That Habib Jalib and Parveen Shakir composed loving verses to Lata in her prime is a remarkable tribute to the healing and uniting power of music
Qafas mein mar chale the hum toa Jalib
Bachaya humko aavaz-e-Lata ne
(We were very much on our way to death in jail
It was Lata’s voice which saved us from the travail)
So observed the Pakistani poet Habib Jalib while being on death row in Pakistan’s notorious Mianwali jail – a jail that had once housed the likes of Nehru, Mujibur Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – during Pakistan’s blackest days under the dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq.
In an earlier period of incarceration at Hyderabad jail, Jalib wrote a fuller tribute to the music legend. As he recounts the circumstances of its revelation in his autobiography Jalib Beeti, Jalib’s jail comrades were also his friends. There were youth among them too. They were his admirers. He would listen to them and they would listen to him. Sometimes he would tell them, “Someone go find Lata (Mangeshkar).” There was a youth Wahab who was a bit senior to them. He too had good taste, therefore two groups were formed there; one loved Lata, the other loved the Pakistani singer Naheed Akhtar. Jalib would say to them, “Brothers there is a big difference between Lata and Naheed.” Wahab while rotating the needle on the radio, would scream when a song of Lata would be playing, “Jalib sahib! Lata has come, Lata has come.”
Jalib wrote his tribute to Lata there. It begins and ends with the refrain:
Tere madhur geeton ke sahare
Beete hain din raat hamare
Here is the translation of the whole poem:
‘With the help of your charming songs
Our days and nights pass
Had your voice not existed
The flame of life would have been extinguished
Such are your true notes
Like the sun, moon, stars
With the help of your charming songs
Our days and nights pass
The number of your songs is so many
The heart bows when the instrument and the voice are in harmony
Hearing you we become elated
Those like us who are afflicted
With the help of your charming songs
Our days and nights pass
Within you Mira has come, residing permanently
The body and colour is the same verily
In the universe you have many a servant
As many as the stars on the firmament
With the help of your charming songs
Our days and nights pass.’
Longer and more poetic than Jalib’s poem is Parveen Shakir’s free verse poem Mushtarika Dushman ki Beti (Daughter of a Common Enemy) which was written in more sedate circumstances than Jalib’s verses. It forms part of Shakir’s bestselling debut poetic collection Khushboo (Fragrance), published in 1976 when she was twenty-four. Connoisseurs will also remember that 1976 was the year when Lata was at the peak of her singing career, having already sung in Mausam, directed by Gulzar in 1975 and giving the audience a hit song like Dil Dhoondta Hai; followed by hits like Husn Hazir Hai and Is Reshmi Paazeb ki Jhankaar (a duet with Mohammed Rafi) in the film Laila Majnu released in 1976. These achievements had come at the back of one of Lata’s finest musical moments, the release of the cult film Pakeezah in 1972, starring Meena Kumar and Ashok Kumar, and directed by Kamal Amrohi.
Shakir’s poem then opens in a Chinese restaurant ostensibly outside the Indian subcontinent where the narrator and her colleagues are seated with their Indian interlocutors. The mood turns from pleasant to bitter with memories of the two wars both the subcontinental neighbours fought with each other in 1965 and 1971. It seemed to the poet that in such a tense situation something will give way, but then,
Lekin us pal aurkestra khamosh hua
Aur Lata ki ras tapkaati, shahad-aageen aavaz, kuch aise ubhri
Jese habs-zada kamre mein
Darya ke rukh vaali khirki khulne lagi ho!
Main ne dekha
Jismon aur chehron ke tanaao par
An-dekhe haathon ki thandak
Pyaar ki shabnam chirak rahi thi
Masakh-shuda chehre jese phir sanvar rahe the
Meri nashanalist kaleegz
Haathon ke pyalon mein apni thodiyaan rakhe
Saakit-o-jaamid bethi then
Geet ka jaadu bol raha tha!
Mez ke neeche
Restoraan ke maalik ki hans-mukh beevi ke
Narm gulabi paaon bhi
Geet ki humraahi mein thirak rahe the!
For the honeyed voice of Lata, the eponymous ‘daughter of a common enemy’ had intervened. Could it have been a song from the hit film Pakeezah? Like Mausam Hai Aashiqana or Chalo Dildar Chalo, which still must have been the rage despite the passage of four years and the heartbreakingly-early death of its heroine Meena Kumari? Or some other Lata song? The poet does not tell us, but then a Lata song is a Lata song and here it acts as a palliative, calming nerves all around, as the poem races to its denouement, addressing its eminent subject:
Mushtarika dushman ki beti
Mushtarika mehboob ki soorat
Ujle resham lehjon ki baanhen phailaaye
Hamen samite
Naach rahi thi!
Here then is the translation of the whole poem:
‘Inside a tiny Chinese restaurant
Me and my nationalist colleagues
Sitting within a beautiful sunset like the poems of Keats
Were looking at the aroma rising from the soup bowl, pleasing to the touch
Turning into fulfillment of the body
The conversation sparkling with the
Mention of ‘The Wind Cannot Read’, Taj Mahal, Mysore silk
And Benares sari turned up to Pak-Indian politics
1965 – then 1971 – prisoners of war
The television of Amritsar
Pakistani culture – new battlefield – alarm bell…..
My zealous colleagues
Were very angry at this attack
I tried saying something, then
They had frowned such
As if they were given quinine syrup instead of soup
The jovial wife of the restaurateur too
Was looking at me with complaining glances
(Perhaps some arrow of 1962 was still pierced within her heart!)
In the nerves of the restaurant as if
Rage like the body of a high-blood pressure person had entered
Had this condition lasted for some time
Then the arteries of our brains would have burst
But that moment, the orchestra became silent
And the syrupy, honeyed voice of Lata, emerged such
As if in a congested room
The window facing the river is about to open!
I saw
Upon the tension of bodies and faces
The coolness of unseen hands
Was sprinkling the dew of love
As if the deformed faces were adorned again
My nationalist colleagues
Keeping their chins within the cups of (their) hands
Were sitting quiet and stationary
The magic of the song was rising!
Under the table
The soft rosy feet too
Were dancing to the accompaniment of the song!
The daughter of the common enemy
In the shape of the common lover
Extending the arms of clean silk tones
Gathering us
Was dancing!’
It is indeed a remarkable tribute to the healing and uniting power of music that the nightingale of India could compel a people’s poet par excellence to provide a modicum of hope to people struggling for their rights and provide catharsis to him while ensconced in a dictator’s jail. And in addition, find mention in the maiden poetic collection of someone who would become a household name in Pakistan’s notoriously male-centric literary universe, becoming a peacemaker between warring neighbors even on foreign soil, albeit in a fictional setting. The power of the daughter of a common enemy indeed!
*All the translations from the Urdu are by the writer.
