In the late 1990s, my mother, a classically trained sitar player, reluctantly attended a Pankaj Udhas concert, cajoled by her closest friend. Reluctantly, because she always thought that Udhas’s voice was ordinary and lacked the vazan (gravitas) and golaai (wholeness) that her heavyweight favourites — Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali and, to some extent, Jagjit Singh — had.
She gave in to her friend because there was one potent weapon in Udhas’s arsenal. “We’ll listen to ‘Chitthi aayi hai’ and come back,” she told the 13-year-old me, as we walked to the open-air concert space. I had heard and watched the song on television many times and didn’t mind the outing.
An hour into the concert came the song we were there for. The audience, which had been demanding his songs about sharaab and shabaab, fell silent, as Udhas began the famed refrain which described the emotions of a father through a letter. And there they were, the lines that turned the atmosphere wistful: “Saat samandar paar gaya tu, humko zinda maar gaya tu/ Tere bin jab aayi Diwali, deep nahi dil jale hai khaali” from Mahesh Bhatt’s film Naam (1986).
The audience wept, including my mother and her friend — the former, imagining the pain of her parents because she lived far from them, and the latter, as she told us later, for her son, a young Army captain posted in Siachen after the Kargil war. Everyone found their own story reflected in Anand Bakshi’s lyrics and Laxmikant-Pyarelal’s tune. Listeners welled up hearing it in Udhas’s uncomplicated voice, including those who didn’t think much of his voice — its timbre, texture or range. Such was the effect that this song by Udhas could have on people.
There were stories back then of the song making such an impression on non-resident Indians that many considered moving back. One didn’t often see such power in a nazm. It was surprising how ‘Chitthi aayi hai’ could evoke such an acute sense of loss. The song will remain synonymous with Udhas, who passed away in Mumbai at 72 after a months-long struggle with pancreatic cancer.
Born and raised in Gujarat, Udhas trained in classical music in Mumbai under Navrang Nagpurkar of the Bhendi Bazaar gharana besides lesssons in Urdu pronounciation. He had moved to the city with his family after his brother Manhar began singing in Hindi films — Udhas thought it would give him a foothold in the industry. But despite the success of the Usha Khanna composition ‘Tum kabhi saamne aa jao’, which he sang for the film Kaamna (1972), Udhas couldn’t find work. This was a time when films were heavily dependent on playback singers like Mohammed Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey and Kishore Kumar, for box-office returns. Not many wanted to bet on a newcomer, unless of course, they couldn’t afford the big names.
Around that time, Udhas, who had been fascinated by Begum Akhtar’s voice, decided to turn to ghazals and brought out his first album Aahat in 1980, followed by Mukarrar in 1981. This was poetry that eschewed difficult phrases and metaphors in favour of clear, plain language, presented like a ghazalnuma film song.
The ghazal, in its traditional form, glorified love and longing, pain and separation, and often the maikhaana (tavern). It was considered a sort of cultured opposition to religious orthodoxy, presenting a modern, secular point of view. Much of that context was lost in the music of the 1980s and 1990s, as the form adapted to survive and developed into the soft, nostalgic genre of today. As the vibrancy of Urdu, the language it was predominantly sung in, declined, the ghazal, too, lost much of its essence.
In the 1980s, even though very few ghazals were brilliant, the genre became a mainstay of film music. Udhas, along with ghazal singers such as Penaz Masani, Chandan Das, Rajender and Nina Mehta, the Hussain brothers, and Bhupinder and Mitali Singh, was part of a wave, with Jagjit Singh at its crest.
Udhas performed ghazals like light music, in a voice that didn’t have the refinement and virtuosity of Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali and lacked the soulfulness that Jagjit Singh brought to the genre. Still, he remained popular, especially among those who didn’t know Urdu well, for the simplicity of his music, which, at times, felt inventive. He also entered the Indian pop space in the late 1990s and found success with soft-pop ghazals such as ‘Ahista’ and ‘Chandi jaisa rang’.
What worked for Udhas was the accessibility of his songs. This may be why many still find an emotional authenticity in his music. For this, Udhas should be celebrated — and for the moving letter from a father that he once sang about.
suanshu.khurana@expressindia.com
Listeners welled up hearing it in Udhas’s uncomplicated voice, including those who didn’t think much of his voice
7
27
28.02.2024
In the late 1990s, my mother, a classically trained sitar player, reluctantly attended a Pankaj Udhas concert, cajoled by her closest friend. Reluctantly, because she always thought that Udhas’s voice was ordinary and lacked the vazan (gravitas) and golaai (wholeness) that her heavyweight favourites — Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali and, to some extent, Jagjit Singh — had.
She gave in to her friend because there was one potent weapon in Udhas’s arsenal. “We’ll listen to ‘Chitthi aayi hai’ and come back,” she told the 13-year-old me, as we walked to the open-air concert space. I had heard and watched the song on television many times and didn’t mind the outing.
An hour into the concert came the song we were there for. The audience, which had been demanding his songs about sharaab and shabaab, fell silent, as Udhas began the famed refrain which described the emotions of a father through a letter. And there they were, the lines that turned the atmosphere wistful: “Saat samandar paar gaya tu, humko zinda maar gaya tu/ Tere bin jab aayi Diwali, deep nahi dil jale hai khaali” from Mahesh Bhatt’s film Naam (1986).
The audience wept, including my mother and her........
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