Sahir’s Legacy

Sahir Ludhianvi aka Abdul Hayee is having a bit of a moment with actor Danish Husain’s play Main Pal Do Pal Ka Shayar Hoon, which is the title of the song he famously wrote for Amitabh Bachchan in Yash Chopra’s Kabhie Kabhie (1976). The poet, whose songs defined a generation’s angst in movies such as Baazi (1951) and Pyaasa (1957) was as mercurial as he was brilliant. His work has been the subject of serious, scholarly work but it is only now that he is being rediscovered in the popular domain. Husain is a former Standard Chartered banker in Delhi who quit in 2014 to follow his passion in acting. He came across the works of Ludhianvi when he did a session at an Urdu literary festival with singer Vidya Shah on progressive writers and poets such as Majrooh Sultanpuri, Kaifi Azmi. The play is the outcome of two manuscripts, one by Ali Hussain Mir on Anthems of Resistance: A Celebration of Progressive Urdu Poetry, and the other, Dastan-e- Sahir, written by Himanshu Bajpai. “I asked the two of them to hand over their scripts to me. I edited, restructured and gave it its present shape.” The end result: The play opened to full houses in Mumbai in September 2023 and the response has only risen with each enactment. “Sahir was a complex, enigmatic man,” says Husain, who has done similar work on Begum Akhtar, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Alla Rakha. The house in which Ludhianvi once lived, in Juhu, Mumbai, is now the subject of litigation between his surviving relatives, even as his books and records lie eaten by termites. He was one of the earliest writers to demand that Hindi film lyricists be credited by All India Radio. His unrequited love for poet Amrita Pritam is also part of the legend that surrounds him as is his feud with singer Lata Mangeshkar. His poetry, poignant and powerful, is as relevant now as it was in post- Independent India. After all, it took a particular kind of courage to question Nehru’s India at the height of Nehruvian India in his Pyaasa song: ‘Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahan hai’.

Zakir Hussain’s Tabla

With every beat of the tabla, Dev Patel would aim a punch at the punching bag. As the beats gathered pace, so did his punching. And when he would tire, Zakir Hussain’s tabla would almost push him to start again in a most unusual duet. Those with long memories will remember Hussain from Merchant Ivory’s Heat and Dust (1983), as Julie Christie’s lover in the film based on a Ruth Prawer Jhabvala novel of the same name. He was also in Sai Paranjpye’s Saaz (1997) as a version of RD Burman, caught between mother and daughter, played by Shabana Azmi and Ayesha Dharker, respectively. But in Patel’s Monkey Man, Hussain plays a tabla maestro in a transgender commune led by Alpha, portrayed by the actor Vipin Sharma. Hussain’s work in the film is stellar, mixing mischief with magic. Patel and he exchange smiles as they keep pace with one another in one of the most thrilling scenes in the movie. The film explores the powerful mafia in the city, Yatana, run by a corrupt godman (Makarand Deshpande), the local policeman (played by Sikandar Kher) and a woman who supplies escorts (an effective Ashwini Kalsekar). Hussain is also known for writing a part of the music for Francis Ford Coppolla’s 1979 classic Apocalypse Now.

Scene and Heard

Pratik Gandhi is playing the young Mahatma in Hansal Mehta’s series Gandhi based on the books by Ramachandra Guha. But much before that, he was the voice and face of Mohan ka Masala. The play which he performs in Hindi, Gujarati or English, as is the demand, is a tour de force, with the actor holding audiences captive for over 90 minutes, without intermission, by virtue of his stage presence. Created by Manoj Shah, the play attempts to explore Mohandas who became the Mahatma by reliving his experiences from his birth in Porbandar to the tipping point in South Africa. Shah is somewhat of a biopic specialist having done similar plays with subjects such as German philosopher Karl Marx and India’s first woman doctor Anandibai Joshi. Gandhi is seeing a surge in his career, with roles in the popular new movies such as Madgaon Express and Do Aur Do Pyaar, which give him an opportunity to do light comedy. His role as Harshad Mehta in Scam 1992 (2020) made the Gujarati stage and movie actor a national star.

About The Author

Kaveree Bamzai

Kaveree Bamzai is an author and a contributing writer with Open

•