Birthday Special: ANAND BAKSHI, HE WAS THE COMMON MAN'S POET AND PHILOSOPHER... BY LT. ALI PETER JOHN

I had absolutely no knowledge of what Hindi poetry was all about till we in our convent school were forced to learn Hindi and by the time I was in the ninth and tenth standard, I was considered one of the best students of Hindi and there were times when our Hindi teacher, Mr R. Singh let me read passages and poems in Hindi throughout the time the Hindi period lasted and he sat in his chair and kept chewing his paan and yawning- Ali Peter John

It was the first time I heard of Hindi poets like Ramadhari Singh ‘Dinkar', Sumitranandan Pant, Suryakant Tripathi ‘Niralla' and Dr. Harivanshrai Bachchan. They made me know the significance of Hindi poetry and I found their poetry to be more real and grounded than all the English poets I was brought up on. I started loving Hindi film poetry...

It was next going to be radio which was going to introduce me to a whole lot of Hindi songs that were different and easier to understand than the Urdu poetry used for some of the songs. The first Urdu poet to make a lasting impression on my young mind was Sahir Ludhianvi because of the songs he wrote for Hindi films and the first two Hindi poets who made an impact on me were Shailendra and Anand Bakshi.

The afternoons and evenings we spent together and the easy poetry that flowed through his being under any circumstances made me spend more and more time with him and I was with him till one day before he bid farewell to the world he gave so much to, the kind of treasure no Ambani or Adani or all of them could put together.

I have tried to know every song that he wrote during the forty years he ruled, but I feel very happy to know that I know his son, Rakesh Anand Bakshi who has been showing his love and respect for his father (which is a quality that is going out of our lives) and has been keeping his father alive through his poetry.

What will follow is Rakesh's understanding of his father's poetry which was an easy way of explaining the most difficult and complex feelings to the most common man......Says Rakesh, about his father, “I know in many cases of my father’s work the lyrics came first. It was a team work and each and everyone contributed to a song, including the primary factor - the director.”

According to Rakesh, his father never attended Mushairas. “In fact, he never considered himself a poet at all, though many people known to him would keep complimenting him on being one”.

Anand Bakshi was no push-over as a singer as is evident in his renditions in“Mom ki Gudiya"(his debut as a singer), “Charas", “Sholay"(the qawwali which was never filmed). So why did he not choose to pursue a career as a singer? Explains Rakesh, “There is a singer in every lyricist.

They complement each other to arrive at a song in the absence of each other.” That said, choosing a path in which Hasrat Jaipuri, Majrooh, Sahir and Shailendra had staked out their indelible lines of control was risky. But then, in his stint in the Services, Anand Bakshi had faced far graver threats.

Bakshi is probably the only Indian lyricist who served in the Navy and the Army. Every battle is a life’s lesson, they say. “Military life taught him discipline. Of the 3300 songs (sic) that he wrote, he never delayed (writing)even one,” discloses Rakesh.

1956 was the year in which Anand Bakshi the Services and plunged into lyric-writing full time. What gave him the confidence that he would be a success? “Poverty,” sums up Rakesh.

Initially, the going was tough. He got a few assignments, “Bada Admi" being one. But the flower of hope would bloom for Anand Bakshi only after his first major success, the Shashi Kapoor-Nanda romance“Jab Jab Phool Khile". Things got better financially. And soon followed the blitzkrieg.

“Milan", “Aradhana", “Do Raaste", “Jeene ki Raah", “Kati Patang", “Hare Rama Hare Krishna", “Amar Prem", “Bobby"… song after song was hummed by young and old, men and women alike all over the land. No inclusion in any curriculum was needed.

Bakshi’s pen had a grip on the emotional pulse of all and sundry. He believed that simplicity was the key to connecting. His verses were mostly colloquial, dialect-neutral Hindi. He could tailor his lyrics to a mushy coochie-cooing “Mujhe kuch kehna hai...” or to a fatalistic “Yeh kya hua...”
Unlike a Sahir Ludhianvi whose couplets carried the ‘watermark’ of his Urdu erudition, Anand Bakshi plucked words from the everyman dictionary. “For me a great song is one in which I am invisible,” quotes Rakesh Bakshi in his upcoming biography about his father that he is in the process of scripting.

This is not to say that Anand Bakshi’s poetry was not thought-provoking. He would dive into philosophy in the ‘Antara’ only after he was sure he had connected with the audience in the ‘Mukhra’. “Jeevan ke dukhon se yun darte nai hain…… sukh ki hai chaah to dukh bhisehna hai”, a man explains to his drug-addicted sister. “…Mai banke aansoo khud apni nazar se girjaoon…”, a forlorn young man punishes himself.

Anand Bakshi maintained that a film lyricist should be able to write to any situation. There was a situation in which a man was trying to explain to his estranged girlfriend the truth after she had caught him in bed with another woman, “…. Jaane tumhe maine koi dhoka diya, jaane tumhe koi dhoka hua…”

Anand Bakshi’s poetry helped define quite a few screen images. The teasing seduction of Mumtaz in the award-winning “Bindya chamkegi...” became her brand identity. “Safal hogi teri aradhana…” and a petite young girl is transformed into a single mother struggling to bring up her son.

Dharmendra’s brawny Punjabi sauce that was so obviously intrinsic to his personality was discovered in “Mai jat yamla pagla deewana…”. Though a Punjabi, Anand Bakshi would bring out his Punjabi vocabulary only if the situation demanded, unlike the stock Bhangra mix that is doled out in every film nowadays.

“He had excellent relationships with seniors like DN Madhok, Sahir and Shailendra, whom he considered his gurus.He had great respect for Hasrat Jaipuri too,” says Rakesh Bakshi. Obviously, Anand Bakshi’s people management was a strength too. With the sole exception of Nasir Husain, Bakshi was the lyricist of every major Producer/ Director – J OmPrakash, Ramanand Sagar, Shakti Samanta, Dev Anand, Raj Khosla, Manmohan Desai and even the South Indian heavyweights like Chinappa Devar and some other leading producers who followed.

He had also forged interpersonal relationships with two “power players” of the 1970s and 1980s: L-P and RD Burman. “(Yet) he never invited anyone home or took anyone out for dinner (as a carrot) to get work. Even the film fraternity people like RD Burman, Kishore Kumar who visited our home did so in the capacity of friends,” remembers Rakesh.

Working in Bollywood demands flexibility of every kind. How would Anand Bakshi feel if any of his songs were left out of the final cut of a film? “He was cool, as he believed that the film is the directors’ and producers’ medium, as he was employed by the producer and owed him his loyalty”, says Rakesh.

But Bakshi would not stand the star-nakshatras. “Once a star-hero rejected his lyrics. My dad gladly walked out of the project. (Sometimes) he walked away from films, but was able to maintain friendships with those directors and producers,” reveals Rakesh. Anand Bakshi wrote for five decades, watching the windmill of time roll over and over. New actors replaced old ones, and his close buddies like Kishore Kumar, Pancham, and Laxmikant left for the heavens even as he watched helplessly. But Anand Bakshi’s gallery of fame kept gathering up successes like“Hum", “Darr", “Lamhe", “Mohra", “DDLJ" and “Dil to Pagal Hai", as he kept adjusting his stance with the changing landscapes of man-woman relationships and the generational conflicts of the Indian diaspora. And even for a psycho-neurotic anti-hero. He stayed young and kept his screen heroes and heroines even younger.

Anand Bakshi passed away in 2002. I was with him on the evening before he died and I cannot for the life of me understand how much he wanted to live as he held my hand and cried like a child, saying, “Ali I don't want to die"but who was I to decide the fate of a man who had changed the fate of so many. He had been active till 1998, penning Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s last film“JhootBole Kauwa Kaate", which was another triumph for him because earlier Hrishida had lyricists who were known poets like Shailendra, Gulzar and Yogesh. It may also be mentioned here that Dev Anand either had Sahir or Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri to write the songs for his films, but when Sahir and Shailendra died and Dev had to make a choice for his ambitious film, “Hare Rama Hare Krishna", he had to finally opt for Anand Bakshi. It may also be known that Dev Anand usually or mostly wrote his songs in English and then asked his lyricists to follow the same guidelines, but in Bakshi's case, he gave him a free hand. The same thing also happened with Yash Chopra. He always wanted Sahir to write the songs for his films, but when Sahir died all of a sudden, Yash and his son, Aaditya Chopra had to go for Anand Bakshi who wrote some of the most memorable songs for films like“Darr" and “Dil Toh Pagal Hai" for Yash and“Mohabbatein" and“DDLJ" for Aaditya which spoke volumes for his versatility.

Unlike composers, singers and actors, none of the lyricists’ off-springs went on to become lyricists (Sameer, son of Anjaan being the only exception). Opines Rakesh, “Your experiences, your past, make your present and future. I did not have the experiences of my father so I cannot write like him. Sameer’s upbringing included the culture and experiences that lead him to become a lyricist.”
Director Subhash Ghai had this to say about Bakshi’s lyrics in“Taal"(which Rakesh has included in his biography of his father), “The amazing thing about Anand Bakshi’s lyrics was that - though I loved them when I first heard them during the song sittings, I realized their deeper true value and significance in my screenplay when I would be shooting them, and at that time I often felt he knew my story better than me. What he had written, reflected all that my story had – (and) sometimes (those aspects that) I too had not realized. I miss a lyricist like him.”

It is seventeen years since the body of Anand Bakshi went up in flames, but his undying spirit and his zest for life live on and on. You have to just switch on any music channel or any radio station and you will see the spirit of Anand Bakshi leaping out to hold your heart and mind or make you go into a tizzy or swing into a kind of dance you have never danced before. No alvidas(farewells) for you, Bakshi Sahab, you say farewells to the dead and not to those who are born to live forever.