Main Shayar Toh Nahin by Rajiv Vijayakar

Author:Rajiv Vijayakar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2019-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

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THEY ALSO MATTERED

IT would be difficult to include every single lyricist from the ’30s to date in a book like this, which focuses primarily on lyrics rather than only their creators. So we handpick the names that evoked reverence among associates and music lovers who paid due attention to the words, and by inference, respected their writers. This is my selection of lyricists who had the gift to reach the top in their careers, those whose work was uniform in calibre, but somehow, Lady Luck (which can be summed up to be a conglomeration of factors, chiefly speed, versatility, flexibility and health) eluded them and kept them from reaching higher glories.

Amit Khanna

Veteran Amit Khanna, a man of multiple interests because of his varied talents, spotlights the big cultural shift in the country over the decades in lifestyles, sartorial changes and everything else. ‘Change is constant. But when one writes a song, a thought has to be there. Being good at a language or languages is a natural talent.’

Khanna has also been writer, producer, director, executive producer and film publicist as well, and is known to have coined the now official but very controversial word ‘Bollywood’ for Hindi cinema!

Khanna differs from most of his colleagues because he never wrote out of financial compulsions. ‘Do you know that I have never charged a fee for writing a single song? Because it was my passion, and I loved writing to tunes as well, which was the case with four in every five songs that I wrote. And I have never got up from a music sitting without getting a song approved. I never wrote songs alone at home.’

Khanna admitted that there were limitations on lyricists, which is why poets and lyricists, he felt, remain different species. ‘Besides writing to tune and a meter in most cases, it was about writing to a situation and keeping the director and composer in mind. It is like stitching a three-piece suit that you can only innovate on and improvise to make it distinct.’ He points out that Shailendra broke the traditional Urdu syntax of his times and used different chhand (meters) in his songs.

‘I have analyzed my songs,’ said Khanna. ‘I used several rare or new words like alvida (goodbye) in the title-track of Chalte Chalte (1976), my debut film, and fresh imagery. I believed in participating even in the arrangements of the music and the singer’s work, because the orchestration and vocals must give a feel to the lyrics.’

Apart from the cult songs of that film, Khanna’s oeuvre includes Swami (1977), Des Pardes (1978), Lootmaar and Manpasand (1980) and even his unreleased film as a writer-director, Sheeshay Ka Ghar in the 1980s. Khanna did restrict his films overwhelmingly to two composers, Rajesh Roshan and Bappi Lahiri, but did foray once each into films with Biddu (Star – 1982), Anu Malik (Apna Jahaan – 1988), Ilaiyaraja in Aur Ek Prem Kahani (1996) and Laxmikant-Pyarelal in the flop that was a musical hit Bhairavi (1996).

‘Nazar lage na

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