She passed away this day, aged 75, exactly 18 years ago. A reigning queen of her times, she represented the last of a unique and rare class of actress: a singing star. Although the transition from silent movies to the “talkies” everywhere started with live sets and singing on the sets, with the musicians/instrumentalists carefully hidden away, as were the microphones, soon enough the innovation of playback singing brought in a distinct change. Some actors and actresses who had a good singing voice remained as a rare species. In Hindi movies, the last lady to rule the roost as singer/actress was Suraiyya. Born in Lahore to a Sunni family, she started working in films as a child, and soon graduated to being a leading lady.
I was reminded of this amazing song from a movie that is more than 70 years old. The song remains such a wonderful truly timeless melody, it is still remembered by many who’ve not just not seen the movie but even those who don’t have the foggiest of ideas about the singer.
Afsar was based on Nikolai Gogol’s famous play “The Government Inspector” . It was Navketan‘s first production. Directed by Chetan Anand, it is a wonderful satirical comedy exposing corruption and the “norm” of taking the extra effort to keep Government officials “happy” so they wouldn’t find a way to harass an ordinary citizen. Amazing to see parallels between Tsarist Russia and the nascent India. Dev Anand is a journalist who strays into a village and is mistaken for a Government official. The imbroglio is predictable. It is set in the last days of the British Raj, the story and screenplay by Chetan Anand are an interesting adaptation of Gogol’s original work. Navketan (& Dev Anand) showed it’s penchant for adapting good works of literature in their movies right from the get go. The movie has an amazing set of quirky twists and turns that make it extremely amusing. Dev Anand is an unemployed young man who goes to a village pretending to be a doctor (which of course he isn’t) while the villagers think he is a Government official collecting information about land holding and earning to assess revenue and plan the levying of various taxes. This leads to the village headman insisting the Afsar (who isn’t one) come stay with him and even introduces him to his young daughter who can sing and dance well (Suraiyya) , preparing the circumstances for a romance. All is revealed in the end and the lovers try to elope by the only train out of the village, but miss it.
The music was composed by Sachindev Burman, who enjoyed a mutually beneficial and long association with Navketan. Narendra Sharma wrote the lyrics for all but 2 songs and the movie also has an interesting duet between Suraiyya and Geeta Dutt. Interestingly the only song sung by a man in the movie is picturized on Manmohan Krishna, who is more famous as the heavy lidded curly haired father in countless movies with the Bharat Bhushan like smile. It was amusing and enlightening to see him sing.
Suraiyya, the leading lady (she got top billing even in this movie produced by Dev and Navketan) had a long relationship with the flamboyant Dev Anand, and both were all set for marriage but for an elderly lady in Suraiyya’s family that threw a big spanner in the works, who even threatened along with her uncle to have Dev Anand killed. Dev Anand was heartbroken by the decision and went into a deep depression, was counselled by Chetan Anand who helped him come out of it and marry Kalpana Kartik a few years later, but Suraiyya stayed loyal to her decision and never married. In her heyday, she was known as Malika-e-Husn (queen of beauty), Malika-e-Tarannum (queen of melody) and Malika-e-Adakari (queen of acting).
(Courtesy: Dr. A.B. Chandorkar Blog-link: https://abchandorkar.wordpress.com/author/abchandorkar/)
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