“It was 11.00 p.m. in Delhi. I was stretched out on a couch with the laptop balanced on my lap. It was deathly quiet. Only the occasional swish of tyres of a passing vehicle and the whistle of the chowkidar interrupted silence. I dozed off for not more than a few minutes. I woke up with a start and looked at my screen. An entire paragraph had appeared on the page. I have no recollection of writing it. Guess which song the para was about? ‘Lag jaa gale ki phir yeh....’ from Woh Kaun Thi. ”
Balaji Vittal’s voice on the phone is gleeful. It is as if he knows I started! In a freewheeling conversation interspersed with him singing snatches of the songs that I cannot quite place, he speaks of the experience of writing, along with his childhood friend Aniruddha Bhattacharjee, two books - R.D. Burman, the Man The Music (for which he won the Swarna Kamal Award for Best Book on Cinema) and Gaata Rahe Mera Dil .
Unable to download the books on time, I seek recourse to some excerpts available online. The first one I read mentions the songs from Guide . The next speaks of Teesri Manzil , then Aandhi ... I know Balaji is from Kolkata and this man in my eyes can do no wrong.
To the inevitable question of how he got interested in Bollywood music, he gives credit to Calcutta, a big radio and, of course, Chitralok on AIR. “What we call Retro today were new songs on Chitralok in the 1970s. A few of us would gather on the steps of the canteen or the library with a guitar and sing.” The adda paid off and, when many years later the chance came up to write about Hindi film music, Balaji and Aniruddha effortlessly got down to the job.
Since they almost simultaneously signed the contract for both books, the collection of material happened together too. Balaji savoured the process. He fell in love with Mumbai, he says. For obvious reasons, he could not chuck up his regular job. So he would arrive in Mumbai on Friday nights, check into a small budget hotel and hit the road the following morning with a vadaa paav in his stomach and many songs in his head and heart. He remembers how everyone was most welcoming. Including a cab driver who was willing to trust him to pay the balance hundred rupees of the fare later as Balaji did not have the change with him and he was late for an appointment. Pyarelalji, Gulzar Saab, Jaaved Akhtar, Vani Jayram... everyone was most kind and forthcoming, he says. “What amazed me was when we went to speak to them about certain songs that we had shortlisted for Gaata Rahe..., none of them recommended we include their songs. In fact, Pyaarelalji strongly pushed for ‘Aayega Aane Walla’ from Mahal . ‘Yeh gaana zaroor rakhiye,’ he said ” and Gulzar praised Hemant Mukherjee to the skies.
Talking to people and getting the stories behind each song for Gaata Rahe ... was not half as tough as drawing up the list of songs. How does one pick 50 songs from hundreds of unforgettable ones? “We knew we would get beaten up. No matter what songs we chose, someone would always come up and say ‘How come you did you not mention such and such song!’”
I did just that and accused him of leaving out songs from Teesri Kasam, Albela and Anarkali ? “It was difficult,” sighs Balaji. But there was no other way out. “We drew up an algorithm that covered different decades, composers, singers, lyricists, films ...That would be representative of the history of Hindi films.” Balaji and Aniruddha also hotly debated the song selection. But Balaji says that was good for the book as otherwise if they agreed about everything it would have been a rather tame outcome. “But it broke our hearts.” “‘Chaudvin ka Chand’, ‘Baar baar dekho’ were also not there,” I point out uncharitably.
Hopefully, says Balaji, others will take up the franchise and come out with more such lists which will include my favourite songs, yours and more. There is still so much more to document and record. It is a treasure trove out there and, as Javed Akhtar mentions in the preface to one of their books, if the facts are not put down in black and white they will be lost to us forever.
Balaji has other plans too. He says there is another book in the pipeline, this time on interesting characters from Hindi cinema.
