The poet’s passing recently has rekindled the debate on the very limited presence of female songwriters in the film industry
Maya Govind’s passing recently has rekindled the debate on the very limited presence of female songwriters in the film industry. The multi-faceted Maya excelled in theatre and dance, but eventually found her calling in poetry.
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Old-timers define her as a rebel, who at the age of 17, went up on the stage without covering her head during a poetic soiree at the Red Fort. “Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, the doyen of Hindi poetry, was presiding. Female poets then addressed the gathering with their heads covered. But Mayaji had different plans. She even left her hair untied,” says Devmani Pandey, poet-lyricist, who has anchored several soirees that reached the climax with Maya’s rousing poetry performed with a dash of drama.
Equally popular were her feminist poems like ‘Ghungta Jala Doongi Main’ (I will burn the veil) and Kante Sehte Sehte Gulab Ho Gaye (I turned into a rose while bearing the thorns).
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Literary merit
Films beckoned but Maya could not shun the poet in her. Her first brush with fame was with ‘Naino main darpan hain’, a meaningful song written in a question-answer format for Vinod Khanna-starrer Aarop (1974). Composed by Bhupen Hazarika, it was rendered by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. Yunus Khan, a senior RJ at AIR’s Vividh Bharati, who has interviewed Maya several times, says, many of her songs had literary merit. “Hazarika was initially flummoxed by the unusually long mukhda but eventually composed a lilting tune.”
She followed it up with ‘Kajre ki baati, asuan ke tel main’, an evocative song from Sawan Ko Aane Do that was marred by flawed picturisation.
A poster of the film Sawan Ko Aane Do. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
Maya emerged at a time when Urdu poetry still dominated film songs, but whenever filmmakers wanted songs with pristine Hindi poetry, they looked towards Maya and Yogesh. Who can forget ‘Ab chiragon ka koi kaam nahin’ (Bawri) and ‘Teri meri prem kahani’ (Pighalta Aasman) .
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As the expressions of Hindi songs began to change, Maya took to simpler words and wrote: ‘Mera piya ghar aaya’ (Yaarana) which became immensely popular. When non-film albums became a craze, Falguni Pathak made a career out of Maya’s ‘Maine payal hai chhankai’.
The lyricist worked with top composers but could not become part of a team or toli, as Pandey calls it, and perhaps that’s why could not get as many ‘big’ opportunities as some of her male counterparts did. “Male composers were never keen to have women lyricists at their musical sessions.”
According to Khan, “sometimes composers include obscene words in their tunes and then expect the lyricist to write on the same lines. This may not work with women writers.”
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Even on stage , women poets face discrimination, but Pandey says, Maya was an exception. “She was called to take the soiree to the climax, a task usually entrusted to a senior male poet. It was because she connected with the masses through her poetry and singing, and could hold on for 30-40 minutes at a stretch.”
One of the two prominent women lyricists today, Kausar Munir whose ‘Doobey doobey’ song from Gehrayiaan is keeping the youth awake and is tying the purists in knots says, like in other creative fields, women lyricists also face patriarchal mindsets. “For a long time, writing film songs was considered just a hobby,” she says.
Kausar says a lyricist requires a different skill set and has to work keeping in mind the music, the situation, and the market. She feels things have changed for the better. She is no longer told to tweak or change words to cater to a certain kind of male audience. .”
Does gender finds its way into song writing? Kausar, who wrote ‘Main pareshan’ (Ishaqzaade), says, sometimes it does. “When Lata ji passed away, I was listening to ‘Aap ki nazron ne samjha pyar ke kaabil mujhe’ (Anpadh). Beautifully rendered, but I thought it sounded regressive. Had it been in a male voice, it would have been wonderful,” she says.
Lyricist Raj Shekhar, whose song in Khaali Peeli was trolled for racist references as he used the word goriya and compared her to Beyonce in one line, says male songwriters are increasingly careful about using words that might offend women’s sensibilities. Having said that, he blames it on the lack of understanding of the vernacular idiom by an urban and supposedly woke audience. “Goriya, traditionally, means a girl, and not skin colour. As in most creative forms, it boils down to intent, perhaps,” he says.