Musigns

Uttam,
Rafi...
and We

Syed Badrul Ahsan

Top: The most popular on-screen couple of all time - Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. Bottom: Mohammad Rafi

It is that time of year when we remember Uttam Kumar. It is that season when we recall the musical genius that Mohammad Rafi was. Indeed, it is that moment in life when the past casts its long shadow on our present. There is something about the days gone by which makes us sit up and feel as if the melodies of the past shape our responses to the world around us. Uttam Kumar is part of that melody. When you watch him, in those old black and white movies that have left a huge imprint on all our lives, you realise just how much of romance there once was in the way we carried ourselves. Of course, there are the men, and surely the women, who these days take the world by storm. They do it through glamour, through the insipid modernity that has seeped into movies, which, by the way, often do not reflect the true calling of the heart. There is something missing in them, something of depth, unless of course you speak of Aamir Khan. He is one young man who keeps the old fires going.

And where it is a question of Uttam Kumar, of his times, no, we are not him and we are not like him. And yet there is something of Uttam Kumar in us as surely as there was something of him in our fathers. He was suave, he was a dignified being and he brought into his portrayals of life and love on the screen all the ideals we tried living by. You watch him wooing Suchitra Sen; you see him argue, in all the passion of love, with Savitri and you see his heart break before Sharmila Tagore. In all those images of the heart in interplay with the soul, you see yourself as you might have been had destiny been yours to mould. Men like Uttam Kumar were men, in that manly sense of the meaning. Look back at Gregory Peck in the West. And when you do, you do not have much interest in Leonardo di Caprio or Tom Cruise. It is a similar situation with observing Uttam. In his songs, in the way he peered into the eyes of the women he loved, there was nothing of the effeminate. It was a simple tale of a simple romance in a virile being. Every man wished to be Uttam Kumar. And every woman fantasised about being Suchitra or Savitri or Sharmila. There was innocence about it. There was the sensuous in that feeling. There was never any sensuality in the thought.

And that is how that era comes to us. It was a time that, again, was made memorable by Mohammad Rafi. Those of us who went to school in the 1960s will today hum the songs he sang, day after day, on the radio for us. No, he sang and it was our parents who sang those songs long after his had come to an end for the day. And yet Rafi belonged to us, as he belongs to us all these decades after his passing. His versatility was his defining trait. He sang the most passionate of romantic songs, in all their pathos. And then there were the jovial, often naughty, numbers. Add to them the duets he sang, with Noor Jehan, Lata, Asha, Suman and so many others. And do not forget the religious numbers. If you have once heard “Parwar digaare alam tera hi hai sahara” you will not have cause to forget it. A profound yearning for God rises in your soul, in the way that deep longing takes hold of your heart when you recall Rajendra Kumar sing “Yaad na jaaye beete dino ki”. Rafi was our epitome of romance. When he sang, we conjured up images of Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor. He was never indistinguishable from the actors for whom he sang. Remember how we always knew that when Hemanta Mukherjee sang there was forever Uttam Kumar behind that song?

Uttam Kumar and Mohammad Rafi were representative of their generation. If one taught us the magic of love, the other informed us of the rich tenor of high romance. Uttam was serious, funny, tragic and clownish, qualities that we wish we had in ourselves. Rafi reminded us of the wild beatings of the heart, of the truth that age is never a barrier to a baring of the soul, that the lyrical is all.

These two men of magic and music ended their tryst with life in July. Mohammad Rafi returned to dust on July 31, 1980. Uttam Kumar was reduced to ashes on July 24, 1984. The rest of us have grown old in thoughts of what they will always mean to us.

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