Muzaffar Ali remembers his ‘musical soul-mate’

Muzaffar Ali, who shared a special bond with Khayyam, had him compose music for almost all his films. Khayyam’s music for Ali’s hit film Umrao Jaan, fetched him a National Award. An emotional Ali shares with us what the veteran composer meant to him. “If there’s anybody who’s been closely associated with Khayyam sa’ab, it will be me. We did four films together Umrao Jaan, Anjuman, Gaman and Zooni. And between Khayyam, Shahryar, Asha Bhosle and myself, we created some of the finest musical scores in Hindi cinema. For me, music and poetry are a very-very important part of a cinema, and so unse ek hamara rishta bann gaya tha jo mujhe lagta hai ki history of film mein usko repeat karna mushkil hai. We worked a lot on these films in great detail. The amount of time we took on Umrao Jaan. To make some of the most creative tunes taken in

Bollywood

. We literally took two years to get the music of the film together! I used to live in

Juhu

, in Mumbai, and Khayyam sahab also lived in Juhu. So Shahryar sahab used to come from his home and we would all stay at my house. We all would have some very intense discussions and interactions on the whole musical expression of the film. It was that kind of a deep relationship that I shared with him.”

Muzaffar Ali (BCCL)
He adds, “When a person like him goes away suddenly, it becomes larger than life and almost impossible to believe.”