This story is from June 23, 2003

When it comes Bollywood, Mumbai is on song

Radha Rajadhyaksha / TNN / Jun 23, 2003, 01:44 IST

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MUMBAI: Mee Mumbaikar, the Shiv Sena-commissioned Javed Akhtar-penned ode, may be the first melodic tribute to the city by a political party. But it isn't as if Mumbai didn't soar on wings of song before this.

When it comes Bollywood, Mumbai is on song

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><script language="javascript" src="Config?Configid=43376741"></script> <img align="left" src="/photo/37695.cms" alt="/photo/37695.cms" border="0" />MUMBAI: Mee Mumbaikar, the Shiv Sena-commissioned Javed Akhtar-penned ode, may be the first melodic tribute to the city by a political party.But it isn''t as if Mumbai didn''t soar on wings of song before this. The city has inspired a multitude of Hindi film ballads, some pedestrian, others exceptional for the way they captured the bitter-sweet quintessence of this magnetic metropolis. Undoubtedly the most iconic of these is the 1956 Ay dil hai mushkil jeena yahan/Zara hatke, zara bachke, yeh hai Bombay meri jaan from Guru Dutt''s CID. Written by the late Majrooh Sultanpuri and composed by O.P. Nayyar, the zingy composition (a copy of the American miner''s tune, Clementine) and nail-on-head lyrics made it the chartbuster of its time, recalls song historian Raju Bharatan. "Those days it was the norm to bring out an LP a few months before the film''s release," he says. "The records of CID, if I''m not mistaken, were out almost a year earlier, and Ay dil hai mushkil was the top song on Binaca Geetmala for that period." The great rush to gold-paved Bombay was gathering speed in the mid-''50s, and Majrooh''s lyrics reflected the ethos, says Mr Bharatan. "I wouldn''t say it''s a brilliant lyric, but its reach was tremendous," he declares. Indeed, it was Majrooh who seems to have sowed the germ of the â€˜heartless Bombay'' cliche in the verse that went, Kahin building, kahin traamein, kahin motor, kahin mill/Milta hai yahan sab kuch ek milta nahin dil/Insaan ka nahin kahin naam-o-nishaan''. "My favourite Bombay ditty is undoubtedly Bombay meri jaan," says Javed Akhtar. "It''s the ultimate song as far as this city goes." Akhtar (whose father Jan Nissar Akhtar wrote one song in CID) has also penned a tangential song on Mumbaiâ€”on its street childrenâ€”for Yash Chopra''s Mashaal, Footpathon ke hum rehne waale/Raaton ne paala hum woh ujaale.'' If Akhtar took up the streetchild, very much a Mumbai motif, other eminent poets have touched other cores of the city. Gulzar''s Ek akela is shahar mein/Raat mein ya dopahar mein/Aab-o-dana dhoondta hai/ Aashiyana dhoondta hai encapsulates beautifully the desperation for shelter in a city without space (the sunshine version, Do deewane shahar mein, brims with exuberance on the attainment of this elusive shelter). Another song that one would swear is a quintessentially Mumbai vignette (Shahryar''s Seene mein jalan, aankhon mein toofan sa kyon hai/Is shahar mein har shaks pareshan sa kyon hai) wasn''t actually written for the film. "It''s a very famous ghazal that was just used very aptly by Muzaffar Ali in Gamanâ€”city life seen through the eyes of a UP migrant," says Gulzar. "It''s a truly beautiful song." Migrantspeak that was less profound but full of earthy commonsense made for another chartbuster in 1970â€”Anjaan''s Ee hai Bambai nagaria tu dekh babua from Don, which actually went into the etymology of locales (Koi bandar nahin hai phir bhi naam Bandra, Church ka Gate hai, church hai laapata!). While Bambai se aaya mera dost had little other than the name of the city in it, it is the sinister ring of an almost forgotten song from the 1983 Haadsa that is chillingly prescient about what the city was to turn into. The words goâ€”Yeh Bambai shahar haadson ka shahar hai/Yahan zindagi haadson ka safar hai/Yahan roz roz har mod mod pe hota hai koi na koi/Haadsa..'' Scores of other songs have tributed and continue to trumpet the praises of Mumbai, one of them by Javed Akhtar himself in the forthcoming Supari (Har andhere ke peeche ek savera yahan/Har savere ke peeche ek andhera yahan). Evidently the city of dreams and nightmares will continue to inspire cinema''s bards for a long time to come.</div> </div>

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