Taj Mahal in songs

Despite the Diwali season in the week gone by, Taj Mahal was also in news. For all the wrong reasons, unfortunately. No fault of the great monument. The leaders of this country are busy finding something which will distract the attention of common man from his hardships of paani, bijli, sadak and prevent him from questioning the rulers about these important issues. Like may other things Taj has also become a prop to divert the attention from basics. However, the way it is done is all the more shameful.

Thankfully, the depiction of Taj Mahal in songs has been, mostly,  very positive. However, if we see how the Seventh Wonder is expressed in songs, we find a spectrum, so it is not only romantic, as we shall see.

The earliest song I could find with Taj Mahal in its lyrics is the S.D.Burman rendition in the film . The voice of S.D.Burman is so different from what we all are used to listening in his 60s and 70s songs. The song is from the film Taj Mahal, released in 1941. This was , essentially, a song which extolled the stature of the monument.

The song   “Dur hato ae duniya waalon, Hindustan hamara hai” from Kismat (1943) was actually against the British but camouflaged to be against the Germans/Japanese. Written by Pradeep, this song  reportedly got past the British censor by the skillful last line: “Shuru hua hai jang tumhara jaag utho Hindustaani/Tum na kisi ke aage jhukna Jarman ho ya Jaapaani..” as World War II was raging.
 

However, the Indian public was skillful at understanding whom “Jahan hamara Taj Mahal hai aur Qutab Minar hai/Jahan hamaare Mandir Masjid Sikhon ka gurudwara hai/Is dharti par qadam badhana atyachar tumhara hai” actually referred to.

The Fifties had two rarely heard/seen  songs either mentioning or showing Taj. The 1951 film Sanam had Dev Anand and Suraiyya, who had a dream sequence featured on them as Mughal royalty. They sing a song of love, with Taj as a backdrop. Though Taj is not mentioned in the song, it is implied and shown. 

In 1954, the Kishore Sahu film Mayurpankh had a very young Helen singing a song while tourists are on a  sight-seeing trip. Taj Mahal is one of the prominent monuments in the song and comes out as a tourist attraction, which it is.  Here the hero Kishore Sahu romances a foreigner (Odette Ferguson) who is unfamiliar with Indian ways of singing duets, and so the usual songs are ruled out. So another way was devised to include songs in this movie by having  performances by various female dancers.

The Fifties and Sixties had the maximum coverage of Taj in songs. The 1957 film Fashion had a Hemant Kumar solo which expressed the grandeur of Taj.

dharti ki god mein
aasmaan ke chhaanv mein
kab se khadaa hai yah taaj

chhupaaye man mein muhabbat kaa raaz
ke sun lo iske dil ki aawaaz
The song from Hum Hindustani ( 1961) , Chhodo kal ki baatein had a couple of glimpses of the Taj.
The film Begana 1963  had the beautiful Rafi solo, Phir wo bhooli si yaad aayi hai which showed Taj Mahal. Despite no mention of the monument, it showed Taj Mahal in its visuals. 

The most popular film about Taj Mahal was, of course, Taj Mahal of 1963. Pradeep Kumar and Bina Roy were the lead pair the title song  ends with a majestic shot of Taj Mahal, which also brings the film to an end.

The most iconoclastic view on Taj was expressed by Sahir Ludhianvi. Sahir was a non-conformist, as he had exhibited all his life. His response "rehne ko ghar nahin hai, saara jahaan hamaara" to Iqbal's "saare jahaan se achchha" and his take on Pradeep's "dekh tere sansar ki haalat", which he turned upside down to " dekh tere bhagwan ki haalat kya ho gayi insaan, kitna badal gaya bhagwaan" are two such examples. 

He was one poet who did not mince the words. So, when he wrote about Taj Mahal, it was not in awe of the monument but a disdain for the display of wealth . The film Ghazal ( 1964) included a short version of his ghazal on Taj. Sahir, the maverick advises his  beloved to meet at a place other than the monument of love Taj Mahal ( एक शहंशाह ने दौलत का सहारा लेकर, हम गरीबों की मोहब्बत का उड़ाया है मजाक )

On the other hand, there was Shakeel Badayuni, who praised the monument of eternal love in his film Leader ( 1964), released in the same year as Ghazal. He  carried on with the conventional

 "ek shahanshah ne banava ke haseen tajamahal
       saari duniyaa ko muhabbat ki nishani di hai"

The diametrically opposite perspectives makes the monument more alluring. 

In the 70s, there was a non film song written by Madhukar Rajasthani and sung by Manna Day, which was played frequently on Vividh Bharti. The words express the yearning of a lover for his "Mumtaz".  Sung soulfully by Manna dey, this was one of the  many gems of the Manna-Madhukar combination, broadcast on Vividh Bharti in the 70s. 'Nathli se toota moti re', 'pal bhar ki pehchan' and 'ye awara raatein' also come to mind.  

sunsaan Jamuna ka kinaara
pyaar ka antim sahaara
chaandni ka kafan odhhe
so raha kismat ka maara
kis se poochoon main bhala ab
dekha kahin Mumtaaz ko

The fantasy film Bundulbaaz ( 1976) had a song with Rajesh Khanna and Sulakshana Pandit as the Mughal couple and shot probably inside the Taj. The song is also melodious to hear. Probably, it is alog-felt dream of every romantic hero be equated with the Maker of Taj Mahal. Such is the aura of Taj.

 
Another non film song on Taj was sung in the 80s by the couple Rajendra and Neena Mehta. By the 80s, the film music had almost stopped giving melodies and the private ghazal/geet scene was at its peak, with Jagjit Singh, Ghulam Ali, Mehdi hasan and a host of other singers. The Mehta couple was one of the notable  duos, apart from Jagjit-Chitra,  Anup Jalota-Sonali and Bhupinder Singh -Mitali. 

The later decades saw less and less of Taj Mahal being mentioned, as India opened up to the world and foreign locations such as Switzerland and Amsterdam were thought to be a more contemporary backdrop for love songs. The Taj Mahal was fast becoming anachronistic as far as song picturisations , specially of non-historical films was concerned.

Moreover, failure of such attempts reinforced this . The film Kasak ( 1992), featuring Rishi Kapoor and Neelam Kothari had a song on Taj Mahal. Both the film and the song remained nondescript.

 The private album were also not venturing into this area as the scene of non film music had shifted from ghazals to indipop. However, Pankaj Udhas came up with a ghazal, which praised the beloved giving many similies, one of them being taj. The poet was Zafar Gorakhpuri. 

The third film titled Taj Mahal was made in 2005 by Akbar Khan. The film had Naushad's music and Naqsh Lyallpuri's lyrics. There was bound to be a song on the epitome of love. The singers were Preeti Uttam and Hariharan. The song tried to bring back the melodious era , as the film was a historical. 

The last song which implied the grandeur of Taj was again a paean for the beloved. Arijit Singh's voice gave the song its emotional core, while Jeet Ganguly's  music and Kausar Munir's lyrics made it contemporary. The film was aptly called Youngistaan ( 2014) 

As we come to the end of this anthology, let us remind ourselves that the great architectural wonder is and shall remain one of the national heritages.
Waah Taj !