I fully agree with you. You are very right, the lyrics

Main toh aashiq hoon raat kii syaahii kaa
Shamaa din ko jale toh main aataa nahin
Shamaa paigam hai merii tabaahii kaa

are from the movie “Shadi” and penned down by Janaab Amir Rajendra Krishan Sahab. I sincerely regret for the error.

However, recently, I came across something written by Sahir Sahab which touched me a lot. I am sharing it here to let people know of the depth to which Sahir Sahab was involved for the cause of the society.

ग़ज़ल – बहु जलाने का हक

ऊँचे ऊँचे नामों की तख्तियां जला देना,
ज़ुल्म करने वालों की वर्दियां जला देना |

दरबदर भटकना क्या दफ्तरों के जंगल में,
बेलचे उठा लेना डिग्रियां जला देना |
…
मौत से जो डर जाओ तो ज़िंदगी नहीं मिलती,
जंग जीतना चाहो तो कश्तियाँ जला देना |

फिर बहु जलाने का हक तुम्हें पहुँचता है,
पहले अपने आँगन में बेटियाँ जला देना |

these lines are from movie SHAADI 1961 and according to movie credits the lyricist is RAJENDRA KRISHAN.
mr.H.K.L. SACHDEVA has made a big mistake by claiming that the movie is DHARAMPUTRA
and lyricist is SAHIR.as far as panini’s comments about SAHIR’s poetry is concerned;it shows his or her little knowledge about SAHIR and his poetry.of course there are many sayings like BANDAR KYA JANE ADARAK KA SWAD,GADHE KO DHOOL MEIN LOTNE ME HI MAZA AATA HAI etc.

Undoubtedly, Saahir counts as a towering figure in last century’s poetry. His only fault (or misfortune) was that he wrote a lot of his profound poetry for films and in an extremely simple language. I do not recount many films made with a poet as a protagonist. (Leave apart Mirza Ghaalib and Mahakavi Kalidas). But the one’s which were produced had Saahir writing the lyrics. Pyaasa, Kabhie Kabhie…What greater proof is required?

His Ishq, Ishq quawaali is almost legendary in philosophical thought. Or the 4 great songs from hum dono, (three of them greatly philosophical and the other eternally romantic). His belief that song is a poet’s creation and I also read somewhere that he charged a rupee more than the music director for this reason!

I cannot agree with the people who believe he was a sub-standard shaayar…

Ishq na puchhe deen dharam nu,
ishq na puchhe zaataaN,
ishq de haththoN garam lahoo vich,
DubbiyaaN lakhkh baraataaN!

from the famous qawwali “yeh ishq ishq hai ishq ishq”

I cannot help think of my favourite poet again in these troubled times….a man who always rejected religion that stood before human values and human life…..A man, who gave voice to the secular, the humane and the ideal….what better way than to capture the imagination through poetry…..?…Sahir Ludhianvi was a poet beyond his times…His poetry/ lyrics are more meaningful today than ever before….His poetry engages me and is a constant reminder of the sanity that is elusive and desirable……Even if it means.. to be moved by allah tero naam ishwar tero naam…sabko sanmati de bhagwaan…..I will unashamedly claim…..yes, I wish the world that he created in his poetry could really exist….I am happy I can still escape into that world…..

How can I then not admire him, who helps me and perhaps many others make sense of our worlds?…

I shall be back – once I return to India – with my comments soon.

In Sahir, I find a poet, who has the poetic conscience to engage with the ‘real world’……sahir was writing at a time when the euphoria of a new nation was glossing over the harsher realities…there were only some lyricists during his times, who wished to look beyond the romanticised image of the great Indian nation, the perfect heterosexual romance, the desired female body, or the overt sense of patriotism. To be able to construct a poetic narrative of the challenges of the times was an arduous task…..to articulate the failures of the Nehruvian vision was difficult….or rather to put it simply…to put in words the myriad emotions of human life and relationships was not easy…At a time when idealism was rampant…to be able to state the obvious, that too so beatifully…and yet retain the idealism tells us much about his poetic abilities…..I have always found a rupture between Sahir’s life and his poetry and am not too sure his personal…was also his political or poetical if u please……He was an arrogant man….probably even a mysoginist…even an egotist whose concern was to be better than others…to stand out……He did have feudalistic tendencies expressed in his interactions…even with his best friends…..He wasn’t a feminist perhaps…and in real life didnt think much of women…..But to be able to then….even articulate the voices of the ‘subaltern’…including women…was a phenomenal job that only a born poet could achieve…If only in terms of how he managed to express things….his literary skills were unsurpassed….he was truly the ‘magician’…..of words!!!!At a time when we are all worried about who can speak for whom….and who can represent whom……I am convinced of his abilities to represent the secular, the feminists, the post modern, the idealists, the realists….and many more…and therein lies his greatness….

And surely those who have read Sahir might ponder on the fact that his lyrics are engaging…in the way he questions…rasm…riwaaz…dharm..and samaj…..and yet manages to dream…of wo subah…kabhi to aayegi…..His idealism was intact in the way he saw the different aspects of life…khak ko but aur but ko devta karta hai ishq…..he maintained a delicate balance of questioning without offending……and perhaps….poetry didn’t flow out of him…but he evolved out of his poetry….

poetry and music is a political statement about the time as well as a personal expression of ideas…..we read these forms of art also in the ways in which our worlds are constructed…The ‘politics of location’ works both ways…for the reader and the writer….Being an ardent admirer of Sahir’s writings/poetry…I am not too sure…how it would be to have met him…if he were alive….but his poetry talks to me…engages me..in a constant conversation…Perhaps even for those who lived during his times…his poetry was better to relate to and engage with than sahir himself!!!! And the Sahir-Amrita story does exemplify this….

Sahir’s poetry is not dull or dead…It speaks…..and how it speaks to us…depends a lot on our own positionings…….Thanks sahir for telling us…’hooren’ milti hain kise…iski parwah se gaye………!!!!!….those who find it difficult to see beauty in sahir’s writings or meaning in his words….might want to locate themselves…..and position themselves….afterall we do experience things differently…but the difference between those who appreciate the writings of sahir and those who dont lies in the argument that the earth does not revolve around the sun, or that we dont need air and water to survive!!!!!It would be too stark….and unneccessary……!!! cheers

“Where else can we find such deep and meaningful lyrics that too in movies ..for instance..ye mahlon ye takhton ye tajon ki duniya..”

Since you, albeit vitriolically, concede that I am a MR CRITIC I would like to state my position unambiguously on this rather sadly extolled poem of Janab Sahir Ludhianvi Saheb. It seems to me to be amongst the shoddiest poems I have read in a relatively short literary life-span of let us say of ten years of serious reading. And have I read a lot!!! I requires some guts to be moved by Janab Sahir’s almost feudalistic command in this poem:

“mere saamne se haTa lo ye duniya”

Are kyoN bhai! Hum kyoN haTaayeN? Koi naukar lage haiN tumhaare? Agar itni lakleef hai to haTa lo na khud hi! Sahir ki yehi problem hai. Uska politics ekdum begana hai – uninvolved or phuss. YahaN to vo darmiyaani shayari se bhi niche utar aata hai.BaNde meiN koi dam nahiN lagta, kam-az-kam yahaN par to nahiN hi

“Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai”

Kya hai? Aisi duniya agar mil jaaye to bhaiyye laanat hai!!!

You jumped to a conclusion with remarkable alacrity. Baqaul Faiz:

Woh baat saare fasaane meiN jiska zikr na tha,
woh baat unko baRi naagawaar guzri hai!

Read your recommendations of Sahir on Lenin. I do not think there is much to write home about such poetry. His filmi stuff is a lot better even if it confirms the age-old belief: Great minds think alike. We have a Sahir and Neruda in a creative shadow play. Maybe Neruda is the Sahir of Latin America in much the same way as Godard is the Mrinal Sen of France. We have furious commentators here, the rasiks in unbridled kaifiat, who would hear no evil… etc.

Cheers

Aap kahte hain to theek hi kahte honge..Sahir ne aaj tak Shayeri hi nahin ki..he was merely thriving on the profession of plagiarism. Seems you have some vendatta against the departed poet. Due to shortage of time im unable to reply in full so will surely do the catching up.

Hats off to you for penning down our (pro Sahir) heart here. I went a step ahead in saying that how can we criticize Sahir or any other poet when we qre not one up as compared to them.

I am sure, you would have read Mr. Guri’s write up wherein he has given virtually a step by step analysis of the changes which he observed in Sahir’s writings.

I am a die heard fan of Sahir Saheb. Read what he write in “Kissii ko udaas dekhkar”. First he talks of her sadness and his concern for it and then he talks of the sadness of everybody around him and then says :-

ye Gam hai.n bahot merii zi.ndagii miTaane ko
udaas rah ke mere dil ko aur ranj na do

Read his “Mere Giit” reporoduced by me above wherein he categorically says that he is not averse to the love songs and poetry but he can’t stand the torture of human sufferings around and that is why his pen womits fire.

This only Sahir Saheb could write.

Hope to have more interaction in times to come.

Regards,

H.K.L. Sachdeva

You can get in touch with me at :-

sac.harry@gmail.com

I would be very much inclined for your sharing with me your thoughts about your father’s writing. I will feel privileged.

H.K.L. Sachdeva

I have happened to enjoy the best of poetry from the great poets like, I think I should start with Janaab Qamar Jalalabadi (Ik dil ke TukRhe hazaar huye, koyii yahaan giraa, koyii wahaan giraa) and then Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Shalendra ji, Harat Jaipuri, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Pt. Gopaldas Neeraj, Rajendra Krishan, Anand Bakshi, Gulshan Bawra, Sampooran Singh Gulzar, Javed Akhtar and many others.

I beleive all of it is for enjoyment and not for criticism. All that a poet writes, is his thought process which he shapes them into words which gets weaved into the music by the Music Director or may be sometimes it is vice-versa also. It is agreed that sometimes the poet has to compromise his thought process or even the words according to the demand of situations in the movies. Like I gave the examples of Sahir Saheb having written “sanaa_Khwaan-e-taqdiis-e-mashriq kahaa.N hai.n?” which was later simplified by him at Guru Dutt’s request as “Jinhein naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hain?”

Yeh log toh hameshaa hii aallah-zarf log rahe hain (people of higher intelect), how can we imagine to put ourselves at a higher level vis-a-vis them and do the critiqing on them because we can do critiqing on another person only when we are at a level which is “one plus” the person we are attempting to criticise.

I also write and I know how the thought process develops and takes the shape of words. I will share with you one beautiful couplet (not mine) which I think is the best couplet I have heard so far :-

Naamuraad-e-mohabbat ko hikaarat kii nazar se naa dekh,
Yeh baRhe log hain, jiine kaa hunar jaante hain.

This is referring purely to their aallah-zarfii and the same is equally true with all these great poets. Inn sabb kaa darjaa toh aasmaan par biThaane kaa hai aur jabb hum unnko aasmaan kii uunchaaii par dekhte hain toh hamein sabb uunche hii nazar aane chaahiyein.

Hoping for a better inter-acion in this forum,

H.K.L. Sachdeva

It was heratening to get your email. please accept my condolences as well. Thank you for sharing with us your grief

I couldnt agree with you more that we should try to enjoy nad get what we can from these great lyricists. I am a great admirer of sahir saab’s poetry and it aggrieved me to see malicious criticism of his works. I would be similarly saddened if we speak against the other great lyricists of the times including your father…if at all, we should build a systematic critique of the films today which have eroded the culture of lyrical poetry and social sensitivities. Most songs produced today are enough to shame us forever….

I am in india at the moment and would definitely like to speak to you sometime. I was wondering if you might have some insights on any minor or major interactions between your father and sahir saab if at all. Or any opinion shailendra saab had of sahir’s writings. Also if you would like to share with us the story behind the making of the movie Teesri Kasam, and Shailendra saab’s experinces with it. It would be something we would all be grateful for. Is there anything else you might like to share about your brother?

Many thanks for getting back to the blog. Its like a breath of fresh air!!!

warm regards
Swati