The Bollywood mujra isn’t yesteryear’s item number. It’s both visual and aural, it objectifies the woman and yet gives her agency, elegance and shairee.
Long before Aditi Rao Hydari’s mujra in Heeramandi inspired a gazillion Reels, there was producer-director Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah (1972), Meena Kumari’s swan song that made her a legend. The film about a courtesan’s love story took over 15 years to make, mired by professional and personal setbacks.
And yet, Pakeezah (The Pure One) is a triumph of filmmaking and music. Lavishly mounted and lovingly crafted, the story ends by cocking a snook at social stigma: the courtesan Sahibjaan (Meena Kumari) marries Salim, the aristocrat she loves (Raaj Kumar). The music casts an everlasting spell.
Composer Ghulam Mohammed, chosen by Amrohi for his National Award-winning music in Mirza Ghalib (1954), excels in the mujras scored for Meena Kumari — Inhin logon ne, Chalte chalte, Thare rahiyo and Teer-e-nazar dekhenge — in different moods, sung by Lata Mangeshkar as only she can.
Teer-e-nazar dekhenge, less popular than the playfully poignant Inhin logon ne, is pehaps the most passionate mujra in Bollywood history. It’s when Sahibjaan performs a mujra in front of Salim, her lover, who’s all set to marry another woman, Ghulam unleashes the full power of Raga Khamaj with the pakhawaj, sitar and the tabla — you can hear his training as a percussionist in every beat.
Lata owns the sur and Kaif Bhopali’s lyrics of hurt and heartbreak, which the tempo of the tabla and angry ghunghroos amplifies.
Lata’s song stops with the breaking of glass, but wait for the outro. It’s heartbreak in a hurricane.
Bhopali’s lyrics begin defiantly: “Aaj hum apni duaon ka asar dekhenge/ Teer-e-nazar dekhenge, zakhm-e-jigar dekhenge (Tonight, I’ll see the outcome of my prayers, the piercing arrows of your eyes, my wounded heart).” He goes on to touch the raw nerve of every courtesan: “Pyar karna dil-e-betaab bura hota hai/ Sunte aaye hain ki yeh khwab bura hota hai (Falling in love, oh eager heart, is wrong, I’ve always heard that this dream is wrong.)
For years, it appeared that Amrohi’s dream of making Pakeezah was wrong. He started shooting his magnum opus with wife-actress Meena Kumari in the 1950s in black-and-white, became excited by the advent of colour in film and began reshooting. The film was half made when his marriage to Meena Kumari fell apart in the early 1960s. They reconciled — professionally, only for the film — years later, but she fell ill with liver cirrhosis. The film was somehow completed.
Meena Kumari died on March 31, 1972, aged 38, less than two months after Pakeezah’s release, sparking mass hysteria for the film and its songs.
Ghulam didn’t live to see the craze for his songs. He died on March 17, 1968, aged 65, when the film was still in the cans. Composer Naushad stepped in to tie up the loose ends, but Pakeezah remains Ghulam’s tour de force.
Proves that no one can predict an artiste’s afterlife.