Najibabad
Remembrance of
things past
MARCH 20, 2014 15:07 IST
Uttar Pradesh’s little
known town of Najibabad in Bijnor district, has always had a cultural life
beyond the obvious
Nostalgia is an inescapable fact of life. It
revives memories of whatever was precious in our past. Although I have been
living in Delhi for more than four decades, I continue to fondly remember my
home town Najibabad in Bijnor district of western Uttar Pradesh. It was founded
in the mid-eighteenth century by Najib Khan, the Rohilla chief belonging to the
umarkhel section of the Yousufzais. He later became prime minister to the
Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and came to be known as Nawab Najib-ud-Daula. He
planned the town in such a way that the Hindu mohallas were kept away from the
Muslim ones. Perhaps, this is the reason why even in the days of the Partition,
Najibabad never experienced communal tension.
What I remember most about my hometown is its
public library Saraswati Pustakalaya founded by a handful of well-meaning,
educated and nationalist individuals in 1918 when spreading education was
considered a part of the freedom struggle. This was the place where I acquired
a passion for reading. I sorely miss the elderly Salek Chand, universally known
as Karmachari Ji, who joined in 1925 and devoted 57 years of his life to
looking after the library. If he thought that I was reading a book that was inappropriate
for my age, he would promptly bring it to my father’s attention.
Though a small town, it had a vibrant cultural
life in the 1960s and 1970s. Mehfils of Hindustani classical music as well as
Hindi and Urdu poetry were held at the houses of aficionados. Our Hindi teacher
Yamuna Prasad Katyayan was a great lover of music. He would tell us with
obvious pride that he had once provided lehra on harmonium to Ahmed Jan
Thirakwa, perhaps the greatest tabla player of the last century, when he
visited Najibabad. It was from him that I heard the names of Nazakat
Ali-Salamat Ali for the first time when he returned from Jalandhar after
attending the famed Swami Harivallabh Sangeet Sammelan in the mid-1960s.
Master harmonium maker Dinesh Chandra Sharma
had a band of committed film music lovers around him. Those days, he would make
a harmonium from the scratch and it was fascinating to watch him perform
multiple tasks as a carpenter, harmonium assembler and musician. People would
come from far off places to get their harmoniums repaired and tuned, as there
was nobody who tuned them better than him. And the situation has not changed
since.
Towards the end of the 1960s, a khandsari
inspector called Ram Bharadwaj was posted in Najibabad. He was a lyricist of
the Kavi Sammelan variety. A warm-hearted and generous person, he soon became
an integral part of the town’s cultural life. Dinesh Sharma, who could play
several instruments, composed tunes for a few of his lyrics and they were sung
by my elder brother Pradeep Kumar. Bharadwaj took these recordings to Bombay
(now Mumbai). When he returned, that was the first time we saw a portable spool
tape-recorder as he had brought recordings of some of his songs sung by none
other than Muhammad Rafi under the baton of Laxmikant-Pyarelal. This was when
we came to know that music directors would often compose two or three different
tunes for one song and ask the singers to render them. Later, the one liked
most by the director and others associated with the film would be chosen. After
making several such trips to Bombay, Bharadwaj got a break and eventually
penned lyrics for quite a few Hindi films. It is said that it was he who
spotted Mandakini in Meerut and introduced her to Raj Kapoor.
Ram Bharadwaj’s wife belonged to Meerut and
her mother was a childhood friend of my mother. So, Mrs Bharadwaj would often
drop by to meet my mother. They had two sons and both were interested in music.
One of them was learning to play mandolin those days. I don’t remember if it
was the younger or the older one. However, after a few years, Bharadwaj was
posted elsewhere and I met him for the last time in 1982 at a wedding. Sadly,
like my brother Pradeep, he too died young.
However, his elder son proved to be a huge
success in Bollywood, both as a music director and a filmmaker. You guessed it
right. I am indeed referring to Vishal Bharadwaj.
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