Poet Gopaldas Neeraj passed away Thursday. He was 93. This excerpt from Anirudha Bhattacharjee & Balaji Vittal’s book ‘S.D. Burman: The Prince Musician’, talks about how Neeraj composed ‘Rangeela Re’ for Dev Anand’s film Prem Pujari.
Dev Anand pulled all stops to promote his directorial debut (Prem Pujari, 1970) and brought in HMV to pitch in marketing. A one-page ad was released which showed Dev Anand dressed as a soldier, which was henceforth to be his Prem Pujari get-up. Finally, after battling several hiccups, the film was released in Bombay in early 1970.
However in Calcutta, on 27 February 1970, a few Naxalites attacked cinema theatres showing Prem Pujari. This led to the film being summarily withdrawn a few days later, starting 3 March 1970, with the then dispensation buckling under pressure. Therefore, not only did Prem Pujari have a ‘no-show’ in the East, it sank without a trace in other parts of India as well.
It is not as if the film had no redeeming features. If the debut of Zaheeda, despite her oomph, came a cropper, Shatrughan Sinha, who also made his debut as a Pakistani Army officer, certainly made an impact. The legendary Amrish Puri also appeared in a cameo, as did the Lebanese actress Nadia Gamal, who performed the most spectacular belly dance ever seen in Hindi cinema. And there was yet another first to the film—Prem Pujari welcomed a budding lyricist into the Navketan camp, Gopaldas Saxena aka Neeraj. In a series of interviews to Anuj Sharma of The Hindu newspaper, Neeraj spoke about his association with Dev Anand and S.D. Burman in detail. Certain portions of the interview
are reproduced as follows:
Dev and Neeraj had met at a mushaira in 1955–56. The actor liked Neeraj’s poetry and left with the promise that if Neeraj ever wanted to write for films, he should contact him. “Ten years later, when I saw an advertisement for Prem Pujari in a film magazine, I wrote a letter to him mentioning my inclination to write songs for the film. Within ten days, I got a message from him inviting me to Mumbai.” Neeraj was then teaching at Dharam Samaj College, Aligarh and took a leave of absence or six days to travel to Bombay. Dev Anand was looking for a poet to fill the vacuum created by the demise of Shailendra.
But writing to a situation and a tune is a different ball game altogether, and Neeraj discovered that when Dev Anand introduced him to S.D. Burman. “He (Dev) put me up in a luxurious hotel in Santa Cruz and paid me Rs.1000 even before signing me. The next day, he took me to S.D. Burman, who was apprehensive about a poet’s ability to write to tunes and a given situation. Dev Anand said he shouldn’t worry. He should give the tune, and if I failed, I would remain his guest for six days and enjoy Bombay. Burmanda gave me a tune and said the song should start with ‘Rangeela re’; it (the situation) was about a girl who sees her beloved coming to a party with another girl.
It should have the elements of jealousy, satire and frustration in love. I worked the whole night and came up with Rangeela re tere rang mein, yun ranga hai mera mann, chhaliya re….” The next day, Neeraj went to Dev Anand’s office and showed him what he had written. After reading it, Dev embraced Neeraj; he was astonished at how Neeraj could write the lyrics in one night.
“He immediately took me to Burmanda’s home and presented me proudly to him and said: ‘See, I told you. Neeraj has done it.’ When Burmanda listened to the lyrics, he said, ‘Dev, you go, now we will sit together.’ After he left, Burmanda admitted that he had given me this complex situation to make me give up. After that, we three began to bond.” Shokhiyon mein ghola jaye was taken from his poem, ‘Chandni mein ghola jaye’. It was his take on life, but Dev Anand wanted it to be changed according to the requirement of the film. “I changed the antara completely. Phoolon ke rang se was written to tune.”
The above-mentioned three songs had the right mix of lyrical elements—love, compassion, eroticism, hurt, hope, and dreams. SD set the tune for one, re-used a traditional tune for another, and had a tune for the third in his kitty. Rangeela re, in which Neeraj’s lyrics complemented the tune, was fast, taut, and rhythmic. The build-up to the mukhda, just after the introductory line, ‘Rangeela re, O rangeela’, was with percussion instruments like the triangle, the acoustic guitar played without a plectrum, and with the thumb hitting the area near the sound hole, and double bass. The main instruments converged later. The interludes had a distinct mid-Eastern feel. SD’s inflections, reproduced perfectly
by Lata, had enigmatic elements to it.
The song became a mammoth hit during its time and was played out several times on Binaca Geetmala. Incidentally, it also happened to be Dev Anand’s favourite song from the Navketan stable. Whether the lyrics of Shokhiyon mein ghola jaye was a take on life or not is debatable, but it was a melody of a lifetime. Based on Rajasthani folk music (one does feel the strains of the iconic, Pallo latke in it), the notes and rhythm exuded romantic love between a man and woman.
The poetry had such an amazing metre that it succeeded in creating an imagery whereby one could touch the delicate, albeit surprising elements like the high-pitched humming by Kishore; the solo violin in the second interlude; or the multi-instrument build up to the third antara.
By his own admission, Neeraj’s fattest royalty cheques came from the songs he wrote for Dev Anand, one of which was certainly Phoolon ke rang se. The magic generated by the collective brilliance of Neeraj, SD and Kishore Kumar was so stunning that it became an anthem for every man who wanted to sing to his new-found love. Apart from the lyrics, the tune was so simple that anyone could sing along, as one can even today, particularly because there is no bifurcation between the mukhda and antara, which makes it easier to recall.
This is an excerpt from the book, S.D. Burman: The Prince-Musician by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal. The book is published by Westland Publications.
Burman da ,Neeraj and even Dev Anand were legends. We always miss them with love and respect.
Felt a twinge of sadness while reading a snippet about a 93 year old Hindi poet’s passing, a sense of loss that one knew nothing about his body of work. Not realising that his songs had been part of our growing up years. Dev Anand would be incomplete without his music. Rest in peace.