Sudha Malhotra: A Love Song Denied

Sahir Ludhianvi wrote the lyrics of his unrequited love.

Sudha Malhotra, Sahir Ludhianvi

Sudha Malhotra arrived at Sahir Ludhianvi’s house for the mehfil where poets and singers had gathered to celebrate a cool summer evening.

The tranquil atmosphere in the garden must have been opiated by the scent of opening jasmine buds that fused the ambience with a dream-like haze. Lights were dimmed to fading embers, crystals sparkled in golden liquids and laughter filled the room with pangs of familiarity. The sky had turned a melancholic purple as it strained its ear to spy on the genteel crowd.

Sudha was late; the mogra in her hair had soured on her journey from one end of the city to his house, giving her the apparition of a flower in wilt.

Sahir was reciting a poem. She heard the final two lines as she took seat at the end of the mehfil.

Woh afsana jise anjaam tak laana na ho mumkin

Usse ek khoobsurat modh de kar chhodna accha

***

The romance that cannot be given a fitting finale

We can abandon it at a beautiful fork in the road

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While the guests clapped, the distraction allowed Sahir’s eyes to skim over it and find her looking at him without the slightest sign of approval. She had come to invite him to her wedding. He had already recited which turn in the road he was going to take on that foreseeable night.

When Sudha was asked to sing, she complained of a bad throat.

‘I cannot promise you I will be there, but you will not miss me even once,’ he said, accepting her invitation.

She believed he spoke only poetry, not words.

He went missing on the night of the nuptials. Instead, a letter arrived as a gift. When she read it the morning after, he had written a nazm asking her to compose and sing it for the film Didi.

‘Didi?’ she thought. Was he mocking their undefined relationship? He always knew that she was betrothed to another man since her adolescence. He was known to be rash but was he calling her a sister now?

When she was starting out as a young girl in playback, he had taken a shine on her. He would call her every morning to greet her and tell her that he had written a new ghazal, a new geet, a new nazm.

She listened with admiration, not romantic love.

She tried to rationalise. The nazm in the letter was of the highest calibre, an elegy on unrequited love.

The opening lines were:

Tum mujhe bhool bhi jao toh yeh haq hai tumko

Meri baat aur hai maine toh mohabbat ki hai

***

You have the right to forget me as you will

I cannot will the same as I have loved you

Was she blind to Sahir’s amorous feelings all along?

A film magazine published her photographs with Sahir, insinuating that she had ditched him. Sudha’s in-laws were upset. They forbade her from entering the studio.

She tried to convince herself that she surely did not do anything to encourage him. She decided to sing the nazm to prove it to everyone that they were just friends and would continue to collaborate in the future.

Sudha turned to her husband to seek approval. She said it was going to be her parting gift to her career.

‘Only one song,’ he said.

She sang it morosely, calling out to a suitor who kept disappearing further into the mist at the rise of the octave in her pleading tone.

Sahir met her after the recording, saying, ‘Let this beautifully-sung melody be our parting gift to each other.’

Stunned, she agreed. She couldn’t argue with him. The song would fuel hushed rumours. They never met again.

The melody made her one of the foremost playback singers to compose a tune in 1959. The memorable tune became her swan song. She stopped singing to focus on her conjugal life.

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A habitual smoker and drinker, Sahir died of a heart attack in 1980. Sudha grieved silently for his broken heart that took his life. It had been more than two decades that she had met him. She hadn’t sung in films either.

In 1982, when filmmaker Raj Kapoor persuaded her to sing in Prem Rog, she flatly refused.

‘Think of it as a tribute to our beloved Sahir,’ he said.

‘Talk to my husband,’ she replied.

Once again, her husband said, ‘Only one song.’

Composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal, the lyrics by Santosh Anand were self-reflective.

Yeh pyar tha ya kuch aur tha

Na tujhe pata na mujhe pata

Yeh nigahon ka hi kasoor tha

Na teri khata na meri khata

***

Was it love or something else

You didn’t know nor did I

It must have been in our eyes

It wasn’t your fault or mine

Singing it with tearful eyes, she recollected that cool summer evening when their eyes had met for one last time in his house. It was all there in his reddening eyes.

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