Anand Bakshi: The essence of a genius

As part of the legendary lyricist’s 20th death anniversary, Rajiv Vijayakar writes on what made him such an integral part of Hindi film music

Anand Bakshi, the peerless bard of Hindi cinema, left the world on March 30, 2022, making film music impoverished by his sheer absence.

Bakshi was the quintessential lyricist. Other than singing in seven of his 625-plus films (from ‘Mom Ki Gudia’ in 1972 to ‘Sholay’ and ‘Charas’), he never moonlighted in scriptwriting or production. He had left the Army and Navy to pursue a career in Hindi films.

It is known that Bakshi would provide the musical framework for many of his songs But as he often declared, film songs were about teamwork, and it was up to composers to accept the broad metre he set while writing a new song. Mostly, as per prevalent norm, he would write to the composers’ tunes, and music directors across four generations from Roshan to A R Rahman were awed that Bakshi wrote 8-10 antaras (verses) for every situation and asked them to choose what they best liked. This was the essence of this genius: writing songs for a character in a situation, keeping in mind the preferences of the composer and the filmmaker. Above all, he kept in mind the intellectual and social stature of a range of characters, right from a boatman (‘Milan’) to a bunch of criminals (‘Gaddaar’) and from a child pining for a mother’s love (‘Mastana’) to a courtesan (‘Khilona’).

Bakshi believed in everyday lexicon (as per changing times—between his 1958 debut, ‘Bhala Aadmi’ to his last significant film, ‘Gadar—Ek Prem Katha’ in 2001). Along with this simplicity came the incredible depth that only a well-educated and observant man who had also learnt life’s truisms and also been exposed to folk culture could deliver.

Take for instance, ‘Chitthi aayi hai’ from Naam. The song on why NRIs should return home got people weeping while a song like ‘Kuch to log kahenge’ (‘Amar Prem’) expressed the truism that people will criticize, no matter what.

In the song ‘Yahaan main ajnabee hoon’ (‘Jab Jab Phool Khile’), the simple Kashmiri hero expresses the difference between Mumbai’s West-oriented high society and him with the incisive words, “Teri baahon mein dekhoon/ Sanam auron ki baahen/ Main laoonga kahaan se/ Bhala aisi nigahen” (How can I see you in someone else’s arms?) during a ballroom dance. Bakshi’s epic anthem on life, ‘Gaadi bulaa rahi hai’ (‘Dost’) had hard-hitting lessons on life, comparing man to a steam engine that chugs on, whistling cheerfully, come rain, storm or lightning. In ‘Zindagi ke safar mein’ from ‘Aap Ki Kasam’, he crisply told us how we must not do regretful things as for what has passed will never return.

Bakshi was never just about one genre. He could grasp a story or a theme very fast to come up with a stunning gist, like he did with the title-song of ‘Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki’, in which his rhyming lines ‘Koi nahin main tere saajan ki’ (I am no one to your beloved) encapsulated the deep subject in six everyday words.

When he wrote ‘Main shaayar to nahin’ (‘Bobby’), he summarised the Punjabi hero’s inability to express his feelings in good Hindi because he had spent his whole life in an English boarding school. Incidentally, Bakshi personally had a rare mastery in English, and maintained an immaculate diary in the language!

It was Bakshi who convinced Subhash Ghai on the innocence of the lines “Choli ke peeche kya hai” from ‘Khal Nayak’ to fashion this iconic song filmed on a top star (Madhuri Dixit), sung by a top singer (Alka Yagnik), and choreographed by a top name (Saroj Khan)—all women. Naughty, funny, sad, poetic, topical, satirical, devotional—no song was beyond the scope of his talent. While rare songs took days, Bakshi wrote most of his songs in minutes, for as he put it, “If you take five minutes to bathe and I take 30 minutes, it is not necessary that I have bathed better!”