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Salieri: Mediocrities everywhere… I absolve you… I absolve you… I absolve you… I absolve you… I absolve you all.

Those were the last lines of Salieri in Milos Forman’s Amadeus as he (Salieri) was being wheeled into mental asylum. Those are coming-to-terms lines. Of accepting mediocrity and its inevitable burden of envy, impotent rage and futile attempts to over-reach oneself. For Salieri it was self-referential – he was forgiving himself for his own mediocrity and the ways it led him to destroying Mozart. I understand him.

But how about those that are victims of mediocrities around them? Those who are prisoners to their own unique voice and an uncompromising devotion to a higher standard. Those inveterate felons constantly reaching out for higher ground and routinely punished for doing it. These thoughts always bring me to Khaiyyam, a prodigious talent who will be destined to remain an afterthought in any discussion on Hindi film music. After sculpting timeless pieces in about fifty movies over almost the same number of years with minimal commercial acclaim to show for, I sometime wonder if Khaiyyam would be echoing Salieri in a different context:
“Mediocrities everywhere… I absolve you… I absolve you… I absolve you… I absolve you… I absolve you all.”

Khaiyyam wasn’t a name that I often heard as a child. The radio announcer among his many “li jiye, ab suniye, film Sargam ka yeh geet, dhun banayi hai Laxmi-Pyaare ne” would sometime slip in “film Noorie ka yeh geet, dhun banayi hai Khaiyyam ne”. And then the initial strains of Noorie would come on with its imagery of the early morning sunlight caressing the dew tethered to the ends of grass blades; a foggy, winding, mountain track and a slight nip in the air suggesting it’s after Diwali. And I would think, hmm, Khaiyyam. And then one day while watching a movie called ‘Chambal Ki Kasam’ when I had given up on any hopes of redemption, a song came out of nowhere and socked me on solar plexus, “Simti hui yeh ghadiyan pal mein na bikhar jaye.” It was time to pay some more attention to this man, Khaiyyam.

Born in Jalandhar almost eighty years ago, Khayyam Mohamed Zahoor Hashmi’s love for cinema and his musical instincts brought him to Delhi. Pandit Amar Nath and the famous music director duo of Husnlal-Bhagatram took the young Khaiyyam under their wings and a trained composer was born. A short stint at Lahore, a city then vying with Bombay for the center of Indian movie universe, with music director Chisti had Khaiyyam hooked to the medium. Khaiyyam moved to Bombay a few years later (just before partition) to join Chisti and re-join his earlier gurus Husnlal-Bhagatram. A few singing assignments with the likes of Zohrabai Ambalewali and Geeta Dutt ensured the young man made Bombay home. He secured a job as an assistant to composers Bulo C Rani and Aziz Khan in the late 40s. Aziz Khan felt his name was too long and asked him to adopt the rather unimaginative name of “Sharmaji” which is why you find him credited, sometimes, as Khaiyyam Sharmaji. Aziz Khan had another assistant named Varmaji and he felt that Sharmaji will be easy to roll off tongue in tandem with Varmaji.

During his time with Bulo C Rani, he composed music in two movies for Jaddanbai (mother of Nargis) Parda and Pyar ki Baatein. Jaddanbai was instrumental in taking him to Dilip Kumar and Chandulal Shah when they were looking for a composer for their forthcoming movie ‘Footpath’. They loved what he had to offer and the writer Zia Sarhady (whose scion Sagar would years later make Bazaar with Khaiyyam) convinced him to go back to his original name of Khaiyyam for his first solo project.

Footpath, thus, became Khaiyyam’s independent debut as a composer and also uniquely laid out what would become a feature of his career. An inspired soundtrack (based on some excellent teamwork between Khaiyyam, Majrooh and Sardar Jafri) in a movie that failed with audiences which couldn’t accept Dilip Kumar in a character with shades of grey. Khaiyyam though didn’t disappoint. The one track that stood out was Talat’s “Sham-e-gham ki kasam”, a signature Khaiyyam tune where he demonstrated the use of silence in a song. It’s a remarkable talent where a pause - the sheer lack of music - isn’t an ebb rather it sweeps you further away with the flow. It is a trick that he has played on unsuspecting listeners since then.

The failure of Footpath and his contract which bound him to Ranjit Movietone ensured that he had very little work in the next few years. The only notable work was for FilmIndia’s Lala Rookh (1958) where Mohd Rafi almost whispers Kaifi Azmi’s lyrics in the song “Hai kali kali ke labh par”. The film predictably bombed. In the same year, Raj Kapoor chose to produce ‘Phir Subah Hogi’ based on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment with Ramesh Sehgal at the helm. Khaiyyam impressed RK with 6 variations of the title track and for once RK dropped his favorites S-J for the young composer. Khaiyyam and Sahir pulled off the impossible – a hummable soundtrack with a deep social message. Each song was a gem, from the sarcasm laced ‘Chin-o-arab hamara’, the hopeful ‘Woh subah kabhi to aayegi”, Asha’s “Do boondein saawan ki” or the other Mukesh numbers, “Aasman pe hai khuda” and “Jis pyar mein yeh haal ho”. The commercial disaster that Phir Subah Hogi was, despite the presence of RK, confirmed the jinxed status to Khaiyyam in the industry.

Khaiyyam’s uncompromising attitude towards quality of his music and his maniacal desire to understand the story, its characters before composing the music created an image of an arrogant and headstrong man. He famously refused Barsaat Ki Ek Raat because Bharat Bhushan’s brother Chander wanted him to copy the tune of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan’s (Ustad Nusrat’s father) famous qawaali. Roshan grabbed the opportunity with both hands and the qawaali was that chartbuster “Yeh Ishq Ishq Hai”. The 60s were lean period for Khaiyyam, only redeemed by his marriage with singer Jagjit Kaur and the non-film albums that he composed for Begum Akhtar (two amazing volumes) and for Mohd Rafi. The odd movies that he composed for showed the genius was alive. Shola aur Shabnam (an early Dharmendra movie) had the popular, “Jeet hi lenge baazi hum tum, pyar ka bandhan” and “Dhoondti rahti hai yeh aankhen”. The other 3 movies that he composed for in 60s had Khaiyyam further polish his ability to use pauses and silence in his composition. To illustrate, Shagoon which had two excellent examples, Rafi’s evoking a densely wooded mountainside with “Parbaton ke pedon par, chaand ka basera hai” and Jagjit Kaur imploring her amour to share his trials and tribulations in “Tum apna ranjh-o-gham apni pareshani mujhe de do”. And then that song from Mohabbat Isko Kahte Hain filmed on a young Shashi Kapoor with Rafi and Lata pleading to be brought back from trance in “Thehriye hosh mein aa loon toh chale jaayega” or Lata sharing her joy with nature in Aakhri Khat’s “Baharon mera jeevan bhi sanwaro”.

The 70s didn’t start any better with Khaiyyam squandering away gems in movies like Shankar Hussain and Sankalp. Kamal Amrohi’s Shankar Hussain, in my opinion, is one of the most under-rated tracks of all times and two of its songs, Lata’s “Aap yun faaslon se gujarte rahe” and Rafi’s “Kahin ek masoom nazuk si ladki” are simply sublime. Yash Chopra, bless him, meanwhile was in search of a music director for Kabhi Kabhie where the protagonist was a poet and zeroed in on Khaiyyam. Thus began the most productive and successful phase of Khaiyyam’s career. The music that he gave for Yash Chopra movies, Kabhi Kabhie, Trishul and Noorie topped the charts and pleased masses and connoisseurs alike. He didn’t compromise his quality in lesser movies though the jinx continued in the movies he picked up like Chambal Ki Kasam (“Simiti hui yeh ghadiyaan”), Ahsita Ahista, Khandaan (“Yeh mulaqat ek bahana hai” arguably one of the worst picturized song), Dil-e-Nadaan (“Chandni raat mein ek baar tujhe dekha hai”), Dard (Bhupinder’s “Ahl-e-dil yun hi nibha lete hain” and Lata’s shrill “Na jaane kya hua”). He teamed up with Gulzar for Thodi Si Bewafaai and gave some unforgettable music including Kishore’s “Hazaar raahen”, Bhupinder’s “Aaj bichhde hain”, Lata-KK in “Aankhon mein hamne” and Gulzar playing with words in “Mausam mausam, lovely mausam, kasak anjaani hai, madhyam, madhyam”.

Kamal Amrohi’s Razia Sultan and Sagar Sarhadi’s Bazaar further cemented Khaiyyam’s reputation of providing unforgettable music for box-office turkeys. Each song in these two movies mocked at the prevailing pedestrian quality of film music in the early 80s. Just one song from Razia Sultan, Kabban Mirza’s “Aaye zanjeer ki jhankar” is worth all that was dished out in 1983 by all other composers. Kabban Mirza was a Radio Artist at Vividh Bharati who was handpicked by Khaiyyam just for this song. And, yes, he paused so long in “Aye dil-e-nadaan” that you almost thought the song was over.

Arguably, Khaiyyam’s greatest feat was Umrao Jaan where he met his match on obsession for details in director Muzffar Ali. Each song was a gem - the lyrics, its relevance (sample “yeh kya jagah hai doston”), the enunciation of singers (Khaiyyam wanted Talat Aziz to pronounce ‘phoolon” in “surkh phoolon se mahek uth thi hai dil ki rahen” in Lakhnawi Urdu than Talat’s Hyderabadi Urdu) and the use of instruments in line with the period it was set. It fetched him the National Award and possibly doused the angst of commercial rejection forever.

Khaiyyam disappeared in mid 80s only to surface for music of a few TV serials in between. He resurfaced last year with Yatra but I guess the world had moved on. He doesn’t hold any visible grouse for not being a commercial success that a lot of his contemporaries were. When I hear Bhupinder singing “Karoge yaad to har baat yaad aayegi…….Barasta bheegta mausam dhuan dhuan hoga”, I can almost feel the music evoking a rainy, misty monsoon twilight. And I think it is an unjust world for not giving this man his due. It is an unequal music. And I wish there is justice and I seek solace of an equal life for him from John Donne’s lines on after-life:

“And into that gate they shall enter,
and in that house they shall dwell,
where there will be no cloud nor sun,
no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light,
no noise nor silence, but one equal music,
no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession,
no foes nor friends, but one equal communion and identity,
no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity.”