majrooh sultanpuri

Millions of people love old Hindi film songs, but many of them don’t know who wrote the vast majority of such songs, much less the meanings of words and imageries used in them. Majrooh Sultanpuri was a key lyricist in close to 2000 such songs, and his mind-boggling oeuvre examined just about every emotion you can think of in an awe-inspiring corpus that leapt over generations for well over half a century. This biography is an attempt to present the stunning repertoire of his work.

In this book can be found a dedicated chapter on ghazals that explains what the form is about, even as it explores Majrooh’s work in that area. There are chapters on other forms of poetry—the rubaayi, the nazm, free verse—as also on subjects like the words that he commonly used, the situationally-relevant lyrics he penned, the songs of inspiration that he wrote, the words he introduced into cinema, and on many diverse subjects such as sad songs, romantic ones, qawwalis, mujras, and so on. Not to forget his opus in Bhojpuri. Majrooh was a poet for all reasons and we have attempted to demystify a great deal of his work.

The book lists all his songs and the films they appeared in, but it also examines some of his non-film work. In addition, we have looked in some detail at his personal journey. In his extraordinary run, Majrooh worked with a few composers in well over a hundred songs. There are separate chapters that have to do with Majrooh’s engagements with specific music composers — discerning writers have contributed a chapter each on his work with such music composers. These names are, alphabetically, Antara Nanda Mondal (SD Burman), Deepa Buty (RD Burman), Lata Jagtiani (OP Nayyar), Madhur Trivedi (Laxmikant Pyarelal), Monica Kar (Chitragupt), and Vijay Kumar (Roshan). Sundeep Pahwa has written on Majrooh and Nasir Hussain.

About the Author

Manek Premchand has a diploma in Journalism and a degree in Arts from Bombay University. He has many friends in the film industry and remains fascinated by the enormous role that Hindi cinema's music has played as a key bonding medium in a country as disparate as ours. This fascination has motivated him to write several books on the subject. These are: Yesterday’s Melodies, Today’s Memories, Musical Moments From Hindi Films, Romancing The Song, Shiv Kumar Sharma, The Man and His Music (co-authored with two others), Talat Mahmood—The Velvet Voice, Hitting The Right Notes, The Hindi Music Jukebox and The Unforgettable Music of Hemant Kumar.

Besides these, he has written hundreds of music-related articles for a variety of newspapers.

He has also been a consultant with Saregama India Ltd. and a show host on many radio platforms including WorldSpace Satellite Radio. He also teaches elements of Broadcasting to post-graduate students at Xavier Institute of Communications, a part of Xavier’s College, Mumbai. He is currently an adviser to Manipal University Press.