Uncovering little-known aspects of Burman’s life
Sachin Dev Burman was among the most successful composers of his time, but that’s only half the story. The real S.D. led a more complicated life, write Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal.
It all started in Bhubaneshwar in September 2012. We had gone to interview Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia at his gurukul. The following morning, we were invited by the well-known artist, Debasis Mahapatra for breakfast, which was preceded by a tour of his personal gallery which had R.D. Burman a.k.a. Pancham’s portraits.
On the breakfast table, Shravani, Debasis’ ever-attentive wife, suddenly said, “I love S.D. Burman more than R.D.”
We found her observation interesting and asked her, “Ok. So, can you name fifteen S.D. Burman’s films apart from the following— Aradhana, Guide, Jewel Thief, Prem Nagar, Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Sujata, Bandini, Abhimaan, and Sharmilee?”
Shravani shook her head sideways expressing tacit disapproval, and said, “That would be difficult!” Shravani’s acknowledgement provoked us to think: so, there are facets of this great musician which are unknown even to his hard-core fans. What about his music outside the coveted list of 20–25 films? Are they virtually forgotten, and is that the reason why they seldom form part of even informal discussions on Hindi film music, in general?
A few weeks later, when we shared the idea of writing a book on him with a few close friends, one of them commented, “S. D. Burman? Isn’t he history?”
We decoded that “history” remark as redundant; outdated; anachronistic! Strong words, we agree, but even as the fans within us wanted to protest loudly at what our minds conceived as a grave transgression, we felt it was time to tell his story.
Until our publishers contacted us, we knew that there were at least two good books on Sachin Dev Burman, or S.D. as he came to be known universally, including his short autobiography. And even as we were pondering over the idea, there was one more awaiting release.
Furthermore, we were aware that every little nugget—opinions, views, analyses—had been shared and exhausted about this great composer, and what if we had nothing new to say? As die-hard fans, the last thing we wanted was to sound trite and tired about a man who influenced an entire generation, before and after us, in more ways than one.
However, we took the plunge and thought we would proceed along while recalling his great music; it was almost as if he would guide us to write it the way he would have liked it! And then one day, courtesy our septuagenarian friend, Probir Mukherjea, we fortuitously found Sachin Ganguly, who was SD’s secretary in Calcutta! This was almost like divine intervention and there How different is Pakistan’s culture from that of India? Exploring various aspects of the arts, literature and heritage of Pakistan, Raza Rumi argues that culture in Pakistan is not particularly unique to the nation, but rather a part of the cultural identities shared by South Asians. Rumi takes a kaleidoscopic view of the deep-set cultural mores that tie India and Pakistan together. is nothing but gratitude for a man, who gave us hitherto unknown insights into the maestro’s life.
We went back to our notes which we’d collected while writing our previous book, R. D. Burman: The Man, The Music. We pulled out every shred of paper that we had kept carefully between 2008–2010; old folders on our laptops came alive and out came our days and weeklong jottings on discussions with fabulous artists such as, Kersi Lord, Manohari Singh, Sachin Bhowmick, Yogesh, Bhanu Gupta, et al. We realised that we had adequate material that could go into the making of S.D. Burman: The Prince-Musician. We wanted to shout out to our friend and many others who had labelled him “history”—he made history and shall always be counted amongst those who gave film music a new grammar.
As is well known, S.D. Burman belonged to a royal family, which like many others in pre-Independent India was ravaged by internecine struggles, palace intrigues, skirmishes and conspiracies. The dogeared yellowed pages in the archives of Tripura court are evidence of multiple disputes which his family faced for several years, and which one had to rummage through to understand his childhood and youth. What we discovered was that we had to dovetail certain historical facts while describing the various stages of his life— for instance, his childhood which was around the time of the First World War; his debut on radio even before it came to be known as All India Radio or AIR; the city that was once Calcutta (now Kolkata); the Ganges and its impact on his music; Bombay (now Mumbai) which became his beloved after the initial resistance he had towards a city where he arrived with a young wife and a boy in tow; the nation’s struggle for Independence and the joy of freedom; the devastating Partition of the subcontinent and with it the loss of his land which was given away to another nation.
Suddenly, the remark that S.D. Burman was “history” began to make sense. The story couldn’t have merely been a chronology of his musical journey; history had to play a significant role in his life’s trajectory.
The discovery of a prince, flautist par excellence, singer, sports enthusiast, a devoted family man, etc., took us on exotic journeys to Comilla in Bangladesh, and Agartala in Tripura. From the fossil-covered walls in old crumbling buildings; the rarefied environs of the National Library; a cosy chat by the fireplace with an octogenarian Brigadier of the Indian Army; a sad, albeit fruitful encounter with a woman on her deathbed—this book has been like excavating an ancient site for stories untold.
Unlike several men and women who arrived in Bombay for a career in Hindi films, S. D. Burman was nomadic by temperament. Even within the same city, he shifted around quite a bit. Although he spent most of his working life in Bombay, he never got around to being completely comfortable either with its landscape or its culture. He was Bengali and of a particular type—the financial capital that Bombay was, didn’t attract him very much; he spoke Bengali with a Bangal (East Bengal) accent, which anyway made him seem like an outsider even within his own peer group and in a city like Calcutta. The best example of this “non-acceptance” was his name, which underwent several modifications.
After the initial hiccups, it wasn’t as if he achieved instant success. His quality of music in the Forties and Fifties was patchy, but thereafter what he did could very well be a management lesson for young entrepreneurs—despite linguistic and cultural constraints, he hauled himself up and moved with the changing times. It must be mentioned here that apart from extraneous reasons which made him feel like an outsider, it was also his upbringing in a royal household which made it tough for him to run the race along with others. But he did, and with such aplomb that he soon came to be known as a composer who adhered to standards which became unmatchable. Therefore, no book on S.D. Burman would ever be complete without exploring these aspects of his personality.
In the end, whether we make Shravani like him better than before, only time will tell. In so far as we are concerned, we still think that Sachin Dev Burman has more than meets the eye, and of course, the ear. Extracted with permission from ‘ S. D. Burman: The PrinceMusician’, by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal, Published by Westland