The Voice That Broke Hearts

The ghazals of Begum Akhtar retain their resonance even today. A tribute on her birth centenary

My sister used to narrate an amusing incident from her hostel days at the medical college. As she and her fellow young doctors broke the tedium of mindless swotting by listening to music from her rackety old tape recorder, one girl who was from the South and knew little Urdu would often ask her to play that song where ‘the woman is having uncontrolled vomiting and the medicines are not working’. She was referring to Begum Akhtar’s Ulti ho gayin sab tadbeerein/Kuchh na dawa ne kaam kiya…

Looking back, I see this incident as illustrative: more than the truism that music builds bridges across languages and cultures, it shows how different people at different times have ‘taken’ different things from Begum Akhtar’s music. A sociologist might view her journey from Akhtari Bai Faizabadi to Begum Akhtar as an Indian woman’s search for respectability and the casting away of her former life as a courtesan who sang for the pleasure of her wealthy patrons and refashioning her life after marriage into a sharif khandan.

For present-day musicians, especially women performers, there are valuable lessons in walking the tightrope of being a woman and being a concert performer. Begum Akhtar’s severely elegant saris, the hair pulled back in a bun, the shunning of flashy jewellery save the diamond that twinkled in her nose, the instant rapport with her audience through the constant eye contact and the flashing of a somewhat toothsome smile made her startlingly different from women musicians who had come from the courtesan tradition, and was therefore reckoned to be a worthy example to emulate. For lovers of Urdu poetry, there is her eclectic choice from the vast reservoir of both contemporary and classical poetry by established as well as lesser-known poets. For the musician, there is of course her inimitable voice and her training in classical music that infused every note of her preferred choice of the light-classical genres such as the ghazal, the dadra and the thumri with the rigour of tradition. And for the music historian and biographer, there is her life—with its rich lode of gossip and innuendo, fame and tragedy, truths and half-truths.

Like Mehndi Hasan, who came after her and took the ghazal to the masses, Begum Akhtar chose simple lyrics, enunciated each word with a bell-like clarity and built a repertoire that was a seamless blend of the classic and the contemporary, the pastoral and the urbane. If she sang Woh jo hum mein tum mein qarar thha/Tumhe yaad ho ke na yaad ho by Momin Khan Momin or Ibn-e Mariam hua kare koi/Mere dukh kii dawa kare koi by Ghalib, she is also remembered for Ai mohabbat tere anjaam pe rona aaya by Shakeel Badayuni, Deewana banana hai to deewana bana de by Behzaad Lucknowi or Sakht hai ishq ki raahguzar by Shamim Jaipuri—who were lesser-known poets till they were immortalised by her voice.

If she brought a rare lilt to her raga- based compositions of the ghazal, it was in the thumri that Begum Akhtar infused a new life. Wrenching it from its moorings in the salons of the rasik rajas and talukdars of Upper India, she brought it to the public stage as a thing of tremulous beauty and throbbing pain. Popularised by the nawabs of Awadh and sung for gramophone companies by pioneering artistes such as Gauhar Jan, the thumri as well as the dadra, hori, kajri dwell on the theme of viraha and rely on largely pastoral images to convey the sense of unsated longing for the beloved. While Begum Akhtar sang several classical compositions such as Laagi beriya piya ke aawan kii, or Koyaliya mat kar pukaar, karejwa laage kataar, she can be credited with enlarging the range with new ones written by new writers such as Dekha dekhi balam hui jaaye by Sudarshan Faakir.

No mention of Begum Akhtar’s music is considered complete without some reference to the many apocryphal stories about her less-than-orthodox choice of poetry and her generosity towards unknown poets. A young Kaifi Azmi wrote Itna toh zindagi mein kisi ki khalal pade/Hansne se ho sukun na rone se kal pade and recited it at a mushaira when he was all of 11 years old. Begum Akhtar set the ghazal to music and turned it into a nationwide phenomenon in pre-partition India. But the best of the many mythic stories about her is the one about Sudarshan Faakir. During a visit to the Jallundhar radio station of All India Radio, the poet, who then worked at the radio station, offered her his ghazal; she not only accepted it but promptly set it to music and sang it within a few hours.

The ghazal was:

Kuchh toh duniya ki inayat ne dil tod diya
Aur kuch talkhiye haalat ne dil tod diya
Hum to samjhe ke barsaat mein barse ki sharab
Aaayi barsaat toh barsaat ne dil tod diya

The characteristic catch in Begum Akhtar’s voice—as much as Sudarshan Faakir’s verses—made this ghazal an anthem of heartbreak and despair decades after it was first recorded.

Rakhshanda Jalil writes on literature, culture and society. She is the author of A Rebel & Her Cause: The Life & Work of Rashid Jahan (Women Unlimited, 2014)

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Rakhshanda Jalil