Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 20, 2020)

In 1978, on a visit to Mumbai from Hyderabad, at a mehfil in Khar, singer Talat Aziz ran into music director Khayyam who complimented him on the purity of his voice and promised to record a song with him for a film if he got a chance. Talat saab did not hear from him till ’80-end when, one day, out of the blue, Khayyam saab called, saying he had a song for him and asked him to come over for rehearsals. “He was very particular about rehearsals. Even Lata ji (Mangeshkar) and Asha ji (Bhosle) had to drive down all the way from town, like me, to his apartment in the suburbs for 10-15 rehearsals before going in for recording. We would sit in his music room and Muzaffar Ali, the director, would be standing at the doorway, watching me go on and on. Sometimes his wife, Jagjit Kaur ji, would feel sorry for me and tell Khayyam saab to let me go, but he would argue that I could sing it better with practice,” Talat saab recounts.

Much later, the composer confided, that singer-actress Suraiya ji, who was among the guests at the mehfil, had been equally impressed by his voice and had urged Khayyam saab to give him a break only in a good film. “He’d retorted saying he only did good films,” Talat saab shares.

Talat Aziz made his debut as a playback singer in Umrao Jaan with the ghazal “Zindagi Jab Bhi” (left). The song was not there in the original script. But Khayyam saab pointed out to Muzaffar Ali that the Umrao had plenty of suitors and the only way the courtesan would be drawn to Farooq Shaikh’s character, Nawab Sultan, was if he wrote nazms. “The film didn’t do well commercially, so I was surprised when, after its release, I was inundated by requests for this particular song at mehfils abroad and learnt that people there had heard it on video cassettes. In some cassettes though it was snipped out because the film was too long,” Talat saab laughs.

The following year, they collaborated on the melodious “Phir Chhidi Raat Baat Phoolon Ki” (right) for Bazaar which was recorded at Bombay Lab. Talat saab recalls how nervous he was to be singing with the legendary Lata ji, and how, when he told her “darr lag raha hai”, she quickly put him at ease. After three takes, Khayyam saab’s voice boomed over the headphones, complimenting them and saying he was on the way to their booth. “Wait and watch, as soon as he comes in, he will say, ‘ek aur’, Lata ji told me, and that’s exactly how it happened. That ‘ek aur’ was Khayyam saab’s ‘safety’ take,” he informs.

Quiz Talat saab on the man himself, and the singer describes his mentor to be “frugal” in every sense. He visited Khayyam saab at home every Friday after prayers as the mosque was next door. The composer waited to have lunch with him. “It was a simple meal of tomato soup, dal, doodhi or turai ki bhaaji and a chapati for him, and overriding my objections, he’d insist his cook Nirmala make chicken for me. After the meal, brushing away my reluctance, he’d insist I eat an apple, at least a slice, as it was a healthy dessert,” he flashbacks.

After that, they’d chat for hours. Sometimes Khayyam saab would recite verses— “he knew Sahir Ludhianvi’s book of poetry, Talkhiyan, by heart”—and sometimes he’d narrate stories, like how he landed the 1958 film, Phir Subah Hogi (left), which was a turning point in his career. “Khayyam saab had gone to RK Studio and played different tunes for Ramesh Saigal (the film’s producer-director), and Raj Kapoor, its hero, with his team of musicians for almost an hour. Raj saab had listened without expression, then gone into the room next door. Thinking he’d been rejected, Khayyam saab was packing up to leave, when Raj saab returned after around 30 minutes, and asked him to play some tunes again. He ended up getting the film which was a big deal then for a newbie composer as it was unthinkable for RK to do a film without Shankar-Jaikishen,” says Talat saab.

The memories continue... How one day, after Kamaal Amrohi’s Mercedes had dropped him off at home close to midnight, Khayyam saab had come upon Sahir Ludhianvi taking a nightly stroll. The lyricist told him he was doing a film with Yash Chopra. Soon after, Jaya Bachchan turned up at his door, wondering if he had the Razia Sultan song, “Dil-e-Nadaan Tujhe Hua Kya Hai” which had become a craze, on a cassette. “Amit ji wants to hear it,” she told him. He didn’t, but the next day, when he told Kamaal saab this, the filmmaker had it recorded on a cassette and rushed to Bachchan’s office. “On Amit ji’s recommendation, Khayyam saab landed Kabhi Kabhie (right),” narrates Talat saab. The film remains unforgettable for Sahir and Khayyam’s evergreen “Neela Aasmaan”, “Main Pal Do Pal Ka Shayar Hoon” and of course, the title track, “Kabhi Kabhie Mere Dil Mein Khayal Aata Hai.”

Khayyam saab has given the music for many love stories, but the one Talat saab loves best is his own. He remembers how, after his mentor collapsed in his flat last year, on July 28, nattily dressed in jacket and trousers, his trademark topi on his head, they rushed Khayyam saab to the hospital, where, soon after, his wife, was admitted too. “Three days before he died, I wheeled Jagjit Kaur ji into the ICU where he lay, eyes closed. She took his hand and whispered, ‘Dekho saab, main aa gayi hoon. Kholo aankhen, mujhe chhod ke mat jao. I love you.’ I could see something flutter beneath his eyelids as if he was trying to come out of the coma. But this time even love failed,” he sighs.

Mohammed Zahur Khayyam Hashmi passed away on the night of August 19. The next morning when Talat saab gave the news to Lata ji she sighed, “He was the last of the Titans. With him an era has ended.”

Hiren Kotwani (BOMBAY TIMES; August 21, 2019)

Legendary music composer and Padma Bhushan awardee Mohammed Zahur Khayyam Hashmi was buried on Tuesday afternoon with full state honours. The 92-year-old veteran, who gave music for films like Footpath, Phir Subah Hogi, Umrao Jaan, Kabhi Kabhie, Razia Sultan, Dil-ENadan and Dard, breathed his last on Monday following a cardiac arrest. Gulzar, Vishal Bhardwaj, Poonam Dhillon, Javed Akhar, Sonu Nigam, Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik were among the first to arrive at Khayyam saab’s Juhu home to pay their last respects.

The coffin, draped in the national tricolour, was carried by cops and government officials and he was laid to rest at the Four Bungalows Kabrastan after a gun salute.

Singer Talat Aziz, who was like a son to Khayyam saab and his wife Jagjit Kaur, met him every day and read out verses from the Quran to him during his recent hospitalisation. “We didn’t have any prior intimation about the state honours but we are grateful to the government for giving a legendary composer the respect he deserved,” informed Aziz, adding that Jagjit Kaur had also taken ill and was admitted to the same hospital with him. “After she was discharged, she came to see him. When she held his hand, he moved slightly, sensing her presence.”

Yesterday, when the open truck carrying Khayyam saab’s coffin stopped for the last time at the gate of their residential complex, Jagjit ji sighed, “Why did you leave me and go?” She is still ailing, with a full-time nurse attending to her.

Khayyam with wife Jagjit Kaur at an event in 2017

Veteran composer Khayyam breathed his last in a Mumbai hospital around 9.30 pm on Monday
Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 20, 2019)

He always had a furrowed brow, as if he was waiting to reach an errant melody he couldn’t quite perfect. When he did, his face would soften, he would dart a rare smile and get on to the next one, which perhaps would be recorded or stay with him.

There are scores of songs which did not reach us, and perhaps never will. His repertoire of unheard compositions have departed with Mohammed Zahoor Khayyam, who passed away on Monday night. The departure, I could see was coming, at the suburban hospital where he struggled to open his eyes at least for a flicker of a moment during a month-long stay at the Tulip cabin of the ICU unit. Yeh kya jageh hai doston, Hindi cinema could have well asked, but then I’m getting maudlin here.

The end is endemic as the last stanzas of the songs Khayyam saab had created, without ever caring for the A-listers of the geetmalas from the 1950s on to the turn of another century. To be sure, because of our limited memories, the 92-year-old icon—never called one during his lifetime will be associated most of all with the ever-resonating soundtrack of Umrao Jaan.

If he was bitter to a degree, I suspect, about the Umrao experience it was because he had topped it with the songs composed for its director Muzaffar Ali’s Kashmir-set love story Zooni. The film was left incomplete, but its songs are somewhere out there on tapes mouldering in the vaults somewhere.

Khayyam was not prolific by choice. If Yash Chopra called upon him to do Noorie, Nakhuda, Trishul and Kabhi Kabhie, it was obviously because the chartbusting music directors couldn’t have touched the composer who insisted on doing it his own way and wouldn’t be subjected to prolonged sessions at ‘sitting rooms’ as they are called. The Kabhi Kabhie score especially had that extraordinary poetic quality.

When Khayyam was no longer in the Yash Chopra ‘camp’ so to speak, he kept silent. In show business, one has to move on. When I had asked him to comment on this, he had shushed me up instaneously with a have-you-come-to-talk-about-my-work-or-gossip?

His music had the USP of pauses (check out Ae-Dil-e-Naadan from Razia Sultan). The orchestra comes to a standstill, when Lata Mangeshkar’s voice returns, it’s pure magic. Incidentally, stalwart writer Javed Siddiqui points that it was Khayaam who made the completion of Pakeezah possible. “Do you know he and his wife (Jagjit Kaur) kept trying to make peace between Kamal Amrohi and Meena Kumari. And they succeeded. The film was restarted only because of them.”

Right from Footpath and Phir Subah Hogi to Shagoon and Aakhri Khat, Khayyam’s track record is classic. He would agree to a TV serial occasionally but had stopped accepting film projects which would make him compromise with his signature style – soft, gentle, romantic and from the heart.

Khayyam saab has left the ICU unit. He can never leave us, ever, because without him will never be another subah, another song of such love and longing.

Avijit Ghosh (THE TIMES OF INDIA; August 20, 2019)

1927—2019

1976 was no time for tender melody. The Emergency was on. Rajesh Khanna’s era of romance was gone. Fists had replaced dialogues in Bombay cinema. And songs were no longer what they used to be. Hardly the moment for a music director nearing 50 to make a comeback.

But Khayyam, who passed away on Monday at the age of 92 following a cardiac arrest in a Mumbai hospital, grabbed the opportunity that Yash Chopra’s ‘Kabhi Kabhie’ brought to his sluggish career.

The inter-generational love story required two different styles of compositions. Khayyam excelled in both. For the first, he produced two minimalist masterpieces of melody which enhanced Sahir’s reflective poetry. The title track, ‘Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai’ became the topper in Binaca Geet Mala’s annual countdown show. ‘Main pal do pal ka shayar hoon’ became an anthem for any self-effacing versifier.

In times when action movies ruled the roost, Khayyam’s music was a figurative triumph of violins amidst violence. For the younger generation, he produced loopy tunes – Tere chehre se and Tera phoolon jaisa rang – sending a loud message to producers that the 1940’s composer could better the sound of the 1970s.

For the next 10 years, Khayyam was at the peak of his creative powers and in his commercial prime. Umrao Jaan, Noorie, Thodi Se Bewafaai and Bazaar became synonymous with melodies that drew you closer to the radio.

A perfectionist, he scored for only 54 released films in a career spanning over five decades. Some of his compositions were so delicate they did not fit into the mould of film music – Kahin ek masoom nazuk si ladki (Shankar Hussain), Aaje re dilbar aaja (Noorie), Tumhari palkon ke chilmanon mein (Nakhuda), Baharon mera jeevan bhi sawaaron (Aakhri Khat). At the same time, he could throw up surprises with simple, swinging tunes of adolescent enthusiasm - Gapuchi gapuchi gam gam (Trishul), Mausam mausam lovely mausam (Thodi Si Bewafai) and Aaj se college band hai (Khandan).

Under him, an assortment of singers thrived. Bhupinder sang his first solo for him in Aakhri Khat (Rut Jawan). His wife Jagjit Kaur sang in films like Shagoon and Bazaar. This year, Khayyam had donated Rs 5 lakh to the families of soldiers killed in the Pulwama blast.

Born Muhommad Zahoor Khayyam Hashmi in Rahon, a little town near Jalandhar, Khayyam wanted to be a singer-actor in films. To boost his chances, he learnt music from the masters, Pandit Amarnath and Husanlal-Bhagatram, and assisted composer GA Chisti. He also joined the Indian Army during World War II.

He made his debut as a music director with Heer Ranjha (1948). His first hit was Akele mein woh ghabrate to honge (Beewee, 1950). He assumed the name, Sharmaji, for these early films.

Khayyam found his musical métier with Footpath (1953). The film had one of the finest ghazals composed in Hindi cinema: Sham-e-gham ki kasam (singer: Talat Mehmood). The composer used a piano, a guitar and a solo vox, a basic form of synthesizer, and yet it sounded totally traditional. The song, Khayyam told this reporter once, was put together from several recordings.

He earned more critical acclaim with Ramesh Saigal’s Phir Subah Hogi. The film based on Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment had some of the finest lyrics written by Sahir Ludhianvi: Woh subah kabhi to aayegi and Chino-Arab hamara. “After listening to the compositions, Asha Bhonsle told me, ‘Khayyam saab aapki to subah ho gayee’. Mukesh immediately told her, ‘You have said the right thing’," the music director once told this reporter.

Khayyam is gone. But his melodies of matchless tenderness will always be heard and remembered.

Visiting veteran composer Khayyam and his singer-wife Jagjit Kaur, who have been inseparable from 1954 to today, in a suburban hospital’s ICU unit
Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 14, 2019)

Inseparable ever since their romance and marriage circa 1954, music composer Khayyam and his songstress-wife Jagjit Kaur, are now in adjoining cabins, named Lily and Tulip, of a Juhu hospital’s ICU unit.

Padma Bhushan recipient Khayyam was admitted to the hospital following a fall while getting up from his armchair at home 28 days ago. Pneumonia and a lung infection were diagnosed. Four days later, his wife who had gone silent with anguish, registered an alarming drop in her blood sugar count.

When I visited them yesterday, Khayyam, in a semi-conscious state, was being treated by a physio-therapist. The revered composer clutched my hand, nodded slightly but couldn’t open his eyes or speak. Jagjit Kaur asked to be wheelchaired to see her ‘saab’ and held on to his hands till the attendants assured her that he would be “okay, not to worry.”

Brightening up, she secured a nurse’s permission before chatting in staccato sentences: *“How couldn’t I fall in love with saab after hearing his song ‘Sham-e-Gham Ki Kasam’?”

*“Raj Kapoor wanted someone who had read Crime and Punishment to do the songs of Phir Subah Hogi. Saab had read the book (by Fyodor Dostoevsky).”

*“Do you know I even sang for Umrao Jaan? What was the song called? Yes, yes… ‘Kaahe Ko Bihayee Bides’.”

*“Saab could get angry, upset with the producers… never with his singers... especially with Lata, Rafi, Talat… Asha.”

*“After marriage… I was happy being his support…would sing for him whenever he wanted me to.”

*“Waqt ke saath music ka trend changed, saab kept refusing offers. Aaj kal ke music directors are doing good work. But nothing can touch old music which was really paidar (durable).”

The durability of their love story has been one-of-a-kind, too, affirmed by the memorabilia at their seventh-floor home in Dakshina Apartments, overlooking the traffic-clogged Juhu circle. Practically every photograph on the living room’s walls and on the mantelpiece show them together, at music soirees and award functions.

A large laminated photograph of their son, actor Pradeep Khayyam, serves as a grim reminder of his premature death seven years ago following a heart seizure.

Jagjit Kaur’s Chandigarh-based niece, Rinnkie Gill, who has been in the city ever since they were hospitalised, points out that the household helps, Nirmala and Shashi, have been tending to them for over three decades. The couple was self-sufficient, inevitably slowed down by ailments which come with advanced age. He’s 92, she’s 88.

Adds Gill, “They have always enjoyed being together at home and have rarely ever travelled out of the city except perhaps to Delhi and the north. Going abroad didn’t interest them at all. Music has been their life. And one more thing —she relishes the masala chai which Khayyam saab brews personally. That’s the way he has always reached out to her heart, with a chai ki pyaali.”

Born Mohammed Zahoor Khayyam Hashmi in the Jalandhar district of Punjab, the music maestro had first used the pseudonym, Sharmaji, dispensing with it for his first full-fledged assignment, Footpath (1953), litterateur Zia Sarhadi’s slice-of-life film featuring Dilip Kumar and Meena Kumari. The soundtrack included the “Sham-e-Gham Ki Kasam” ballad written by Majrooh Sultanpuri and sung by Talat Mehmood.

Around then, Jagjit Kaur, born to an aristocratic family of Punjab, was aspiring to become a film playback singer. One evening, Khayyam followed her on the overbridge of the Dadar railway station. She felt he was stalking her and was about to raise an alarm when he summoned up the nerve to introduce himself as a music composer. Despite her father’s objections, theirs was one of the film industry’s first inter-communal marriages.

The image of the composer and his muse stays with me hours after Eid ul-Adha day—Khayyam-Jagjit Kaur just a breath away from each other in the Lily and Tulip cabins.

The muse has been informed that she would be discharged from hospital by early evening. To that she had smiled, “Really? After so many days?” On second thoughts, her face had fallen, as she said almost to herself, “But what will he do without me—alone?”

Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 7, 2017)

MID-DAY (July 10, 2016)

"Aapko malum hai, is umar mein toh davai khani padti hai (You know, at this age, you have to take medicines),” says veteran music director and Padma Bhushan awardee Mohammed Zahur Khayyam Hashmi — better known as Khayyam — as he downs a few pills. He laughs at his own joke, before letting us in on the eateries that he used to frequent, when he was young. “Now, I eat homecooked food, but when I was single, I would visit Sarvi at Nagpada and Kareem’s at Mohammed Ali Road. Till date, I enjoy a drink or two.”

Today, at the ripe age of 90, Khayyam begins his day at 6.15 am, listening to the gurbani (compositions of the Sikh Gurus and other writers of Guru Granth Sahib), and the Quran. “This routine gives me strength. Even the importance of food is mentioned in these texts. One should eat only 70 per cent of one’s appetite for better digestion. Secondly, you should share your food with outsiders and visitors,” adds Khayyam, whose breakfast at 10 am comprises a glass of Bournvita, an onion and tomato omelette and a date. “I also have a spoonful of Chyawanprash. In my younger days, I ate for pleasure. Today, I eat for life,” he adds.

Lunch at 2.30 pm includes a vegetable, a non-veg dish (he has given up mutton and prefers chicken) prepared by his cook of 30 years, Nirmala. “I also have a bowl of dal, along with rotis.” Dinner includes leftovers from lunch or a new spread of home-cooked fare, at 9 pm sharp.

Once crazy about laddoos, Khayyam has long given them up. “If it comes as prasad, I take a small piece,” he adds. But, what the legendary artiste most craves for is Gujarati food. Film director Chandulal Shah first introduced him to the cuisine. Khayyam also recalls relishing food made by late actor Sanjeev Kumar’s mother. “No one was allowed in her kitchen, except for my wife, Jagjit Kaur.” “I loved the dhokla she made,” 86-year-old Kaur chips in. She leaves us with another food nugget. “Singer Mukesh loved my kebabs. And Khayyam saab would schedule recordings in such a way that he could stay back for them.”