King of ghazals and hearts
July 10, 2010, shall forever remain etched in my memory because on this day, my friend, journalist Tahir Abbas, interviewed shahenshah-e-ghazal Mehdi Hasan at the BBC, London, for its Urdu service. It was a special interview for two reasons: the maestro’s 83rd birthday was on July 18, and the great Muhammad Rafi’s 30th death anniversary fell on July 31.
I had met Hasan sahab in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in 2007. It was an informal meeting. He was down-to-earth and didn’t have a retinue of fawning sycophants and muscle-men protecting him from delirious crowds. He took the Tube to reach the BBC headquarters. His disarming simplicity endeared him to all. On that day, due to technical reasons, the interview was held in the studio of BBC’s Hindi section. When he saw me, he exclaimed, ‘Barkhurdaar, hum aapse guzishta saal Bartania mein hi mile thay (Oh dear, I met you last year in England)’.
The moment the BBC Hindi staff saw the legend in the studio, everyone requested him for an autograph. He obliged all smilingly: ‘Aap sab toh Hindi wale hain (You all are Hindi-knowing people)’. He wrote his name in Devanagari and chuckled, ‘Hindi rasmul-khat se humari vaabastagi aaj bhi barqaraar hai (My acquaintance with Hindi script is still intact)’.
Jhunjhunu-born Mehdi sahab left India for Pakistan in 1947 and had picked up the Hindi alphabet before learning alif, be, pe. He’d always give his autograph in Devanagari whenever someone from India requested him for it. That was his greatness.
His munificent spirit was not confined even by a semblance of linguistic chauvinism. He began the interview in his natural baritone: ‘Main khaaksaar toh maktab-e-ghazal ka faqat ek adna-sa taalib-e-ilm hoon (I’m just an ordinary student of the school of ghazals)’. Those words stayed with everyone present that day.
Politely, the self-effacing genius asked the interviewer, ‘Aap mujh se mere humwaqton ke baare mein poochhiye (Please ask me about my coevals)’. Devoid of any trace of ‘I, me and myself’, the great man was eager to talk about his contemporaries in glowing terms. When it came to describing his friend Rafi’s musical expanse, he touched his ears (a sign of profound respect to one’s elders in the subcontinental musical tradition) and said, ‘Woh aawaaz iss jahaan ki nahin thi, ghaibi thi, jannat se naazil hui thi (that voice didn’t belong to this mundane world; it was divine, descended from the heaven)’. His eyes were brimming with tears. Everyone was stunned. Hasan sahab sang his signature ghazal, ‘Ranjish hi sahi dil hi dukhane ke liye aa’ by the inimitable Ahmad Faraz.
It was an interview that meandered into professional and personal spaces seamlessly. Alas, I couldn’t meet him after that. He shuffled off this mortal coil in 2012. But the memories of those meetings will stay with me. My tributes, and those of scores of other admirers, on his 95th birth anniversary today.
