Back to Legends – Noor Jehan

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Noor Jehan

Datta Korgoankar composed approximately 11 songs for Noor Jehan in Nadaan (1943) and Badi Maa (1945). He was a Noorjehan believer to the core. To date K Datta remains the only top composer from Maharashtra to whom Noorjehan came first, Lata after. No one regretted Partition more than K Datta. Indeed, his creativity seemed to come to an end once Noorjehan left him high and dry by moving, with a song on her lips, to Pakistan. He once said, “Noor Jehan left for Pakistan and took my creativity with her”.

Take `Badi Maa’ itself in which Lata and Asha, as kid stars, first encountered Noorjehan in all her vim and vitality. So distinctive were K Datta’s creations for Noorjehan in `Badi Maa’ that her four solos in it ring in our ears to this moment as Diya jala kar aap bujhaya, Aa intezaar hai tera, Turn hum ko bhula baithe ho and Kisi tarah se mohabbat mein chain paa na sake. These four Noorjehan numbers, as fashioned by Maratha Datta, are historically most important. Because it was hearing and absorbing these four nuggets of Noorjehan, while acting with her in `Badi Maa’, that Lata Mangeshkar learnt to shape her vocal technique. If Lata came to sound a Noorjehan replica for so long, the tonal base for this was laid, just imagine, by a robustly tall Maharashtrian from the ghats called K Datta in `Badi Maa’.

There was much for Lata to admire in the way K Datta composed for Noorjehan. How can anyone of that musically refined generation forget the virtuosity Noorjehan brought to those `Nadaan’ tunes of K Datta: Roshni apni umangon ki mita kar chal diye, Ab to nahin duniya mein kahin apna thikana, Dil doon ke na doon baaton pe unka kya bharosa, Naachti jaa gaaye jaa ho ho mujhe behlaye jaa and Ek anokha gham ek anokhi musibat ho gayi.

The last-named number of Noorjehan, K Datta told me, fetched him the ultimate tribute from no less a movie stalwart than Mehboob Khan, who said: “Bhai Datta, yeh gaana to aap ne Khuda ke darbar mein baithe hue banaya lag raha hai” (“It sounds as if you created this song sitting in Allah’s abode”). K Datta now played for me that Allah-given Ek anokha gham ek anokhi musibat ho gayi on a harmonium presented to him by O.P. Nayyar. How grimly significant that the one music director, O.P. Nayyar, who never in his life commissioned Lata, should have gifted that harmonium to the one Maharashtrian composer who believed only in Noorjehan!