Forever Young

Recently two great singing ladies passed away within days of eachother.

First, Suraiya, the retired, reclusive singing star of Bombayfilms, almost forgotten till death and TV channels had to inform many of her once glamorous presence andvoice. Unfortunately, the voice had been a part of an image and stayed hooked to the screen. When the imagefaded, so did the voice and the person. Suraiya had no family left, lived a lonely life, saw almost nobody andwe don’t know what she did with her time. Ironically, she seemed petrified of the public gaze, avoidedpublic appearances and hid herself in a burqa when she stepped out. Reports suggest that she was alone whenshe died, a very rich lady.

Then, Malika Pukhraj, a generation older, the product not of alens but of an age where the successful performer looked her audience, and the world, in the eye. Suchperformers just don’t disappear. They are equipped to impress well beyond their youth.

Suraiya lived in a flat decorated lavishly with larger than lifeportraits of herself in her prime. Malika did not possess a single picture of herself. When she looked at thecover of her published memoir she is supposed to have asked, "Who is this?" and lost interest the momentshe realized it was she herself. She opened the book instead.

Not that the glamour of films had not excited her. Her dotinghusband willingly let her do what her mother would never hear of – act in films. She came to Bombay, movedinto a posh sea-facing apartment, bought a Vauxhall and caught up with her many friends – well knownmusicians, poets, actors – who met frequently. However she got bored when she discovered that the costumejewellery that looked so wonderful on screen was awful close up; that studios were boring and uncomfortable;that her fellow actors were dull, insecure, and unfriendly; the shooting was tedious and the glamour fake. Shespoke to her husband almost everyday, missed Lahore, and soon feigned illness and fled back.

Her only regret on leaving Bombay was that she had to abandon theKathak lessons she had begun taking from the legend, Lachchu Maharaj, who was also on the pay roll of the samestudio. She was thrilled to be able to dance again and very pleased when her guru praised her highly.

She never severed her links to Bombay. In 1948, living inPakistan, she produced the successful Kajal- starring who else but Suraiya. She later came to own a studio in Lahore but never made another film.

Suraiya retired after doing her last film in 1963, a famous lady.She died forty years later leaving substantial wealth, no heirs and no will. Vultures have begun hovering,reducing her life to carrion. Malika too was successful, famous and probably made more money than Suraiya.Unlike Suraiya, she had many heirs and had to live the indignity of dealing with the scavenging of her wealthwhile she was still alive and in possession of it. She talks about this bitterly in her book and made noattempt to hide the hurt when she spoke of it.

She lived a few days longer than Suraiya but again, unlike her,she had never stopped living till ill-health reduced her mobility and finally confined her to bed. When, forwhat ever reasons, performing dropped in her list of priorities, she did massive canvas embroideries, madesoft toys and regularly hauled her grand daughter to art and karate classes that she had enrolled her in andwhich she would monitor carefully, sometimes by grilling the tutors. She would drop in to see old friends likethe late Nur Jahan among others. And she spent hours writing a remarkable book, in a shaky hand.

She had been cruelly cheated of her dream of creating and livingin a rural fantasyland next to Lahore. From growing everything she needed, including fodder for her cattle,she had settled down to tending a much smaller garden. Pheasants and peacocks no longer roosted in her treesor on the roof of her house. Instead she kept a pet parakeet and tried to teach it how to sing. Nor did shestop from exclaiming at what a good breed a goat in the street was.

And what is most important, she lived long enough to remind theworld of her presence with the eventual publication of her memoirs, even if only in translation.

This work had been her obsession for most of the last two decadesof her life. She resisted tremendous opposition from her family who wanted her to abandon the work. That her last yearscoincided with the publication of the work was her ultimate victory, a confirmation of her spirit. She was notembarrassed at what she was, what she had achieved, how she had lived her life and of speaking her mind.It will be some years before the importance of her work as social history is fully established. Thatwill eventually decide her place in history, and perhaps it will be higher than those of her contemporarieswho were considered more accomplished artistes. An idealistic young man teaching in a school in Leh wrote tome about the successful experiment he had made when he made his class read parts of the book and how thechildren in Ladakh not only related easily to what they read but also enjoyed it.

Music critics have their own opinion of her, of her place inhistory. Purists dismiss Malika. They even disdain the thought of including her in the same category assingers such as, say, Begum Akhtar, Siddheshwari Devi or Rasoolan Bai. A sharp-witted musicologist tried toconvince me not to waste my time on her with a very funny analogy and a cruel take-off on her singing. Asenior Urdu speaking connoisseur told me that when they first heard her recorded songs in Lucknow, a wit hadcommented that she typed rather than sang the words of a ghazal. Thissoon became a frequently repeated opinion. This doesn’t conflict with Malika’s own boast about her Urdudiction – that arguments about how an Urdu word was pronounced were settled by hearing her sing the word.

The grit and determination with which she found the time andsummoned the energy to work on the final stages of the book were my first impressions of her as a real person.It should not have surprised me because her book was all about a determined woman. I had known her music sinceI was fourteen or fifteen. A slightly more tangible connection with her came when I held the condolence lettershe had written to Begum Akhtar’s husband in 1974.

In 1981 I first set eyes on her in a concert in VigyanBhawan. As the first notes of the ghazal, Zahid na keh buri reachedmy ears, I got goose-pimples.

Ironically, when Aaj Tak broke the story of her death, the first picture they flashed in the story,which they continued to repeat, was of Tahira Syed, and not Malika Pukhraj. This was most unfortunate andinappropriate. The pair was a contrast in persona and as singers. Malika Pukhrajwith her unfashionably cut short hair, large dark glasses and her powerful voice and rendition was a reminderof great times gone by. Tahira Syed, striking-looking, dressed and made up like a star in a soap opera,crooned -- a sign of things to come.

But I digress. Let me return to first impressions. Her tenacitywas remarkable because she had recently returned from hospital and would tire easily. Doctors had ordered hernot to smoke and for someone who had been smoking since she was a child, it must have been very hard.It is clear that she saw this as her last chance and therefore put everything into saving the book. Shehad worked at the book for long, editing and re-editing parts of it several times. Yet, her family wasdetermined that the book should not be published and among the means they used, one was to continuously tellher that the book was no good.

Even though she was convinced that she had written a good book,she continued to be afraid that her family might still succeed in stopping the publication of her work. I canonly imagine the pressure she was under. My host often received anonymous calls, some in a female voice,warning that the Indian who was there should be asked to desist from what he was doing. Some times the voicesounded ominous. We met at the house of a common friend and I was asked never to call her at home. Ourappointments were arranged through her only ally in the family, her granddaughter and adopted daughter FarazehSyed. For Farazeh, it was a mission of love and duty to see that her mother/grand mother’s deep wish wasfulfilled.

Her manuscript was in nine exercise books but I never saw them alltogether. She would check and reconfirm which part we would be working on in our next meeting and bring onlythe relevant copy. She never even let that out of her sight even though I had a (not very clear but workable)photocopy of the entire book and there were other copies around. I am sure one of the first things she didwhen she reached home was to lock it and watch over the keys carefully.

She was also, always, very well turned out. She was around ninetybut her eyebrows were always plucked, her face made up, her clothes carefully chosen and she always wore lotsof fine, expensive jewelry. The only concession she made to the conventions of age was the sneakers she wore.She used a stick to walk with and always had one or two maids with her.

Her directness, so clear in her book, was confirmed by the way shereacted when I first met her. As a gift Ihad taken her a piece of cloth with some very fine chikan from Sewa Lucknow. She was impressed by the work and likedthe gift but said that the mukaish embroidery on it would scratch her skin. So could I bring her another pieceas fine as this when I came next? She even suggested the possible colours.

As our work together progressed, she began to relax. A definite sign of it was therevelation of her unabashed passion for food, again evident in her book. In the home where we met, we wereserved lavish lunches and the way she relished what she liked was genuine and delightful. The first day wemet, she was served fresh, crisp potato chips fried in pure ghee. She loved them and from then on asked forthem the moment she arrived. She would send them back if they were not crisp enough. She wondered why she,despite being a great cook, could never have similar ones at home. She finally decided it was the way thepotatoes were sliced. She asked to see the implement used and must have gone to the market on the way backbecause the same evening she returned with an implement and wanted to check if it was similar to the one she hadseen in the morning. Luckily for me, I got a bonus meeting with her. And that too without a list of things tobe done. So we chatted.

Despite getting her own slicer, she continued to ask for the chipsand it was over endless plates of those that we worked. She patiently explained terms unclear to me andsometimes elaborated on what she had written. Often she would sigh at a memory her text brought back. Orexclaim at how well she had written some passage. She would often hum the tune of a song she had mentioned andthen follow it up with humming snatches from other songs. It was mesmerising watching her demonstrategestures she used while she sang. She told stories about known names and .... she gossiped. She expressed heropinion bluntly. Once she even cried, beating her breast.

When she started using my first name, I too started thinking ofher as mama in the manner of Farazeh. We began to talk of personal, even casual, things. She asked me about my familyand showed surprise that I had never been married. She said she wanted to cook me some of her favourite dishesbut couldn’t because she couldn’t have me over. It then struck her that she could cook and bring the foodover. Did I drink? So we would have two pegs of Black Label too, she decided. We talked about liquor distilledin Pakistan and she recommended apricot flavoured vodka. The scotch and the dinner unfortunately stayed afantasy. Doctors had forbidden alcohol too, and I did not want her straining herself over food for my sake.

I believe she was thrilled when she saw an advance copy of herbook. One of my precious possessions is her book touchingly inscribed to me. Thank you Malika Pukhraj. Evenwithout that inscription I would have mourned your loss just as much.

Saleem Kidwai is a historian who taught at Delhi University. Apartfrom translating Malika Pukhraj's memoir, Song Sung True, he is co-editor, with Ruth Vanita, of SameSex Love in India: Readings from Indian Literature and History (2000)