Here is a wonderful article by Akshay Manwani, who is the author of ‘Sahir Ludhianvi: The People’s Poet’. Akshay comments on Majrooh Sultanpuri’s non conformist style of lyrics and bending the rules of grammar to suit poetic needs, in Hindi Cinema songs, where his works spans across five decades, from the 1940s onwards. Here are some excerpts from the article, that makes for an interesting read:
“…It is interesting to note that Jaata kahaan hai deewane was cleaved out of CID after the censors objected to it. Apparently the word “fiffi” in the song, which appears in the lines ‘Kuch mere dil mein fiffi, kuch tere dil mein fiffi, zamaana hain bura…’ went against the sensibilities of the censors. They thought it best to have the entire song removed from the film. It was a baffling decision because ‘fiffi’ is a nothing word, fitted in perhaps only to suite the lyrical meter of the song. In the context of the song, it only means a ‘flutter’ or to ‘skip a beat’ and so ‘My heart skips a beat, there is a flutter in your heart, it is a bad world out there’ made imminent sense.”
“Majrooh was a master wordsmith. Of that there is no doubt. His very ability to understand the flexible structures of songwriting is what makes him such a good songwriter. The fact that he could write “Hum bekhudi mein tumko pukaarey chale gaye” (Kala Pani/1958) or “Jaltey hain jiske liye” (Sujata/1959) or “Teri aankhon ke siva duniya mein rakha kya hai” (Chirag/1969) was never in doubt given his poetic lineage. But it was his willingness to bend the odd grammatical rule here and there, introduce a new word with no known etymology, keep it simple and play along with the phonetic requirements of the song is what made him special.
This is why he was able to churn out so many lighthearted, frothy and fun songs from Aye dil hai mushkil (CID) to C-A-T cat, cat maaney billi (Dilli Ka Thug/1958) to Daiya yeh main kahaan aa phansi (Caravan/1971) to Bachna ae haseeno (Hum Kisise Kum Nahin/1977) to Papa kehtey hain (Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak/1988). The reason we hear words like “tramey”, “motor”, “paape bacha lo tussi”, “engineer” and “Tell me oh Khuda” in his songwriting is because of his nonconformist style.
It is precisely why Majrooh is missed!”
The entire article can be accessed at the link below:http://scroll.in/article/729133/how-majrooh-sultanpuri-bend-the-rules-of-grammar-to-write-some-of-hindi-cinemas-best-known-tunes
urduwallahs 