He took liberties with grammar for the sake of better phonetics.’ But he felt that “ tujh” would not sound correct musically. It should have been “ tujh” or it could have been “ suno”. This is incorrect because as Javed Akhtar explained to me, ‘When you are saying “ sunn”, you can’t say “ tum”. In the same film, he also wrote, ‘ Sunn sunn sunn sunn zaalima, pyaar humko tumse ho gaya’. The words ‘ aar-paar’, like the film’s title, are always used in tandem, but Majrooh conveniently used them separately to come up with a very popular song. For instance, for Aar Paar’s title track, he wrote, ‘ Kabhi aar, kabhi paar, laga teer-enazar’. Majrooh often took grammatical liberties to cater to the demands of song-writing. There is another interesting aspect at work in the Husain–Majrooh collaboration. Like my friend Nasir Husain, I mentioned his name because as I talk of working with Guru Dutt, Nasir also comes to mind.’ And because he was a decent man there was no cheap humour, forced laughter, the kind of thing one got used to later. With him there prevailed an atmosphere of friendship. There is a feeling of distance, which was there with everyone, but not with Guru Dutt. With other people I felt employed by a producer/director and that I am his songwriter. The feeling is that you’re working with an equal, that we were both on the same level. I’ve had the same feeling when working with one other director, Nasir Husain. ‘While working with Guru Dutt, I used to feel that I was working with a colleague. He enjoyed his working relationship with Husain.

Mansoor said as much, ‘Majrooh uncle enjoyed working with my dad immensely because my dad would give him examples with a sher or a phrase or some anecdote from a literary point of view.’ And in every one of these songs, Majrooh was able to give the right expression to Husain’s narrative requirements through song. There is no denying that Husain and he shared a great affinity. A point needs to be made here about Majrooh Sultanpuri.

Yadon ki barat free book