How R.D. Barman, Gulzar created so many masterpieces together

Mumbai, Aug 30
Late music composer R.D. Burman has composed many iconic songs, most of which were born from his collaboration with the veteran lyricist Gulzar. However, the process of working together was far from a cakewalk. In an old video, the late composer can be seen talking about his long and painful process of making a song with Gulzar.

He said, "Ek aadmi ke saath toh bahut atakta hai, uska naam hai Gulzar (I always get stuck while working with Gulzar). We were working on ‘Aandhi’. The songs that he wrote in the film, I couldn’t understand the language or its metre, his metre is entirely different from the patterns that we work on, in cinema."

In the video, R.D. Burman recollected telling Gulzar, "We can’t work like this." Gulzar then told him to try something, and he assured the composer to do it differently.

He said, "We then sat one day, and somehow cracked the song. Eventually, we created 'mukhda'. I then told him, ‘Now you have to write the 'antra' as per the 'mukhda' and its metre'. This is where he gets stuck. He goes home, sits on it then calls me, ‘This is not happening’. But, our perseverance makes way for good songs, see ‘Aandhi’ has such good songs."

Gulzar and R. D. Burman often would bicker over lyrics in the songs, another instance of this is the making of the song ‘Mera Kuch Samaan’ sung by Asha Bhosle from the film ‘Ijaazat’ directed by Gulzar.

R.D. Burman kept scratching his head to make a tune out of it but nothing worked until Asha Bhosle hummed a random melody for the 'mukhda'. The composer liked it, and he kept what she sang as the 'mukhda'. The song went on to win two National Awards, Best Lyricist and Best Female Singer.