Story behind the story

It was while reporting on the cholera outbreak in Hyderabad last month that I made a discovery, and it wasn’t about the presence of E coli bacteria in the water pumped into our homes. The city was reeling under the shock of the poor quality of water being supplied by the water board, residents were crying foul and water board officials were busy denying reports. In the midst of all this, a senior official of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) landed from Kolkata to conduct tests to verify whether it was indeed a cholera epidemic in the IT hub. Needless to say, she had scribes like me calling her up constantly for a clarification or for that one question that we forgot to ask the last time. But ironically, after the first call itself I, and I believe a dozen other scribes covering the outbreak, had started hoping she wouldn’t take our calls. Not that she was rude or anything, in fact she was very obliging, but her caller tune, it had left us helpless. It was a rare Bengali melody and I for one knew I had to get not just my cholera stories from her but also lay my hands on the song.
Thankfully, I managed to hear it a few times and with the help of Google and a Bengali colleague finally found the song that had been haunting me — ‘Ayi shundoro sarnali shondha’ — sung by Geeta Dutt, from the film `Hospital’. And thanks to the Bengali colleague’s uncle’s impressive song collection, had the song finally playing on my system. I also managed to find the black-and-white video of the song featuring Suchitra Sen and Ashok Kumar on YouTube and the senior NICD official was finally spared of incessant calls.
It was a happy month for a die-hard fan of old film songs like me, as far as lilting melodies were concerned — this was the third discovery I had made. After all, it is not often that old gems like these surface from nowhere. After all, you may find ‘Mausam hai bada awesome’ easily but it is rare for a ‘Thandi hawaye lehra ke aaye’ to crop up.
A few days before the cholera surprise, another rare melody had surfaced, surprisingly in the midst of a dusty election rally in the Old City of Hyderabad. A first time candidate’s campaign manager had Mohammed Rafi crooning ‘Baad muddat ke ye ghadi aayi’ from Jahan Ara. I had to call this manager over a dozen times for the candidate’s affidavit details (since they were not put up on the election commission website yet) and for once chasing someone for information wasn’t a hassle at all. Reports of the day over, it was time to hit Google again.
But the most pleasant of the three surprises that sprung in a short span was the visit of Shamshad Begum to Hyderabad for a felicitation function. At the function, many of her songs were rendered by a bunch of young people and the playback singer of ‘Kajra Mohabbatwala’, ‘Kabhi aar kabhi paar’ and the now remixed song `Saiyaan dil mein aana re’, sat quietly, clapping gently once in a while, a half smile never leaving her face.
Much like the smile that an ‘Aa chal ke tujhe, main le kar chalun ek aise gagan ke tale’ playing creakily in an auto rickshaw brings on the faces of people sitting in it. Or that half annoyed smile of a man with a heart condition as he listens to ‘Pal pal dil ke paas’ that plays tellingly as his cardiologist’s caller tune.
Yes, sometimes the grim realities of life are ironed out thanks to a few strains of music, of melodies. And now with swine flu surfacing in Hyderabad, I’m hoping that perhaps the lady from NICD will be brought back, just in case she has a new caller tune — one that lifts the mood even while reporting on the many ills that ail us.