South Asia Daily

On Rajneesh's 31st death anniversary, a short reminiscence

Today marks the 31st death anniversary of  "Bhagwan" Rajneesh also known as Osho. Incidentally, Osho is a Buddhist term that means "the one on whom heavens shower flowers."

It is as good a time as any to re-reminisce about my two meetings with him in 1985-1986.

My first meeting with Rajneesh was at the Bombay airport as he was being wheeled out by one of his aides. Rajneesh had become a huge story in the US having been slapped with a 35-count indictment by a federal grand jury accusing him and his disciples of violating immigration laws. He was arrested on October 28, 1985 on board a private jet in North Carolina and then paraded in chains. There are several sordid details to the whole case but they are not germane to this post.

The case against Rajneesh concluded with him having agreed to what is known as the Alford plea, which essentially means the defendant not pleading guilty and maintaining innocence even while conceding to the existence of enough evidence with the prosecution to convict should the case go to trial. I am mentioning the basic details because they are relevant to my meeting. Rajneesh received a suspended sentence of 10 years, a fine of $400,000 and was asked to leave the country.

As Rajneesh was coming out of the Bombay airport I quickly introduced myself. The word AP did the trick because by then he was very familiar with it.

I was told sternly by the aide that unless I addressed him as “Bhagwan Rajneesh” he would not respond. I kept calling him Mr. Rajneesh. He relented after a while. One of the questions I asked was whether his commune in Oregon was seen as a threat to the local Christian community. He looked at me with mild amusement and replied in his trademark nasal tone, “If a religion, which is nearly 2000 years old, can be destroyed by an old, unarmed man (namely Rajneesh), then that religion deserves to be destroyed.”

For the record Rajneesh was not that old then. He was 54 but managed to look much older. He told me he had been administered a slow acting poison during his incarceration.

A day or two later my second meeting took place, this time at a bungalow in Juhu Vile Parle Development Scheme or JVPD. The bungalow belonged to the owners of Patel Roadways, then a well-known trucking and transport company. I remember I was ushered into a large living space which had just two chairs in it—one that looked like a throne of some kind and the other a regular chair. It turned out that the throne was the one that his entourage brought from America. The pecking order of the morning told me where I would be seated—on the regular chair. The throne was for “Bhagwan”. To my surprise there were more than 20 or so followers of him sitting on the floor in worshipful anticipation.

Their presence should have told me that what was being planned was not a news interview but a sermon of some sort.

Rajneesh was brought in his wheelchair and then he changed over to the throne. He looked around with his absolutely still eyes. He then turned to me and said nothing. His aide, I think it was Ma Neelam Dhal if memory serves, said to me, “Bhagwan is interested in doing a spiritual interview this morning.” That surprised me because I had specifically mentioned the day before that I was looking for a news interview about the circumstances of his being thrown out of the US.

I said so as much to which the aide said, “But Bhagwan would like to focus on spiritual aspects this morning.” Even as she was saying that many of his followers nodded in agreement.

“Well, the AP is not interested in spiritual matters right now. I suppose we have to end this,” I said. I got up and left.

That is how abruptly my second meeting with Rajneesh ended.

On course to wrapping up four books in 2021

I have just begun again going through four incomplete manuscripts of mine which were in various stages of progress when I stopped writing a couple of years ago. Three are novels—a political thriller, a historical novel and an imaginary conversation between a popular Hindu god and a troubled scientist (That is all I can say for now about the last one)—and one unfinished biography of my hometown of Ahmedabad. I am determined to finish all four this year which would bring me to a total seven books, still three short of ten, a number at which I would call myself a writer. Until that number is reached, I regard myself as an aspiring writer. I have done only three so far.

I have never thought that having written one or two books or even five one should call oneself a writer. Ten is my personal objective when I would begin to think of myself as a writer. I have a long way to go and hopefully 2021 will take me 70 percent of the way.

I am happy to offer a teaser from my political thriller from a chapter titled ‘Odors of Mochipore’.

Odors of Mochipore

Chapter 1

It is only at predawn that Mochipore is free from the stench of rotting entrails. As night hands over the realm to day odors cease for an imperceptibly brief moment. They say you have to be born here to know when to capture that moment.

The odors never really leave Mochipore. They merely change their direction and intensity depending on the time of the day and how much sea breeze is blowing. By noon the summer sun has cooked the odors which are seasoned by the humid air so thoroughly that cases of people fainting in the middle of the town’s main square are not altogether unheard of. Although it sits in the midst of hundreds of mango orchards Mochipore remains remarkably untouched by the heady fragrances of the fruit in various stages of ripening unlocked during the summer. Locals have a wistful saying here which goes: “Even decaying mangoes inside my sweat-drenched armpit smell better than perfumes of Mochipore.”

Mochipore (the former name of Mochipur) literally means Cobblertown because it was founded as one by Warren Hastings Shoe Company (WHSC) in 1820. The company was formed in 1818 to commemorate the life of the first governor-general of Bengal who died that year. Its motto was ‘Why ride rough shod on the natives?” The accompanying watercolor depicted a ramrod straight Englishman in white breeches, red tunic and black boots standing hands akimbo with his one foot on the severely bent back of a cadaverous and practically naked Indian peasant. To many this may have been just one drawing. To me it was the emblem of the British Raj--cruel but efficient.

WHSC’s founder James Yule (1763-1827) had made a deal with the Nawab of Junagadh under which the company acquired 30 acres of land along the coast of the Arabian Sea to “settle the State’s low class mochi population” in a colony of “captive cobblers” whose sole purpose was to handcraft shoes for “the (East India) Company’s upper echelons who were required to make a profound impression on the subaltern native servants.” It was instructive to learn that Yule thought one way the “subaltern native servants” could be impressed was if the “upper echelons” wore knee length  boots whose untreated leather made a squeaky noise when the English officers perambulated. They never walked. They always perambulated with an authoritative gait.

When an occasional Indian had the temerity to greet an English officer, he would have an ever so slight expression of acknowledgement on his face. The best that anyone ever received by way of a return greeting was when an officer would raise his index finger, which seemed more like a warning or an accusation than a greeting. “I want the subalterns to be alerted to the presence of their superior officer. He can always harrumph but squeaky boots sound more authoritative,” he wrote in one of his diary entries. The practice of wearing boots made from untreated leather was discontinued soon enough in the face of mounting complaints among the Company officers that they left “bloody shoe bites on the delicate English skin.”

Several documents exist in the state archives, including a contract between WHSC and Mochipore for the monthly supply of 500 pairs of handcrafted buffalo hide shoes and 300 “mugger” or alligator skin handbags that the company shipped from the Veraval port and sold in fashionable stores in London. Yule first thought of creating a whole township full of mochis when once on his morning walk along the banks of the Jamna River in Delhi his shoe upper came unstuck from the sole after he tripped over a piece of rock on his path. Troubled by Yule’s plight a cobbler nearby took out his anvil, hammer, stitching needle and nails and fixed the shoe in 10 minutes. That shoe lasted Yule years. According to British archives, Mochipore became a thriving township within a couple of years after its founding with a population of 15,000 men, women and children. All men in Mochipore were haggard. All women were deprived and emaciated. And all children were unlettered and chronically hungry.

Among the documents found is a letter that Yule wrote to his wife Victoria but never sent. The letter is significant to the story of Firaq Husain Bhama because it makes a reference to the ancestors of the Muslim couple that adopted him in 1952, just five years after India became independent. “Of all the cobblers that I have come across in this strip of a town, Bilawal Husain Bhama is the only one who manages to raise his craft to the level of art. His shoes are like second skin to me,” said one of Yule’s entries.

Bilawal Husain and his wife Fatima had seven children, three sons and four daughters, of whom only three survived. One of the two sons to have survived was Liaqat who was born in 1915. By the time he was 16 Liaqat’s nikah was announced with his second cousin Zahera, who was all of 13. Liaqat was keen to escape the family vocation and become a member of the Congress Party inspired by an attorneyat-law who had returned to India from South Africa in 1916 after earning a considerable reputation in Natal and London as an “agitator” of extraordinary political astuteness.

That Mohandas K. Gandhi’s hometown of Porbander was barely 90 kilometers from Junagadh made Liaqat feel a sense of proprietorship about the man and his message.

Burke, Hastings, Trump, Bolton and I

During my interview with John Bolton, a former National Security Adviser to the outgoing President Donald Trump, he made a reference to how the US impeachment model was different from the one in British parliament. In that particular context, Ambassador Bolton made a specific mention of Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of India (1778-1884) who faced impeachment for his egregious conduct in India. Leading the charge was Edmund Burke, a member of British parliament.

Bolton told me, that perhaps it was time to have a “serious constitutional discussion on whether the senate can try an impeachment after the president’s term has expired.” “I am very confident that the US did not pick up the impeachment model of the British parliament which did have impeachments after people had left office, notably Edmund Burke’s efforts against Warren Hastings, the governor-general of India…structure and wording in our constitution makes it clear it applies only to sitting presidents,” the former US ambassador to the United Nations told me.

I decided to read some of what Burke (1729-1797) had said about Hasting (1732-1818) after he returned to England and faced impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It was Burke who led the prosecution of Hastings. 

Burke said, “The question is not solely whether the prisoner at the bar be found innocent or be found guilty, but whether millions of mankind shall be miserable or happy. You do not decide the case only; you fix a rule. For your Lordships will undoubtedly see, in the course of this cause, that there is not only a long, connected, systematic, course of misdemeanor, but an equally connected system of maxims and principles invented to justify them, upon which your lordships must judge. It is according to the judgment that you shall pronounce upon the past transactions of India, connected with those principles, that the whole rule, tenure, tendency and character of our future government in India is to be finally decided.”

In terms of charges against Hastings, Burke told parliament between February 15 to 19, 1788, “I charge Mr. Hastings... with having destroyed, for private purposes, the whole system of government by the six provincial councils which he had no right to destroy..... I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govind Sing (Ganga Govind Singh, Maharaja of Benares) ..... I charge him with having robbed those people from whom he took the bribes. I charge him with having fraudulently alienated the fortunes of widows. I charge him with having ... taken the lands of orphans and given them to wicked persons under him. ...... and with  having destroyed the landed interests, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, seized their crops, tortured and degraded their persons, and destroyed the honour of the whole female race of that country. In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon Warren Hastings in this last minute of my application to you.”

The trial started on 18 February 1788 and went on for nearly eight years. Eventually Hastings was acquitted by the House of Lords in 1795.

I find it fascinating that a trial nearly 225 years old should come to be invoked in a discussion about something similar happening to an outgoing US president. Hastings was, of course, an imperial bureaucrat who believed it to be a matter of Britain’s rights to do what he did in India.

If Bolton’s assessment is accurate, and I am sure there will be those who would disagree with it, then Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate beyond his presidency would lead to some serious constitutional discussions. Of course, if the trial does indeed take place, it is highly unlikely that it would stretch to a length of time anywhere close to Hastings. 

Schadenfreude and I*

If you know the word schadenfreude, it likely that you have experienced it with some relish, even if momentarily. You know the act of deriving joy or pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.  I have had my moments of schadenfreude when it comes to douchebags coming to harm. There are those who just deserve unkind karmic justice even though karmic justice is more like gravity, just too subtle at times.

Schadenfreude is not what I feel while reading about journalist Nidhi Razdan’s terrible predicament in discovering that her appointment as an “Associate Professor of Journalism” at Harvard University was bogus. But I do feel baffled at her sheer credulity in believing a scam for so many months, especially when she should have known that becoming an associate professor in any university in America, let alone the Ivy League one like Harvard, is quite a process that involves years. I did some quick calculations and found that it averages between four and ten years before you become one after teaching for a length of time. That is elementary knowledge.

When Razdan first announce in June last year that she was leaving NDTV for Harvard, I had a perfunctory interest of a journalist since it involved her teaching journalism at Harvard. Even at that point I was intrigued that she could have directly landed an associate professorship at a non-existent program. I don’t think you could do that even at a subpar university here let alone Harvard. But then I reasoned that perhaps Harvard, not necessarily an agonizing stickler for not bending its own standards a bit in favor of some celebrity, might have given that position to her. It turns out not. As Razdan clarified in a Twitter statement she was duped by what she calls a “sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack” where she says the perpetrators used “clever forgeries and misrepresentations” to convince her that they were legit.

I am just putting it out there. If even a local community college asked me to become a lecturer, let alone an associate professor, I would at least call them first to ascertain that they did indeed make the offer. I presume when Razdan was approached she interacted with someone in authority at Harvard’s journalism to confirm that the offer was genuine. Such offers are easy to confirm with a phone call or two. The passage of six months between her first announcement that she was leaving NDTV for Harvard and the one that said she was in fact duped by some sophisticated scammers is worrisome. May be there is a perfectly convincing explanation for this long gap. Perhaps it took that long back and forth to determine that it was a sinister phishing attack likely partly motivated by the fact she is a reviled figure among India’s extreme right-wing acolytes. These is just surmising on my part. I have no specific clue.

She does call the scam an attack on her and has asked the police to investigate. That still does not answer the primary question about her credulity in taking the offer at its face value to begin with. It would be interesting to find out how much time passed between her being approached via, presumably, electronic communication and even formal one by mail and her actually calling the university.

I just called the university while writing the post and the operator told me there is no department of journalism listed on her system. She transferred me to their public affairs which is a messaging service where I left a message. Hopefully, someone will call back. But I know that Harvard does not have a journalism program. Razdan too would have known with one phone call.

It is not my case that there is no department of journalism Harvard—although it is my case because there is none at the university—but if there were it should have been listed on the university’s official phone directory which it is not. So please know that I am on the job and will unravel this utterly trivial and inconsequential story soon. Because that’s what I do--look for thing that do not exist.

And yes, genuinely no schadenfreude here.

* My headline is deliberately misleading.

Karaoke as an escape

I have become an inordinately enthusiastic consumer of karaoke tracks of Hindi cinema music. I record one practically every day and post it on various social media accounts. The particular fascination for me, apart from some transient desire for an applause or two, is the astonishing confluence of technologies in the whole enterprise.

A karaoke track is not just a karaoke track. Those who make these tracks more often than not use synthesizers to produce tracks as close to the original as possible. Synthesizing sounds itself is a remarkable set of technologies. Most of these karaoke producers scroll the original lyrics which is yet another layer of technology. They then upload it on the new via a desktop or whichever other form be it a phone or a tablet or a laptop, all results of brilliant technologies. Then comes telecommunications as in high-speed internet via broadband, yet another layer of rather complex technologies. I am not even getting into the wired and wireless aspects of transmission, which are also high-tech. After jumping so many technological hoops I park myself in from of my desktop and microphone to record songs and then upload them on various social media platforms, which in themselves are brilliant examples of technological advancement.

It has been a longstanding annoyance of mine that we as a society do not adequately acknowledgement the backbreaking among of work that goes into creating a dazzling array of technologies by engineers toiling away in obscure recesses. What is worse is that these technologies are then deployed by those who do not their arse from their elbow to spout absolute non-sense. In a cruel irony the current prevailing contempt globally for pursuit of excellence in any field through hard work and respect for science, intellectual curiosity and facts then manifests itself with the help of technologies which are the very result of that passion for hard work, science, intellectual curiosity and respect for facts.

Coming back to my current obsession with karaoke I find it to be a powerful tool to keep myself centered and anchored. Of course, it helps that more often than not I sing passably well.

Of transparent tumbleweeds and kaleidoscopic vision in my eyes

A couple of days ago mid-sentence while writing a piece my vision in both eyes became suddenly blurred. It was as if words had dunked themselves in water. I rubbed my eyes but it did not change. Soon enough transparent splotches, sort of life watery tumbleweeds, started blowing across my eyes. Sentences on my monitor were splintering halfway through as if thoughts had exhausted and given up on their articulation.

I quickly went to Google to search for “splotches in my eyes” and sure enough there were several links about it, the top being from the Mayo Clinic that said, “Most eye floaters are caused by age-related changes that occur as the jelly-like substance (vitreous) inside your eyes becomes more liquid. Microscopic fibers within the vitreous tend to clump and can cast tiny shadows on your retina.”

It did not seem serious because the explanation was that generally the condition goes away after some time. So I waited and it did go away….only to be replaced by something weirder. The corners of both my eyes suddenly turned into kaleidoscopes. Everything seemed like I was looking through a kaleidoscope. Sure enough, that too is a known condition called kaleidoscopic vision.

Some amount of reading revealed that it is caused either by an ocular migraine or, more seriously, a mini stroke. The explanation was that the brain creates an illusion of bright or fractured light that looks like a kaleidoscope. It could also be caused by brain damage or a stroke.

The problem has since gone away but while it lasted it was a remarkable experience. Both the transparent tumbleweeds racing across my eyes and splintered reality revealed yet again how much of life is what we see. The effects lasted about an hour.

There was a brief moment where I considered the possibility of losing my vision suddenly. That would have been a problem.

Some broad thoughts about Donald Trump, Twitter, celebrity and suchlike

Traditionally celebrity or fame used to result from the quality of one’s work. Ever since the rise of social media work results from celebrity or fame. People become famous first which in turn leads to work. Influencers are a great example of this topsy-turvy world.

Speaking of a topsy-turvy world, celebrity/fame, social media and work.... Donald Trump. He will be out of work that he was not in to begin with. The man built a fortune on the basis of his celebrity and fame. Now that Twitter, which profited from his unbridled toxicity and bigotry for years, has like Elaine Chow and Betsy DeVos developed a weird conscience about it and banned him forever. I am not sure about the definition of “permanent” on Twitter but do not be surprised if he is reinstated at some point.

In the interregnum—who uses that word anymore except me—he may become like a mole in whack-a-mole and pop up from many unexpected holes. I do not know whether Twitter safety policy on such permanent bans also precludes Trump using his family or friends’ account as his proxy. Don Jr. and Ivanka could both choose to be his shoulder to rest his metaphorical gun.

In late 2015 and then through 2016 as Trump was stomping through America’s political landscape with his outrage-a-minute ideas, people used to be confused about how to deal with that phenomenon. Writing in The Atlantic Salena Zito said something that became the early explanation cum extenuation of the horrendous Trump phenomenon.

“It’s a familiar split. When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally,” Zito wrote about one of his million affronts to facts. As sharp and glib that construct was, I rejected it out of hand. For as long as I remember I have said demagogues like Trump ought to be taken literally because that is how they think. They are literalists. That’s how religions and cults have born in this world.

There has never been anything subtle about Trump. He has no subtext. He is all text and that too in ALL CAPS and exclamations. His tweets were littered with absurd assertions in all caps. The one thing you can’t ever accuse him of is any subtlety or nuance. There was nothing to read between his lines because the lines made it obvious. Like I said he is a literalist.

The man spawned an entire political industry from which so many have benefited but are now faking outrage. The idea that Trump has become progressively infra dignitatem ‘beneath (one's) dignity’ or more popularly infra dig and anathema is a non-sense that those who gained so much from those very failings are now selling. Trump is that rare example where a failing was not just a single failing but part of an unbroken chain of egregious character flaws which together make what he is. The man grotesquely mocking the disabled is the same as the man threatening election officials in Georgia and the man grabbing pussy is the same as the man rationalizing and promoting hate and misogyny. It is a horrid continuum.

At some level it should have been quite easy for America to reject him because it was all stated, often in  ALL CAPS. But not only did a significant part of the American electorate vote for him the first time but did so even more significantly the second. They bear as much responsibility as him. Here was a man who needed no reaffirmation or reinforcement of his spectacular view of self being handed 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast.  What do you think that does to his narcissism which needed no endorsement in his mind to begin with?

It is beyond the purview of this short post to discuss what it tells about America that voters gave him a staggering number like that. It is the second highest in US history after President-elect Joe Biden’s 81.3 million votes, or 51.3% of all votes cast.

I am sure in his private moments Trump has let Trump know that even when he loses, he loses creating history.

Elaine Chao, Donald Trump, Manhattan Project and Vada Pav

Elaine Chao (Photo: https://www.transportation.gov/)

This post is mostly triggered by the gratuitously self-serving resignation of Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao because she was "deeply troubled" by the "entirely avoidable" attack on the Capitol Hill yesterday. I say mostly but it equally applies to all of President Donald Trump’s top government colleagues who are now scrambling for the exits over yesterday.

What makes Chao’s departure barely two weeks before she would have been out anyway particularly galling in its hypocrisy is that she happens to be married to someone—namely a certain Senator Mitch McConnell—who has for four years deployed every ounce of brazenly cynical utilitarianism to drive his partisan agenda on the back of the president. All along the high-powered Washington D.C. couple knew of their Faustian bargain.

I would like to give you an analogy of the Manhattan Project, you know the one that built the first atomic bomb in absolute secrecy. Consider for the sake of this analogy that you were a key member of the Manhattan Project fully aware of what the endgame was. You gave the project your everything. At the conclusion of the project, you also watched a test that atomized things within a large vicinity. You did all of that with blind and even admiring conviction. And once that bomb went off you began developing a weird conscience and you felt you were "deeply troubled" by the "entirely avoidable" enterprise.

At that stage of the game who the fuck is going to believe you? Do we think that you thought the Manhattan Project was about making a vada pav?*

*If you don’t know what vada pav is, it is just too bad. You may instead read a burger.

On turning 60 today

At age 10 I used to wonder what life might feel like at 60. I turn 60 today and now wonder what I really felt at age 10.

At 10 looking ahead it could only be speculative and imaginary. At 60 looking back it is a cavalcade of memories, some accurate but many amorphous and perhaps even unintentionally false.

My sister Pallavi told me that yesterday was my father Manharray’s birthday. He would have been 95 today had he lived another 50 years. Strangely until yesterday I did not know when my father was born. I knew precisely when and how he died—on May 4, 1970 of a fourth heart attack at age 45. That means I have outlived my father by 15 years today. If only outliving someone were an accomplishment….

I can say with a fair degree of certainty that in my mind I do not feel any significantly different at 60 than I did at 10. Sure, a whole lot has changed in terms of life’s experiences and physically. You can see the second law thermodynamics at work with advancing years. Entropy increases by the day and disorder becomes the order of the day. For instance, since Saturday, I have been laid low by a horrendous if routine sinus attack. Since the release of sinuses, accompanying headaches and body aches, runny nose and terrible cough all mimic symptoms of the COVID 19 I got myself tested yesterday. The result will be known likely by tomorrow.

Entropy will only get more intense as I deplete whatever number of years I have left in me. I have always considered between 75 and 80 to be the optimal age in terms of their effectiveness. Let’s say for the sake of argument that for an average human being like me it is 75. That means at 60 I have already lived 80 percent of my life. By definition, 80 percent of all my life’s success and failure, joy and grief ought to have been lived and experienced by now. But we all know life does not unfold in percentages. It is possible that a single day or a single hour or a single minute at any age could produce a remarkable accomplishment. For the sake of argument, however, it is fair to say that 80 percent of my effective life is over.

I was told by a friend of mine who believed in birth charts and astrology—for the record, I do not—that the 60^th will be an important year for me. He also said it would be a very rewarding year for me. That year has just begun today. I am willing to give that friend, who is no longer alive, my 60^th year to test his hypothesis.

I mentioned the second law of thermodynamics and its application to human life. It is true that the availability of my system’s energy that can be converted into mechanical work has diminished over the decades. I do not see my system lasting beyond its 65^th year. Let me correct it. I do not want my system to last beyond its 65^th year.

One has no delusions about what one brings to the human discourse—nothing. I can safely say that my birth and life have made no material difference to the universe at all. If you cannot make an impact on the universe, what’s the point of your existence?

A short reminiscence of Rahul Deb Burman

Today happens to be the 27^th death anniversary of the composer Rahul Deb Burman. To mark the anniversary I would like rerun a piece I had written on June 27, 2014 his 75^th birth anniversary.

June 27, 2014

The great sarod maestro and musician Ali Akbar Khan told me once this about Rahul Dev Burman, “Pancham (R D Burman) could pretty much do anything with music. He just lived music.” That was sometime in 1999, at Khan’s music academy in San Rafael, California where I had gone to interview him.

Khan was visibly happy to hear Burman’s name and, in fact, quickly hummed the great composer’s first song “Ghar aya ghir aayi” from the 1961 film ‘Chhote Nawab’  sung brilliantly by Lata Mangeshkar. Khan had a special fondness for Burman because as a child in the 1940s the latter learned the sarod under him. “He did not want to make a career as a Sarod player but strengthen his foundation as a music composer,” Khan told me.

Being a son the illustrious Sachin Deb Burman and himself a preternaturally talented musician,  Pancham had his career laid out for him. People are surprised when they realize that he would have been 75 today had he lived past 1994 when he died at 55. At some level Burman seems like a figure from another era but at another level he is easily the most current of all Hindi cinema music composers.

I had the good fortune to spend a couple of hours with Burman at his apartment in the suburb of Khar in Mumbai in 1993, barely a few months before he died. I had gone to interview him. I vividly remember entering his music room whose floor was covered with wall-to-wall mattresses in spotless white sheets with half a dozen bolsters, also in white covers thrown about casually. Burman was sitting cross-legged and playing his harmonium. He was singing/humming something he had just composed. By the time I met him, he was well past his prime and made it a point to tell me that. “I have at least 1000 compositions sitting with me as of now,” he told me, “But no one wants them.”

Burman was then in the midst of composing for his last film ‘1942: A Love Story’ directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The songs from the movie became widely popular. He asked me to accompany him for a recording of one of the songs at a studio in Mahalaxmi. I remember Burman, lyricist Javed Akhtar and I took a cab from Khar to Mahalaxmi. Once at the studio, he told me that he had unabashedly copied “Baba”—his great composer father Sachin Dev Burman—in some of that film’s music. In particular, he pointed out that interlude from the song ‘Jane who kaise log’ from the 1957 classic ‘Pyasa.’ “If you pay attention, you would feel as if your are listening to Baba’s composition,” Burman said.

That particular day Burman was recording a singer called Shivaji Chattopadhyaya for the song ‘Yeh safar bahut hai kathin magar na udas ho mere humsafar’. Being a Bengali speaker, he had trouble with some of the pronunciations which Akhtar, a stickler for such details, kept correcting. It took some effort for Chattopadhyaya to nail it. I could see the Burman was getting restless and at one point said as long the singer sang it right, they might have to compromise on his pronunciation.

In my book, Burman has always been one of the five greatest composers of Hindi cinema in this order—S.D. Burman, R.D. Burman, S.D. Burman, R.D. Burman and the fifth position changes among the others. That may seem like a controversial thing to say but we have to judge a Hindi cinema music composer, just as we have to do a cinema lyricist, by employing many varied yardsticks. The father and son have been unsurpassable from that standpoint.