OP Nayyar at 100: How his music set a young India’s heart beating with rhythm and desire

In a world shaped by restraint came the playful, sincerely romantic and teasing melodies from Nayyar that flirted their way through people’s hearts. Borrowing from folk traditions and the rhythms of the street, Nayyar introduced a lightness that felt familiar, mischievous, and, in the larger context, even modern, thus presenting how desire, often a woman’s, could be expressed. At a time when popular Hindi cinema was quite conscious of its female leads stepping out of ‘acceptable’ bounds, Nayyar brought in a shokhi, a playful charm where women had some agency. So you heard Geeta Dutt crooning the sensuous advisory Babuji dheere chalna (Aar Paar, 1954) or the title song from the same film, where one hears the line Saiyaan ghayal kiya re tune mora jigar. There was the feather-light Jayiye aap kahan jayenge (Mere Sanam, 1965), the sultry nightclub invitation from Madhubala in Aaiye meherbaan (Howrah Bridge, 1958) and the teasing Ye hai reshmi zulfon ka andhera (Mere Sanam), among others.

A still from Howrah Bridge.

You can still tell an OP Nayyar song within the first few seconds of its prelude. Sometimes sooner. So strong and unique is the opening. The mandolin and claps lead-in from Ude jab jab zulfein teri (Naya Daur, 1957), the energetic and now-famed harmonium preludes of Kajra mohobbat wala (Kismat, 1968) and Leke pehla pehla pyar (CID), the piano chords that begin Aapke haseen rukh pe (Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi, 1966).

Be it the Punjabi folk-inflected lift in Reshmi salwaar (Naya Daur), the galloping ghoda-gaadi songs (where the beat mimics a horse’s stride), such as Yu toh humne (Tumsa Nahi Dekha, 1957) and Maang ke saath (Naya Daur), which became instant hits besides becoming Nayyar’s signature, turning him into the king of rhythm. Even though Nayyar wasn’t the first one to use the rhythm (Pankaj Mullick was), he just worked it really well. Naya Daur was also the only film for which he won a Filmfare award in 1958. Then there were his phenomenal songs with lyricist SH Bihari in Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) with a charming Mohammad Rafi and Asha Bhosle collaboration that turned this Sharmila Tagore debut into a blockbuster. The tunes can still bring a room to life. Nayyar would have turned 100 on January 16.

In the ’50s, in a newly independent nation still finding its bearings, Nayyar’s music came with a reassurance that life could be joyful. “I often wondered why his music went straight for my jugular. I think it was the spirit of the joie de vivre. The songs made you happy. He would just take an instrument and highlight it, then he would use other instruments to embroider it and others to complete it and would just create a painting out of a song,” says Lata Jagtiani, author of OP Nayyar: King of Melody, who along with her husband and film music historian Manek Premchand, was friends with Nayyar and his partner and singer Madhuri Joglekar since the ’80s till he moved away to Thane and spent his final years leading a relatively secluded life.

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OP Nayyar with Dev Anand (Express Archive

Born and raised in a conservative Punjabi family from Lahore, Omkar Prasad Nayyar learned the basics of music from his mother. But his father was a strict man and was quite uncomfortable with one of his sons singing around the house. “He wasn’t too pleased with my singing. He said it was only fit for miraasis (street entertainers),” Nayyar told Mumbai-based author and film music historian Vishwas Nerurkar in an interview in the ‘90s. “One night I came home late from a fair, lost in the folk song and dances, completely unaware of the time, my father, well… he gave me a good thrashing. But my head was swimming with the rhythms I’d heard. Next day, I was right back at the fair,” he told Nerurkar, who also released a new commemorative version of his older book The Legendary OP Nayyar (1999), on January 16 with actor Asha Parekh as the chief guest in Mumbai. “Nayyar saab always said that the way Asha Parekh ji emoted his songs was special and it would enhance the original tune,” says Nerurkar.

After Nayyar walked into a music conference in Lahore and won Rs 10 for crooning a bhajan, he began singing in children’s programmes on radio despite his family’s disapproval. His father had a dawakhana, while his siblings were all preparing for a career in medicine. His younger brother’s granddaughter Niharica Raizada, an actor in Mumbai, who grew up on his music, told The Indian Express that the family is still conservative about the industry. “Our family has never been pro industry, even though they absolutely adore film music. Back then, things were stricter for him,” says Raizada, who adds that Nayyar was greatly inspired by legendary composer RC Boral.

The family pressure was mounting to do something more ‘serious’, so Nayyar ran away from home and joined a touring naatak company in Punjab, becoming its music composer for Rs 15 a month. While it immersed him in Punjab’s infectious folk, it also allowed him to learn many instruments. But soon he got tired of “composing those typical songs for mujras”. So he left and moved to Izzatnagar in UP. He experimented with a few ideas and composed Pritam aan milo, a private song recorded later by Columbia Records, in 1945. It was written by stage dancer Saroj Mohini, who later also became his wife. Sung by CH Atma, the song, which was later famously re-recorded by Geeta Dutt and used in the Guru Dutt- and Madhubala-starrer Mr and Mrs 55 (1955), caught on quickly. Its success in the ’40s was all the affirmation Nayyar, though not formally trained, needed to know that film music was his calling.

A still from Naya Daur.

His family moved to Amritsar post-Partition. Four hours after he got married in 1952 in Amritsar, he got a telegram from movie mogul Dulsukh Pancholi, who offered Nayyar his first film: the Nasir Khan-Shyama-starrer Aasmaan (1952). At this point, he composed in accordance with the times: he tried the semi-classical tunes when composers such as Anil Biswas, Naushad and Shankar-Jaikishan were already established music makers. But the film tanked and the songs failed to cause any flutter. “I soon realised that film music must be of the people, for the people… I started experimenting with rhythm,” said Nayyar in Nerurkar’s book.

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It was for Aasmaan that Nayyar was to record with Lata Mangeshkar. The song was Mori nindiya. An industry messenger named Raju, who booked artistes for composers, was sent to call on Mangeshkar, who was then riding high on the success of Mahal (1949), Andaz (1949) and Barsaat (1949). She refused to record. Nayyar recounted the story to Nerurkar after much insistence. “Lataji asked Raju who the composer was. When he told her, she said that she didn’t know of him and wasn’t going to work for just any composer. When Raju reported this to Nayyar, the latter recorded the song with Rajkumariji. What hurt Nayyar saab the most was that she didn’t even listen to the song before rejecting him,” says Nerurkar. Nayyar’s refusal to work with Mangeshkar became one of the most talked-about absences in Hindi film music. His later stance on the matter was that Mangeshkar’s voice didn’t suit his music, but Nerurkar believes it was a comfortable answer for the interviews.

Four songs in Aasmaan were recorded with Geeta Dutt. Notoriously uncompromising, Nayyar decided that he would never work with Mangeshkar. And he never did. Geeta Dutt, Asha Bhosle, Shamshad Begum and Rajkumari remained his go-to women singers. Jagtiani says Nayyar was always headstrong and couldn’t take rejection. “He fell out with me after a decade of friendship as I missed two of his calls because I was working,” recalls Jagtiani. Nayyar, who had so many successful songs with Mohammad Rafi, didn’t work with him for years after the latter was late to his recording. What made it worse was Rafi’s mention of being held up at a Shankar-Jaikishan session. It was only after they bumped into each other and Rafi apologised that Nayyar softened. “He’d say ‘if a bada singer like him can apologise, I have to forgive. I would have never done the same’,” says Nerurkar.

A still from Aar Paar.

It was Geeta Dutt, who, impressed by Nayyar’s talent, mentioned him to her husband and director-actor Guru Dutt, who gave him Aar Paar. All eight songs, including Hoon abhi main jawaan, Sun sun zaalima, Ye lo main haari piya and the title song were instant hits. Hindi cinema had just found a brisk rhythm and it cemented Nayyar’s reputation as a composer of contemporary, urban numbers.

Always impeccably dressed in white, topped with a black hat for flourish and a connoisseur of branded shoes, watches and perfumes, Nayyar went back to Amritsar after a hat-trick film success in his famous lemon Chevrolet Impala. “He wanted to tell the family, he had arrived,” says Raizada.

Popular playback and independent singer Sona Mohapatra, who sang a remixed version of Kabhi aar kabhi paar in 2004, “on a dance forward interpretation with a rather risqué video” almost 50 years after it was first sung by Shamshad Begum in 1954, has always believed that the fabulous swagger and spirit of his music continues to invite re-interpretation. The mark of a truly timeless composition, says Mohapatra, is when the vibe of one era still makes the next one move.

“OP Nayyar saab wrote songs that refuse to age. Kabhi aar kabhi paar was among the very first songs I recorded as a professional singer and it went on to find an entirely new life and superhit status. What moves me today, on his 100th birth anniversary, is watching a new generation discover it organically on social media and love it all over again. Timeless music doesn’t belong to an era; it belongs to curiosity. Seeing my 2004 version resurface two decades later on streaming platforms and be embraced by Gen Z and A only proves how fearlessly modern his compositions were to begin with.” Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet used two remakes of Jaata kahan hai deewane (CID) while Tareef karun (Kashmir Ki Kali) made it to many ads.

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(From L-R) Mohammad Rafi, OP Nayyar, director RK Rakhan and Asha Bhosle during a recording. (Express Archive)

In the process of not working with Mangeshkar, Nayyar did one more significant thing: he turned her younger, ambitious sister, Asha Bhosle, then relegated to second-tier songs, often the ones Mangeshkar passed up, into a star. Under Nayyar’s baton, Bhosle moved swiftly to the forefront, singing for leading women and, in the process, redefining her career as well as his sound. Nayyar would ask her to improvise, help improve her Urdu diction, ask her to elongate the words for clear pronunciation. Success for her came when she sang for Vyjayanthimala in Naya Daur and went on to croon some of the most iconic Nayyar songs, both rhythm-based and those with very strong melodies. In Nerurkar’s book, Bhosle had said, “Nayyar saab gave me a lot of encouragement. He said, ‘There is no singer like you, and I am telling you this: you will sing for a long while.’ My self-confidence rose… I not only began to get varied songs, but I felt my singing improved. Nayyar saab stood by me and gave me immense mental support and strength.”

While Bhosle was divorced by 1960, Nayyar was still married when their working relationship turned into a romantic one. The two were together till the early ’70s. Her last song for Nayyar was the poignant Chain se humko kabhi which was never included in the film Pran Jaaye Par Vachan na Jaaye (1974). Bhosle still won a Filmfare for the song but never attended the ceremony to accept the award. As legend goes, Nayyar collected the award on her behalf and tossed it out of the car on his way home.

A still from Kashmir Ki Kali.

When Jagtiani asked him how he could create magical music, he replied, “Woman, I am of woman, by woman for woman. Women are my inspiration.” By the time Jagtiani met him, he was living with Joglekar in Mumbai’s Virar. The two later had a falling out and Nayyar began to live as a paying guest in Thane in the mid-’90s and was looked after by Rani Nakhwa and her family, who rented him a room in their house. Nayyar passed away in 2007 at 81 and his last rites were conducted by the Nakhwa family. As per his request, his family didn’t attend. People from the film industry were not present either. “Individuality and self-respect are expensive commodities,” said Nayyar in an interview, while discussing his lifelong but perhaps flawed attempt at staying true to himself.