Here comes the Punjab Mail!

Dr Omer Adil
In this TFT exclusive, Dr Omer Adil tells the incredible story of a little girl from Kasur who arrived in 1930s Calcutta and there began her conquest of India's burgeoning film and music scene

"It is as if the Punjab Mail has arrived in Calcutta!” quipped a Bengali studio hand to his colleague, while keeping his gaze fixed upon a trio of chubby, petite, brown-eyed lasses who were at that moment moving past him and conversing in a thick Punjabi accent.

The other boy followed his friend’s gaze. “What’s the Punjab Mail connection?” he asked, that being the name of the great train that in those days was traversing the wide plains of British-ruled North India.

“Can’t you hear them chirp in Punjabi?” came the retort.

“I can hardly understand a word of what they say,” replied the lad who had spent all of his 18 years speaking plain Bangla without being able to read or write in it.

“But how can you miss the syrupy lyricism of their lilting voices?” asked the studio hand with a distinct disdain for his friend’s apparent tone-deafness.

This conversation was taking place in a prop-strewn courtyard of Madan Studious, Calcutta, on a crisp April morning in 1934. The Punjab Mail in question had come all the way from the sonorous suburb of Kot Murad Khan in the backwaters of Qasur, some 1,000 miles away, after making a brief stop at the dimly-lit cinema houses that were then projecting silent stunt-movies in and around the walled city of Lahore.

A paucity of patrons had compelled performers who came from the suburbs to move to larger city centers that offered a better chance of recognition and remuneration. In the early 1930s, Lahore was the ideal destination for performing artists. The city’s zestful inhabitants possessed an almost insatiable craving for pleasure, and performers of all sorts thrived on it. Cinema was becoming popular; silent films were full of stunts and tricks made possible by the combined magic of camera and editing table. Sound came to these ‘moving pictures’ as late as 1931. Until then, the acoustic void was filled by many ingenious devices, ranging from a live orchestra entrenched in a pit at the foot of the cinema screen to live singing and dancing by hired performers during the intervals. These secondary sound-shows titillated the acoustic sensibility of the cinema-goers; they also provided a pedestal for quite a few performers to exhibit their wares and fares under the generous auspices of a major breakthrough in technology. This coexistence was to prove short-lived – it would end the day sound entered film – but for the time being it made for a happy arrangement.

The house of Madad Ali in Kasur was stacked between the houses of other musicians. Nearby, for instance, was the house of Ali Bukhsh, court musician to Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir. His sons spent their days in rigorous ‘riyaaz’ under the exacting tutelage of their uncle Kaley Khan. The oldest of these four sons, one Ghulam Ali, could touch the very soul of a raag while singing its khayal.

Now Madad Ali’s brood was no match for such prodigies. And, abiding by a distinctly different set of social codes, it was the girls of his household who were to be the star performers as well as the breadwinners for his establishment. But it seemed like a long wait before Madad Ali could expect a steady flow of admirers and consequent income. The demands of raising a large family had already forced three of his girls to trek all the way to Lahore and take up the role of ‘live performers’ in cinemas that were screening silent ‘mythologicals’ and ‘stunts’. This trio consisted of Idan Bai, Haider Baandi and Allah Wasai. (The first and last were real sisters, while Haider Baandi was the daughter of Lala Kulla, the younger brother of Madad Ali.)

Their act consisted of performing a naat followed by a few popular fast numbers, whose racy tunes provided the rhythm to which the girls gyrated and pirouetted, receiving spirited cheers from the audience. The act was a not unusual ‘sublime-to-sensual’ package. But there was something out of the ordinary about it: the opening naat was rendered by an incredibly melodious voice that could soar to distant notes of the upper register and dip deep to the lowest in one breezy flight. The entire congregation swayed to the aural pull of this voice. Whether one was a clerk in a government department or a ‘dhaadi’ from the nearby district, one always came under the spell cast by this voice. Just as the congregation scaled the heights of devotion while listening to the naat’s lyrics, imbued with the love of the ‘ultimate beloved’, the performer would break into a lilting number that would release the captive audience from the trance – a mere pause before the listeners succumbed once again to the mesmeric majesty of the singer’s voice, this time in the domain of the profane.

Many were surprised when they learned that the possessor of this special voice was the youngest member of the trio – the prepubescent Allah Wasai with her glistening cheeks and luminous forehead. Set between these two facial features were eyes that shone like faceted carbonados. But the real magic emanated from her throat. A well-known instrument even at this early stage, it had resulted from a curious congenital configuration and a thorough grounding in the nuances, scales and basic grammar of classical music.

It was during one of these ‘interval performances’ that the ears of an important visitor were pricked by the singing of Allah Wasai. “She has that melodious, high-pitched, carrying voice that is perfectly suited for the stage,” the gentleman thought to himself, he being a talent scout who had come to prowl the musical establishments of Lahore for fresh stuff that could be exhibited on the live stages of Calcutta. In little Allah Wasai he surely had a ‘find’. (The other two girls in the trio would be an added bonus.) Quick inquiries into the origin of the troupe led him to one Muhammad Shafi, an older brother of Allah Wasai and a manager of sorts who was quickly persuaded that ‘interval performances’ were a waste of time for the girls, as the era of the silent film was ending and that of ‘talkies’ about to dawn. “Soon your girls will be redundant as the talkies talk and sing to their audience. They will find themselves singing at local fairs and ‘melas’ in the vastlands of rural Punjab,” said the visitor, painting an undeniably dreary picture of the times to come. The only escape, as suggested by this man, was to relocate the girls to Madan Theatres in Calcutta, a theatre and film company of immense repute.

One day not long after that incident, this performing group climbed the lowest class compartment of the Calcutta-bound Howrah Express at Platform 2 of Lahore Railway Station. It was a bright spring morning in March 1934. And on this auspicious day, in this way, the ‘Punjab Mail’, as it would come to be known, was carried to Calcutta by the Howrah Express across the Indian subcontinent and ultimately transported to the gates of Madan Theatres.

The Madan Theatre Company was founded by a Parsi entrepreneur who had stepped into the entertainment business as early as 1902. By the early 1920’s it had become a joint stock company exercising great control over the country’s box office. A well-oiled machine, the Madan Theatre produced popular landmark films that were screened in the dozens of theatres owned by it. A sister concern was the Corinthian, which was the most revered seat of traditional Parsi theatre. After J F Madan’s death in 1923, his third son J J Madan continued to manage the company with great skill.

By the early 1930’s the company was a bustling enterprise with salaried artists and staff in every department of production. Seth Sukhlal Karnani, a business tycoon of Calcutta, held a large stock share in the company, and greatly influenced the running of it.

The trio from Punjab was employed by Madan Theatres in 1934.

The ‘Punjab Mail’ title was an expression of the fascination that these girls evoked in the Calcutta studio. It owed much to the tonal charm of the language they spoke and sang in, especially the musically precocious Allah Wasai. At that time her mesmerized audiences didn’t know that what they beheld was in fact the beginning of what would come to be called the ‘Punjab ang’. (Its inherent ‘lehak’ and ‘laay’ made it distinct from the fluid Bengal ang.) What transformed the simple phrases of the song into great music was the expressive emotionality that issued from Allah Wasai’s throat, as if it contained not only ‘sur’ but also a vast repertoire of sentiment that conveyed the emotional content and context of the uttered note.

One pair of ears presently wandering the premises of Madan Theaters belonged to Mubarik Ali Khan, younger brother of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. (The same melodious Ghulam Ali who had resided in Allah Wasai’s neighborhood in Kasur.) That fateful year the two brothers made their first visit to Calcutta. Mubarik Ali, the younger of the two, was 26 years old. Robust and flamboyant, with a certain garish flair, he sported a John Gilbert moustache and a rowdy mane of thick hair. Dazzled by the flickering cinema screen, he aspired to see his face on it. (This aspiration had brought him to the Madan Theatres.)

Far though they were from Kasur, the musical dialect and diction of young Allah Wasai struck a nostalgic chord with Mubarik.

A fateful audience with Seth Sukhlal Karnani and his mistress Miss Jahan Ara Kajjan got Allah Wasai rechristened as Noor Jehan, or ‘Light of the Universe’. The prophetic aptness of this new name was to be realized in only a few years. The girls got busy playing small roles in insignificant studio productions, but their presence had started a series of events which would culminate in an all-too-momentous occasion.

Now the simultaneous presence in Calcutta of Baby Noor Jehan, Mubarik Ali Khan and a set of other artists from Lahore was not an accident. Kishan Dev Mehra, a staff director at Madan Theaters, had for some time been toying with the idea of a full-length feature film in Punjabi. The arrival of the miraculous ‘Punjab Mail’ only strengthened his resolve. When he spoke to Mubarik he found in him a supporting partner.

“These girls from Kasur and Pushpa Rani from Lahore and myself, we have a full cast for your movie,” the aspiring actor assured Mehra.

But Mehra said: “I wish the Seths shared our enthusiasm, Khan Sahib. They are primarily concerned with what rakes in the money at the box office. They are wary of experiments.”

“But don’t you realize the box office potential of a Punjabi film? It will run successfully at both poles of the country, here in Calcutta and there in Lahore.”

Mehra said: “We have had artists from Punjab working in Calcutta theatres and studios. But Lahore too is a cinema center. Somehow no Punjabi has felt confident enough to suggest Punjabi as a medium for cinema...”

“Maybe it is we who are destined to serve our culture and introduce cinema to our language,” offered the enthusiastic Mubarik.

And Mehra said: “Allright, let me speak to the Seth and see what happens.”

Seth Karnani heard Mehra’s proposition and made a set of crisp and business-savvy demands, mainly a new production banner for the PunjabI experiment. Indra Movietone was thus launched. The Seth also offered just a meager amount of money to cover the production cost, and required the cast and crew to consist of his salaried staff. This was Mehra’s intention as well.

“And don’t forget to have that girl sing and act in your movie!” roared the Seth.

“Which girl?” asked Mehra.

“Kajjan Baiji’s pet, who else. What was that name she gave her?”

“Noor Jehan,” replied an eager Mehra, remembering a name he would never forget for the rest of his life. “Surely she will feature in our movie…”

Just a few weeks later sound stage 6 of Madan Theater’s studio becomes the setting of an off-camera orchestra accompanying the young Noor Jehan, who is made to stand on a stool to reach up to a microphone dangling out of the frame. She sings the song, which is set in a faint raag Bageshri, rendering it plaintively without a hint of nervousness. Cajoled by the baton-wielding Mubarik she quickens her tempo and barely manages to not miss a beat. From there on she is in full command, oblivious to the camera filming her and the mike recording her. Just before the last antara, she breaks into an impromptu alaap of taans in a well-cultured and chiseled voice that completely defies her age.

And a tremulous “OK!” by KD Mehra seals a very special moment in the cine history of the Indian subcontinent.

Baby Noor Jehan has just recorded the first Punjabi film song for ‘Sheila: Pind di Kudi’, the first Punjabi film ever to be made.

Dr Omer Adil lives in Lahore

April 22-28, 2011 - Vol. XXIII, No. 10