‘There are so many men who are in love with Nur Jehan…”
There are so many men who are in love with Nur Jehan. I know cooks who prepare food for their sahibs and memsahibs while looking lovingly at her picture, which they have stuck on the kitchen wall. I also know domestic servants who do not care for Nargis, Nimmi or Kamini Kaushal but who are mad about Nur Jehan. Whenever they see a picture of hers, they clip it and put it in their collection, which they hoard in a broken tin trunk so that they can soothe their eyes by looking at it in their spare hours. Were someone to say something disparaging about Nur Jehan, such men would be prepared to fight. In our own home, we have a lover of Nur Jehan who calls every young girl, every bride and every woman wearing red, “Nur Jehan.” He knows practically all her songs. He himself is good-looking, so I am at a loss to understand what it is about Nur Jehan that he likes so much that he keeps talking about her from morning to evening.
He is closely related to me, being the son of my nephew Hamid Jalal and my sister-in-law Zakia. His name is Shahid Jalal but we all call him “Taku.” We have tried to tell him many times that he should seriously think of falling out of love with Nur Jehan whom he cannot marry, as she is already married and has her own children, but it has no effect on him. He loves movies and if these movies do not star Nur Jehan he is very upset. He comes home and begins to sing her songs. He has told his parents that all he wants in the world is Nur Jehan. Some time ago, his grandfather Mian Jalaluddin went to the street to meet Shaukat Hussain Rizvi and said to him, “Look, you have a rival who is madly in love with your wife and one of these days he is going to run away with her and you will be left watching.” Shakat asked awkwardly, “Who is he?” Maian Jaluluddin smiled. “My grandson.” “Your grandson! How old is he?” “About four.” When Nur Jehan heard the story, she declared that she would go and meet her lover and marry him. Shahid Jalal has been in seventh heaven since being given the news and is watching impatiently for the day when Nur Jehan will come to see him and become his bride.
Recently, someone told me a story about another of Nur Jehan’s lovers, who was not four, but a grown-up man, a barber by profession. He would sing her songs all day long and never tire of talking about her. Someone said to him one day, “Do you really love Nur Jehan?” “Without a doubt, “ the barber replied sincerely. “If you really love her, can you do what the legendary Punjabi lover Mahiwal did for his beloved Sohni? He cut a piece of his flesh from his thigh to prove his love,” the man said. The barber gave him his sharp cut-throat razor and said, “You can take a piece of flesh from any part of my body.” His friend was a strange character because he slashed away a large chunk of flesh from his arm and ran away while the barber fainted after providing this proof of love. When this great lover regained consciousness in May Hospital, Laore, the first words that came to his lips were, “Nur Jehan.”
- From Stars from Another Sky by Saadat Hasan Manto.
January 3, 2012 at 8:16 am
The article seems to be available here:
http://www.hamaraforums.com/index.php?showtopic=23359
The one on Ashok Kumar from the same book is also available:
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/arts-letters/ashok-kumar-the-evergreen-hero
Regards,
Swarup
January 3, 2012 at 8:57 am
Thanks for the links, Swarup. We’ve talked on this blog about Hamara Forums linking to some of the contents of the book and I had some memory of that myself, but I didn’t recall it as linking to the entire chapters. I only recalled seeing the more nasty parts of the Noor Jehan chapter, in which Manto talks about perceiving her as being vulgar and insincere. Maybe I recalled that part most because someone out there at one point had chosen to remind me of those negative descriptions. :( But this is a nicer part, and one I can relate to it myself. :) I also like the descriptions of the beauty of her voice, which is the most important thing.
And now that I finally got the whole book, I thought I’d have fun transcribing some of it.
Though I have mixed feelings about this book, really – it is so much just one big dishy gossip sheet. Some people like that, but often I would rather simply admire the artist or performer for her or his art and/or screen presence, and there are usually many things outside of those areas that I’d rather not know.
January 3, 2012 at 9:11 am
I feel like an interloper here since I have very little knowledge of films ( my knowledge is mostly confined to a few hindi and telugu films of the fifties). Moreover I am not a fan of Nur Jehan, I liked Zohrabai and Amirbai better. But there is one by Nur Jehan that I loved (you must have already mentioned this)
In any case, I enjoy reading your blog and Minai’s and keep wondering what are the kind of social spaces which made these songs and dances popular (at least in some iecles) from Russia to Nigeria to USA.
January 3, 2012 at 10:13 am
It is funny that you posted that clip, Swarup, because just this past day, I treated myself several times to the other scene for this song from the same movie. which I also presently have as the featured song on my YouTube station:
I have actually posted many versions of “Lal Meri Pat” on this blog. (Maybe I’ll dig up links for those again – but not now, because I have once again stayed up past the time when I had planned to go to sleep, etc.)
There is a book that I have finished reading (finally) by the sociologist Lousie Brown which is about the real life of a brothel family in Lahore… It’s quite grim, but there are wonderful descriptions of the festival days, etc., that beautifully match stuff I’ve seen in films and song clips. I was thinking of doing a post with more quotes from that book, illustrated by song clips. :)
But back to Noor Jehan… While I am very fond of those other singers that you have mentioned, I consider Noor Jehan to be on a higher plane. Especially in the films from the ’40s to ’60s, I am absolutely crazy about her voice (in case you didn’t guess); it just does some kind of magic for me.
As for where the social spaces came from for me to get into all this… Well, I have my own stories about how that gradually happened (though I doubt they suffice to explain it all)… I think I tell some of that in my “About” page, some on the side of my YouTube site, and in a bunch of other places. I don’t know if people in the U.S. in general have had the kind of affinity for these old Bollywood films that people had so many years ago in Russia and other parts of the then-existing Soviet empire (which also happens to be the land of my ancestors)… But I’ve had the opportunity to get exposure to a lot of things, and also meet certain people who helped me along on this path, simply by living in New York, the global city. But Minai lives in a different sort of place in the U.S. (so I gather) and I don’t have the faintest idea how she got to be such a huge fan of Indian films and dances and now, apparently, an expert. I think she’s much more a mystery than I am. :)
January 3, 2012 at 9:20 pm
Thanks for the detailed reply. ‘Social space’ is something I picked up from Brian Larkin’s “Signal and Noise” which in part describes the popularity of Bollywood in parts of Nigeria. It might have been a different route in Russia, partly political contacts and partly the optimism conveyed in Rajkapoor films. Of course, individual choices do not quite come under the same scheme; for example a villager like me taking to pure mathematics. By the way, Brian Larkin teaches in Bernard College and may be an interesting person to contact. A mathematician friend who teaches in the same place tells me that he is a nice bloke.
January 4, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Legends make the legends legendary!