Anand Bakshi: A master wordsmith

On October 2, 1947 a 17-year-old Anand Bakshi (1930-2002) left Rawalpindi in Pakistan to arrive as a refugee in India. The family arrived in Delhi but registered in Pune at the refugee registration branch of the local police. From here on, with a stint in the Indian Army as the beginning of his working life, Bakshi began his pursuit of filmi dreams nearly a decade later, when he landed in Bombay in 1956.

It took its own time again, but by the late sixties, with a series of hits like ‘Himalay Ki God Mein’, ‘Jab JabPhoolKhile’ and ‘Milan’, Bakshi had arrived by delivering eminently hummable songs in a list of six films. This was the firm foundation on which his career was based – over 3,500 songs in more than 600 plus films.

The beauty of Bakshi’smesmerising lyrics was that it retained its currency till he lived in the first decade of the new millennium. His words echoed across the world in films like ‘Gadar: EkPrem Katha’ ‘Mohabbatein’ and ‘ Yaadein’, whose title number by Hariharan is still sung by fans.

The 1970s, many of Rajesh Khanna’s major successes made waves, sailing smoothly into the hearts of its fans on the lines penned by Anand Bakshi. The songs of ‘Amar Prem’ come to mind immediately. Bakshi, despite being a Hindu, wrote his lyrics in Urdu and was a rebellious writer, whose words seethed at the disparities and injustices in interpersonal relationships. His contemporary was SahirLudhianvi who too wrote similar stuff, keeping away from mythical descriptions of feminine beauty and divinity.

The amazing pairing Bakshi enjoyed with the top names then – R D Burman and Laxmikant-Pyarelal – with whom his bulk of work was delivered is the stuff of eternal legend. It is for sure, that his contribution to the rhythmic songs of the golden era of Hindi cinema, which began in the 1950s and lasted till the mid-1970s will be noticed among the dozen odd top lyricists who served the entertainment industry then.Bakshi died on March 30,2002.