Punjab Mail

Dr. Omer Adil

The Punjab Mail or Punjab Limited, as she was then called, made her maiden run out of Ballard Pier Mole station on 1 June 1992 to traverse the terrain that lay between Bombay and Peshawar. Named after Colonel J.A Ballard, a founder of Bombay Port Trust, the pier and port constituted the Ballard estate situated in south Bombay. Any British boarding the train could easily be lured by a mix of home sickness and faux familiarity in believing to be in a London borough. This ‘London likeness’ was primarily due to the European renaissance facades of buildings in the districts which were designed by George Wittet. A proponent of Indo-Saracenic revival architectural style, Wittet evolved the style by combining elements from native Indo-Islamic architecture with Gothic revival and Neo Classical style favoured in Victorian Britain. The choice of the design vocabulary proved to be unintentionally appropriate for the officers of the Raj and the ‘maim sahibs’ disembarking from the P & O steamers on their first postings in colonial India. The cultural shock was buffered to some extent for the arriving ‘white sahibs’ as they embarked the sparkling carrying cars for their inland journey to Peshawar Cantonment.

The romance of the railways combined with the majesty and speed of the train, made Punjab Mail a prestigious symbol of galloping development in colonial India. So much so that by 1929 the train service lent its name for the title of Imperial Studios action thriller directed by R.S Chaudhury featuring the exotic, Eurasian Ruby Myers alias Sulochana with Dinshaw Billimoria as her leading man. Punjab Mail 1929 added to the flurry of silent romantic super hits of Sulochana just prior to introduction of booming sound to cinema.

Fast forward:

“It is as if the Punjab Mail has arrived in Calcutta”  quipped a bengali studio hand to his colleague, while keeping his gaze fixed  at a trio of chubby, petite, brown eyed lasses moving past him engrossed in a excited conversation in a thick Punjabi dialect. The boy looked up with a quizzical expression and followed his friend’s gaze. “Whats the Punjab Mail connection?” he asked. “Cant 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 his entire 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” came the reply with distinct disdain for his tone deafness.

 This conversation was taking place is a prop strewn courtyard of Madan Studious, Calcutta on a crisp April morning in 1934. The ‘Punjab Mail’ in question had originated not at any railway terminus of Indian Railways, but had steamed forth from the sonorous suburb of Kot Murad Khan  in the backwaters of Qasur with a temporary stop at the dimly lit cinema houses projecting silent stunts movies in  and around the wall circumventing the ‘undroon shehr’, a part of Lahore that lay within.

 Let us follow the unfamiliar track as it belied any known railway route of the time. A paucity of patrons had compelled performers hailing from suburbs to gravitate towards larger centers offering a better chance of recognition and renumeration. Lahore in the early 1930’s seemed a logical destination for most practitioners of performing arts. The zest of life that the city’s inhabitants possessed warranted an almost insatiable craving for pleasures. Performers of all sorts thrived on this. Cinema was gaining popularity amidst a prevalent penchant for live display of performing arts. The silent movies were high on stunts and tricks made possible only by the camera and the editing table. Sound continued to elude the visuals till 1931. This acoustic void was filled by many modes. Ranging from live orchestra entrenched in a pit at the foot of the screen to performers singing and dancing during regular intervals of the screening, it titillated the acoustic sensibility as well as creating an aura possible only through live performance. This provided a pedestal for quite a few performers to exhibit there traditional ware along side a major breakthrough in entertainment technology. The coexistence was to prove short lived but for the time being it sufficed.

The  household Maddad Ali in Kot Murad Khan was stacked between households belonging to practitioners of musical arts. Their attainment excellence varying widely for a small group living in such close proximity. Nearby was the house of Ali Bukhsh, court musician to Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir. It boasted of his sons who spent their days in rigorous ‘riyaaz’ under the exacting tutelage of their uncle Kaley Khan. The oldest of the four sons of Ali Baksh, Ghulam Ali, could touch the very soul of a ‘Raag’ while singing  its ‘khayal’ with such proficiency that the Raag would slowly materialize out of reverberating notes and stand right before the  listener in full splendour and regalia.  Maddad Ali’s brood was no match for such progeny. A matter of distinctly different social codes it was the girls of his household who were to be the star performers as well as bread winners for the establishment. In that section also it seemed like a long wait before the family of Maddad Ali could expect a steady inflow of admirers and consequent income. The demands of raising a large family and fending  for it   had necessitated three girls of the household to trek all the way to Lahore and take up the role of ‘live performers’ in cinemas screening silent ‘mythologicals’ and ‘stunts’. The trio comprised of Iddan Bai, Haider Bandi and Allah Wasai. Two real sister and daughters of Maddad Ali and Haider Bandi the daughter of Lala Kulla the younger brother of  Maddad Ali.

Their act consisted of performing a ‘naat’ followed by a few popular fast numbers of the time. The racy tunes provided the rhythm on which they gyrated and pirouetted to spirited cheers and acclaim from the audience. The act was a ‘sublime to a sensual’ package. The opening ‘naat’ would be rendered by an incredibly melodious voice that soared to distant notes of the upper register and dipped deep to the lowest in one breezy flight. The entire congregation would sway to the aural pull of this voice. Wether one was a clerk in a government department or a ‘dhaadi’ from the nearby district, no one was or could be impervious to 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 in to a lilting number that would release the captive audience from the trance. The release was but a mere pause before the listeners succumbed to the mesmeric majesty of the singer’s vocal poignancy yet again.

The lead singer was surprisingly the youngest member of the trio -- Allah Wasi, a prepubescent girl with glistening cheeks and a luminous forehead. Set between these two facial features were eyes that shone like faceted carbonados. But the magic emanated from her throat. Almost a well known instrument even at this early stage, this throat was the result of 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 a visitor were held captive by the singing of Allah Wasai. “She has that melodious, high pitched, carrying voice that is perfectly suited for the stage”, he thought to himself. The visitors was a talent hunter from Calcutta who was busy prowling the musical establishments of Lahore in search of fresh talent that could be lured to the live stages of Calcutta . In Allah Wasai he surely had a ‘find’. The other two members of the trio, an added bonus indeed. 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. It took littles time and even lesser effort to convince Lala Shafi of the futility to continue with ‘interval performances’ as the era of the talkies had dawned. “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 the rural Punjab”, stated the visitor while painting a dreary picture of times to come. The only escape, as suggested by him, was to relocate these girls to Madan Theatres in Calcutta-- a theatre and film company of immense repute.

 

The plan thus made and the route well charted was executed dutifully as this group climbed the lowest class compartment of Calcutta bound Howrah express at platform 2 of Lahore railway station on a bright spring morning in March 1934. The ‘Punjab Mail’ so to say was carried to Calcutta by the Howrah Express across the sub continent and ultimately reached the gates of Madan Theatres. This was followed by employment at the studio through the courtesy of various influences.

This is another story to be told at another time  

The Madan Theatre company was founded by a Parsi entrepreneur who had stepped into 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 Madan Theatre produced popular and landmark films that were screened in the dozens of theatres owned by it. A sister concern was Corinthian theatre which was the most revered seat of traditional Parsi theatre. After JF Madan’s death in 1923, his third son J J Madan continued to manage the company with great ability. 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 the company

The trio from Punjab became the employees of Madan Theatres in 1934.

The epithet ‘Punjab Mail’, was not just a pointer to their origin but more so an expression of fascination that the presence of these girls evoked in the Calcutta studio. This fascination owed much to the tonal charm of the language that they spoke and sang in. When the young but musically precocious Allah Wasai sang, it was in a style which was singularly peculiar. Little did the listeners realize that what they were listening to was the origin of the ‘Punjab-ang’. It was difficult to differentiate wether Allah Wasai sang in the Punjab- ang or the Punjab- ang sang through her.

The inherent ‘lehak’ and ‘laay’ was distincnt from the fluid Bengal- ang.  What transformed a simple musical phrase into great music was the expressive emotionality that exuded from her throat. It was as if it was not just ‘sur’ that resided their but a vast repertoire of sentiment as well that conveyed the emotional content and context of the uttered note. 

Gradually Allah Wasai drew the initially uninitiated into a charmed circle; opened eyes closed to the grandeur of her music and held previously withdrawn ears attentive. One pair of such ears was perhaps trained to recognize genius much more astutely than others. They belonged to Mubarik Ali Khan, younger brother of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. That fateful year Khan Sahib made his first visit to Calcutta. He was accompanied by Mubarik Ali Khan, his 26 year old robust brother. Flamboyant with a certain garish flair, the young Mubarik sported a John Gilbert moustache and a rowdy mane of thick hair. Dazzled by the flickering cinema screen he aspired to be projected on it. This made him seek employment in the Madan Theatres as an actor.

Far removed from Qasur, the musical dialect and diction of 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” :the 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 to roll which will culminate in a momentous landmark.

The presence of baby Noor Jehan , Mubarik Ali Khan and a set of other artists from Lahore was not just a mere coincidence. Kishan Dev Mehra . a staff director at Madan Theaters had been toying with the idea of a full length feature film to be made in Punjabi for some time. The ‘Punjab Mail’ strengthened his random thoughts into a firm idea. He spoke to Mubarik and found in him a supporting partner. “These girls from Qasur and Pushpa Rani from Lahore and myself, we have a full cast for your movie”, he assured Mehra. “I wish the Seths shared our enthusiasm Khan Sahib. They are primary concerned with what rakes in the money at the box office and are weary of experiments”, replied Mehra . “But don’t you realize the box office potential of a Punjabi film. It will run successfully at both poles of the country, both here in Calcutta and there in Lahore”, effused an excited Mubarik. “We have had artists from Punjab working in Calcutta theatres and studios. Lahore is a cinema center as well but somehow no Punjabi has felt confident enough to suggest Punjabi as a medium for cinema”, remarked Mehra with a hint of remorse. “May be it is us, destined to serve our culture and introduce cinema to our language”, continued Mubarik. “Allright then, let me speak to the Seth and see what happens”, said Mehra getting up with a resolve.

The demands of Seth Karnani for agreeing to Mehra’s proposition were crisp and business savvy. He demanded a new production banner for the PunjabI experiment. Indra Movietone was thus created. He offered a meager amount to cover the production cost. There was no room for negotiation. He required the cast and crew to consist of his salaried staff. This was Mehra’s intention as well. “And do not 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?” asked the Seth scratching his bald head. “Noor Jehan”, replied an eager Mehra “surely she will feature in our movie”.

Weeks later sound stage 6 of Madan Theater’s studio was the setting of an off camera simple orchestra accompanying the young Noor Jehan who was made to stand on a stool to reach up to a microphone dangling out of the frame. She grips the song set in a faint Bageshri tonal structure and renders it plaintively at first without a hint of nervousness. Cajoled by the baton wielding Mubarik she quickens her tempo and barely manages to not miss a beat. From then on she is in full command, oblivious to the camera shooting her and the mike recording her. Just before the last ‘antra’, she breaks into an impromptu ‘alaap’ of ‘taans’ in a voice so well cultured and a throat so well chiseled that defied her age completely. A tremulous “OK” by KD Mehra sealed a moment in the cine history of the subcontinent.

Baby Noor Jehan had just recorded the first Punjab film song of the subcontinent for Sheila : Pind di Kudi, the first Punjab film of the sub continent. In doing so this damsel from Qasur had etched her name in the history of the language and lore of Punjab.

The trek of the ‘Punjab Mail’ to Calcutta was not without consequence.