Beat your Monday blues with ‘Hum aur tum tum aur hum’ – t2ONLINE

Hum aur tum tum aur hum by Kishore Kumar and Lata MangeshkarFor decades, lovers in Bollywood have had their most intimate conversations through songs, and no one has batted an eyelid. Willing suspension of disbelief is easy when the duets often seem to echo what real-life lovers would like to say to each other.Hum aur tum tum aur hum from the 1973 film Daag: A Poem of Love, sings of the joy of finding someone to be with. Director Yash Chopra had left his elder brother B.R. Chopra’s shadow to set up his own film company — Yash Raj Films — and had a lot to prove with Daag, the first offering from his fledgling production house. But Yash didn’t play safe. The subject wasn’t for the lily-livered: The hero was an unwitting murderer and bigamist.Yash chose the hugely popular Laxmikant-Pyarelal to score the music for his film and his friend Sahir Ludhianvi to write the lyrics.Bollywood has thousands of duets, each with its own take on love — passionate, playful, coy, arch, melancholy. This one has a carpe diem vibe as it celebrates togetherness.For it, Sahir wrote: Hum aur tum tum aur hum/ Khush hain yu aaj milke/ Jaise kisi sangam par/ Mil jaye do nadiyan/ Tanha behte behte…With these simple words, Sahir brought to life that dopamine rush that comes from knowing you are not lonely anymore.By the early ’70s, a duet was a walk in the park for both Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. These legends could speak with each other musically, perfectly in sync and sur, capturing that liminal space between the intimacy and the amplified nature of a film song.Singing this number for Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore, they do more. Moods shift in this duet from playfulness to softness. Kishore and Lata never miss a beat.From the opening riffs of the guitar, L-P’s treatment of this duet stands out. Usually, their orchestrations roared on an epic scale. Here, the orchestration was pithy, the strings and beats creating rhythmic variations geared to make the song seem like a two-way conversation. The first interlude is uniquely different from the second. Notice the pauses that create a sense of wonder.Perhaps the soul of the film’s music is two decades-old friendships.Laxmikant Shantaram Kudalkar and Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma, who met in their struggling teens and bonded over music and cricket, stayed friends and musical collaborators till Laxmikant passed away in 1998.Sahir’s friendship with Yash predates the latter’s debut, Dhool ka Phool (1959), for which Sahir wrote the astounding Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega, insaan ki aulaad hai, insaan banega. When Yash created his banner, Sahir was right there. Till Sahir’s death in 1980, he wrote the lyrics for every film Yash made, including Kabhi Kabhie.In Akshay Manwani’s book, Sahir Ludhianvi, The People’s Poet, Yash recalls how, as a college student in Jalandhar, he’d read Sahir’s poems and become a fan. When Yash came to Bombay (now Mumbai) to visit his brother, already established in the movie industry, the first filmwallah he wanted to meet wasn’t any hero. It was Sahir.Magic moments like these make enduring music.Write your commentsSubmit