For many, Pancham was Nalanda; for others, an IIT or an IIM
RD Burman neither followed the path of his father, SD Burman, nor that of other established greats. He carved out a fresh, uninhibited musical trail for himself
Shubham Upadhyaya
You could easily call Rahul Dev Burman the Gulzar of the musical world. Not just because decades before Vishal Bhardwaj, Pancham and Gulzar epitomized the ultimate duet of a meaningful lyricist and an experimental composer, but because within Pancham the musician, there always lived a Gulzar.
Just as Gulzar altered the grammar of film lyrics, discovered new imagery, and shifted the audience’s sensibilities with his pen, RD Burman did the exact same for Hindi film music. He didn’t just step out of the shadow of his father, SD Burman; he also steered clear of the established tracks laid down by composers like Salil Chowdhury, Naushad, Kalyanji-Anandji, and Shankar-Jaikishan. He chose an entirely new, uninhibited path of experimentation.
Credit for the success of Pancham Da’s music is also given to the superstar of that era, Rajesh Khanna, who popularized the songs by lip-syncing them in his signature style. Yet, he could perhaps only do so because RD’s music afforded him that creative freedom. Shunning the addiction of purely commercial success throughout his long career, Pancham did not just alter the temperament of Hindi film music; he subtly transformed the cinema and its audience as well. Through continuous, fresh experiments, he constantly hooked the audience to entirely new flavors of music.
While the music directors who followed him often overindulged in Western influences, Pancham remained that rare, distinct composer who never let the Western elements disrupt the balance of the melody beloved by Indians. One can easily divide Hindi film music into two eras: before RD and after RD. Listening to just a few songs from either period makes the transformation—from song structure to melodies—instantly recognizable.
Pancham’s initial training in music took place under the watchful eye of his father, rooted in the classical Hindustani music that defined SD Burman’s temperament. Yet, his inclination always leaned toward Western music. He deeply listened to foreign musicians of his time who mastered various genres of Western music. From rock bands to jazz, Latin, Spanish, and the music of any land that could reach India—Pancham studied it all with profound depth.
Several anecdotes circulate about how Rahul Dev Burman earned the moniker ‘Pancham’. Some believe that as an infant, he cried in several different notes, prompting his family to call him Pancham! Others say that when Ashok Kumar heard him repeatedly saying ‘Pa’ as a child, he named him Pancham. However, Manna Dey recalled asking SD Burman about it, who replied, “When he cried at birth, he cried in the fifth note (Pancham), which is ‘Pa’. So, I named him Pancham.”
Pancham began his film career as an assistant to his father. He practiced the tabla and vocal modulations under Pandit Brajen Biswas and learned the sarod from Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. He was also an exceptional mouth organ player; the iconic mouth organ piece in ‘Hai Apna Dil To Awara’ (picturized on Dev Anand and sung by Hemant Kumar) was played by him. At that point, he hadn’t yet become an assistant to the father who would not only provide the bedrock for his music, but in whose studio the very foundation of his personal life would also be laid. Pancham’s first meeting with his second wife, Asha Bhosle, happened during one of his father’s music sittings in 1953, when Asha came to the studio to record a song for the film ‘Armaan’. It was there that SD first introduced Asha to a remarkably thin and school-going Pancham.
Pancham never passed his matriculation exams; he left his studies behind to immerse himself entirely in the music. His second meeting with Asha took place in 1957 during the making of ‘Nau Do Gyarah’, which featured SD’s music. Asha had come to the studio to rehearse, and there she saw Pancham for the second time, sitting on the floor, playing an instrument. A few years later, in 1966, Pancham married Rita Patel, but the marriage lasted only until 1971. The reason was his overwhelming preoccupation with films. The girl who had married him out of admiration for his music ultimately left him because of his total obsession with that very music.
After years of growing closer, Pancham and Asha Bhosle chose each other as life partners in 1980. Though their personal duet could not sustain each other until the very end, their musical partnership became immortal. They complemented each other so beautifully that Asha went on to sing more than 800 film songs for Pancham.
The serendipitous twist of fate that transformed him from his father’s musical assistant into an independent music director walked right up to Pancham within the very walls of SD’s studio itself. Mehmood had visited the studio to rope in SD for his film ‘Chhote Nawab’. However, after seeing Pancham play the tabla (and since SD had declined the film), Mehmood signed Pancham on the spot. With the song ‘Matwali Ankhon Wale’ from his 1961 debut film, he began unleashing his Western-infused musical flair. Yet, the same film contained ‘Ghar Aaja Ghir Aaye Badra’ in Lata Mangeshkar’s voice—a pure Hindustani classical track that showcased an uncompromising grip on melody. Listening to this, one can understand just how profound a grasp of music this composer possessed even during his very first film—long before he would go on to create wonders in the years to come.
There has always been a debate over whether SD composed songs for Pancham or if Pancham completed SD’s tracks when he was unwell. Some in the industry believe there are several songs where Pancham composed the mukhda (opening lines) and SD finished the rest, and vice versa. Many anecdotes clearly state that several of SD’s massive hits were originally composed by RD, even though he only took credit as an assistant. Songs like ‘Gaata Rahe Mera Dil’ from Guide and ‘Kora Kagaz’ from Aradhana credit SD Burman as the composer, but their melodies were crafted by Pancham.
Pancham often found it challenging to set Gulzar’s lyrics to a tune. Gulzar’s style of writing did not conform to traditional poetic meters, and stories from Pancham’s associates reveal that he always had to put in extra effort to compose for Gulzar. The famous anecdote surrounding the song ‘Mera Kuch Saamaan’ is now legendary: when Gulzar brought him the lyrics, an exasperated Pancham snapped, saying that tomorrow he might bring a copy of The Times of India and ask him to tune that as well! Later, in tandem with Asha Bhosle, Pancham composed that immortal song in just ten to fifteen minutes.
Whether it is Ijaazat, Aandhi, Parichay, Kitaab, Kinara, Masoom, or Dil Padosi Hai—the songs born from the collaboration of Gulzar and Pancham will remain timeless. They also stand as a testament to a friendship forged between a lyricist and a composer that lasted until the end. This is evident not just in the nazms (poems) Gulzar wrote about Pancham, but also in the way Gulzar’s eyes well up with tears every single time Pancham’s name comes up.
For many, Pancham Da was the Nalanda of music; for others, an IIT or an IIM. He was an academy in himself, a school from which not only his immediate successors and the generation that followed (Bappi Lahiri, Anu Malik) learned, but even highly successful modern composers like Vishal-Shekhar, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Shantanu Moitra, and Vishal Bhardwaj continue to draw deep inspiration from his melodies. Even in Amit Trivedi’s music, Pancham’s footprint is unmistakably visible. Sujoy Ghosh’s vibrant debut film, Jhankaar Beats, was an outright tribute to this very ‘Boss’ of music. Coming across Pancham in that film still warms the heart—”Do you know who the Boss was?”
Pancham also experimented extensively with his own voice and unconventional instruments, generating a distinct soundscape never heard before in Hindi cinema. Think of the song ‘Duniya Mein Logon Ko’ from the Rajesh Khanna-starrer Apna Desh. The first things that come to mind are the astonishing breath control in the “Haha..ha..hahaha” and the raspy, high-pitched “Tara tara tara tara tara”. Just as a later generation was left spellbound by AR Rahman’s early tracks, listeners of Pancham’s era were filled with disbelief. They wondered how a composer could craft a song where the brilliance emerged not from traditional vocals or standard instruments, but from a bizarre play of breath and vocal textures.
Such unique experiments were a regular feature of RD Burman’s music. He ran a gurgling female voice through a sound processor to churn out the chilling entry theme for Amitabh Bachchan’s alter-ego in Satte Pe Satta. Sometimes he scraped two pieces of sandpaper together, and at other times, he ran a small comb over a surface to generate rhythm. Sneha Khanwalkar fascinated us much later by discovering raw sounds in her show Sound Tripping, but Pancham was doing this decades ahead of his time. He would sit through the night recording falling rain or the chirping of crickets. He blew into empty glass bottles to craft the background track for ‘Mehbooba Mehbooba’ in Sholay, and once even tapped on an assistant’s bare back to extract an entirely unique resonance from a dholak.
Yet, a composer so consumed by his passion could not escape the vortex of failure. Post-1985, a phase began in his life that no artist should have to endure, but one that inevitably visits everyone in an industry known for saluting only the rising sun. When your work stops hitting the mark, and the setting sun is left to walk alone. RD spent a long time in isolation as friends and industry well-wishers drifted away.
This composer, considered a certified hitmaker until 1985, saw the music of his next 27 films fail commercially, and this string of failures broke him deeply. Although the soundtracks of films from this period like Ijaazat, Parinda, Gardish, and Libaas were hailed in subsequent years as anywhere from exceptional to masterpieces, the man everyone calls a genius today was deeply marginalized and humiliated in his final days. Subhash Ghai signed him for Ram Lakhan (1989), only to abruptly replace him with Laxmikant-Pyarelal one day without even bothering to inform Pancham directly. Pancham, who had suffered a heart attack in 1988, reportedly remarked after the Ram Lakhan incident: “Just because I went away for a bypass surgery, he bypassed me entirely.”
This deeply humiliating blow wounded Pancham profoundly. He could neither come to terms with it nor recover from the betrayal of a close assistant. Many film personalities remember him in his final days as a melancholic and desperately lonely man, with some attributing his fatal heart attack to this deep sense of isolation and depression.
But rare are those who answer all their failures and humiliations solely through their work. RD Burman delivered exactly that kind of resounding reply to the world with his final film album. As the story goes, director Vidhu Vinod Chopra was adamant about hiring RD Burman for his 1994 film 1942: A Love Story, but the music label that bought the rights resisted having a “faded star” score the film. Vidhu refused to back down—as he seldom does. 1942: A Love Story did not just gift listeners immortal, romance-drenched anthems penned by Javed Akhtar; it also earned RD Burman his third Filmfare Award for Best Music Director—a career spanning from the 1960s to the 1980s where he had won it only twice before. It came posthumously.
A song written by Javed Akhtar for someone else felt as though it was destined for him—
“Jaate jaate wo mujhe achhi nishani de gaya,
Umr bhar dohraunga aisi kahani de gaya.”
(In leaving, he left me a beautiful token;
he gave me a story I will repeat for a lifetime.)
(To understand Pancham Da better and faster, do watch Brahmanand Singh’s two documentaries: ‘Knowing Pancham’ and ‘Pancham Unmixed’. Our own horizon of information expanded through them, as did this article.)
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