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Kidar Sharma was born in Narowal - Punjab (Present day Pakistan) in 1909.


By Khalid Hasan


Memorable Films
(as Director)
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Pre-Partition India
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Chitralekha (1941)
Armaan (1942)
Gauri (1943)
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Post-Partition India
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Neel Kamal (1947)
Suhag Raat (1948)
Jogan (1950)
Chitralekha (1964)

          Narowal, a place nobody in Lahore knows the exact whereabouts of, produced Chaudhry Anwar Aziz whose great genius for politics and deal making now finds fulfillment in his son Danyal Aziz. “Danny” was once number two to the un-doer of Pakistan's administrative cohesion and is now number one in the same outfit, which may be a good thing as he can perhaps make up for what he helped get done in the first place.
     And, of course, Narowal produced Faiz Ahmed Faiz, his village of Kala Qadir being in the Narowal area. Though Faiz went to school in Sialkot as that was where his father had his law practice, he never lost his Narowal moorings. Barely days before his death, on what surely was a premonition, he went to his village and distributed the land that he still had there to the peasants who had cultivated it.
     The Punjabi poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi who died three years short of his fiftieth birthday and who has left behind a body of work of haunting intensity and lyricism, was born in a village in the Shakargarh tehsil, not too far from Narowal.
     Yet another remarkable son of Narowal - and one who is totally unremembered in that town or for that matter in Pakistan itself - was the great film director and Indian film industry literary genius, Kidar Sharma, who died in Bombay in April 1999. His death went unnoticed in Pakistan, except perhaps by those like Sheikh Hafizur Rehman in Islamabad who can still hum nearly the entire score from the Kidar Sharma classic Chitralekha, made in 1941. All twelve of the songs, most of them in the lovely and haunting voice of Ram Dulari, were set to music by Ustad Jhande Khan, who belonged to Gujranwala, in the raga `Bhairvi'.
     Kidar Sharma was born in Narowal in 1909. He went to school in Amritsar but Narowal remained home. In 1964 when my friend Akhtar Mirza met him in Bombay, Sharma talked nostalgically about Narowal and of having gone to Murray College. He told Mirza that when Narowal was connected by rail to Sialkot, there was a doggerel from that time that he remembered: ` Gaddi aayi, gaddi aayi Narowal di. Babay di pug wichh ugg baldi'. After partition, he never returned to the town where he was born and had played as a boy. In 1932 he was married, the baraat going all the way to Bannu.
     Kidar Sharma was in his early 20s when he saw Debki Bose's Puran Bhagat which inspired him, making him run off to Calcutta from Amritsar. He recalled in a memoir, “I had nothing to recommend me. My voice was horrible and my face was average. My health was poor and my purse empty and there was nobody to help me. Only my sense of humor and my faith in God goaded me on to continue the struggle.” Of Debki Bose, he wrote, “He expressed his ideas through symbolism. He was the greatest moviemaker. Even today no one can match his subtlety and mastery. He was the supreme guru and all subsequent directors have learned a thing or two from him.” Kidar Sharma did not have the train fare to Calcutta but his wife produced the money that she had saved. It was just Rs. 25.
     His first job was as assistant painter at the city's Madan Theatres but he lost it after two months. Both Prithviraj, Raj Kapoor's father, and K.L. Saigal were in Calcutta working for New Theatres. Kidar Sharma first went to see Prithviraj and asked him to help a “Punjabi brother” by introducing him to Debki Bose. Prithviraj sent him to Saigal who introduced him to Durga Khote who was playing the lead in the new Bose film. She introduced him to Bose who was charmed by his wit and hired him as his still cameraman (Kidar Sharma had a Brownie camera and could take good pictures) for the director's new film Seeta. In Calcutta he also met the blind singer K.C. Dey (Manna Dey's uncle), legendary music director R.C. Boral, the great character actor Nawab Kashmiri and the singer Pahari Sanyal, both of them from Lucknow.
      Kidar Sharma, who was a fine Urdu poet, was asked to write the dialogue and lyrics for Devdas, an assignment he got because of his friend Saigal who was playing the lead. The great Saigal classics from that movie Dukh ke ab din beetat nahin and Balam ayo basso mere mun mein are Kidar Sharma's work. The cameraman was Bimal Roy who became one of Indian cinema's greatest directors, and who cast Dilip Kumar as Devdas in the movie's remake. Kidar Sharma wrote five songs for Saigal for which he was paid a total of Rs 25. They included such unforgettables as Sunno sunno jay Krishan kala and Panchhi kahe hoa't uddas. He also wrote the ghazal Shama ka jalna hai ya sozish'e-parwana hai for Saigal and the evergreen Saigal hit Mein kya janoon kya jaddo hai. And the hauntingly beautiful lullaby, immortalized by Saigal, So ja rajkumati so ja as well as the great Kanan Bala song Moray angana mein aye aali, mein chaal chaloon matwali.
     After an argument with the director Nitin Bose, Kidar Sharma left New Theatres, as did his friend Prithviraj in sympathy. Both moved to Bombay. His first film as director in Bombay was Aulad, starring Gyani and the lovely Romola. Gyani later played the lead in Chitralekha opposite the doe-eyed Mehtab who married Sohrab Modi, the great dramatic actor and director. Kidar Sharma gave Raj Kapoor and Madhubala, then known as Baby Mumtaz, their first break by casting them in the movie Neel Kamal. It was also he who cast the teenager Geeta Bali in Sohag Raat, thus launching a career that ended prematurely due to her tragic early death. He also cast Nargis against Dilip in Jogan, which Nargis always considered her best film.
     Kidar Sharma's parents escaped from Narowal in 1947 but before they left, his mother cleaned the house thoroughly so that the next occupants should not think that those who had lived there were negligent, and his father put his picture on the wall so that they should know whose house it was.
     Jawaharlal Nehru who was a great admirer of Urdu and Urdu poetry (he once said he listened to Radio Pakistan for news as he could not understand a word broadcast by All India Radio) was so struck by a Kidar Sharma song that he sent for him. According to Kidar Sharma's memoirs, Mir Tariq Mir was Nehru's favorite poet. The Sharma lines that had entranced Panditji were from a Sohag Raat song: Aankhoon mein aankhain daal toonay mujhko kya pilaya: Jiss taray par nazar parri, wo tara larrkharraya.
     If anyone still cares about such things, they should put a memorial plaque on the house in Narowal where Kidar Sharma was born. Here then is something for Danyal Aziz to do. It may even win him both salvation and forgiveness for what he and Gen. Naqvi did to us.