“I was the youngest in the family - the eldest being Shashikant, while Bhai (Laxmikant) was about three years younger than him. The difference between Bhai and me was 12 years, so it was quite natural that both of them treated me like a daughter as much as a kid-sister. This is the reason why Bhai wanted that I be familiar with the arts but that I should not enter films. I learnt music and singing from Dasarath Poojary, the eminent musician, but Bhai encouraged me only when I presented programmes on stage.

“Being uneducated out of economic compulsions, both my brothers were keen that I get an education and Bhai especially insisted on this when he became a successful composer and we became financially well-off. When my SSC results were out, he distributed pedas in the entire film industry. After I entered college, he would not only insist on my wearing sarees but also want that I do not wear the flimsy or fashionable ones! He also considered me lucky because his earning phase and our slow economic upswing began after I was born in 1948.”

“For Bhai, education always meant a lot - he learnt to speak functional English through his associates and when he made a 10-minute speech in Singapore where L-P had staged a show and were felicitated, he came back and described it as the ‘greatest achievement of his life!’ He added proudly, ‘I did not read from any paper. I spoke what I felt!’

“This housing society (in Mumbai’s suburb of Vile Parle East) in which I reside now with my husband was called Pandurang Nivas. It was a chawl where our family stayed on the ground floor. Bhai had so much art and creativity within him that at the age of 8-9 years he had already become a musician in films. There was this story of how he was made to sit on a box over the piano at the studio so that the conductor and composer could see him!

“For Bhai, music was a sadhana or worship. He was into music 24/7. All along busy as a musician and later as a composer, Bhai would sit and do his 20 minutes of riyaaz on the mandolineven if he returned late in the night! He would explain that ‘Vidyechi sadhana’ (worship of the art) was a must.

“At the same time, he was such a loving soul that after we shifted to our first apartment in the nearby Sangam building and each of us had a room, he would first go to my mother’s room and check whether she was asleep, look into mine and even tuck me in and only then go to his room. At that point, our Pandurang Nivas premises was converted into the music room.

“There was an unusual quality in Bhai where the human being and successful composer came to a confluence. Whether it was V.Shantaram coming in to sign him for Jal Bin Machhli Nritya Bin Bijli, Raj Kapoor for Bobby, Manoj Kumar for Shor, Yash Chopra for Daag or anyone else big or small, all the producers had to meet our mother before he signed a film! For Bhai, there was no one bigger than mother. If she told him that he should drink just half a glass of water, there was no way Bhai would take a drop more than that!

“When he passed away, I was there by his side though he was in a coma. I could not believe it and even today, when 10 years have passed, I still do not believe it. He could not bear to see tears in my eyes and that was the only point on which he would sometimes speak back to our mother.

“Looking back, I realise that he had worked so hard - I remember Bhai and Pyarelal waiting all day below Anna (C.Ramachandra)’s music room at Dadar hoping that Anna would notice them and call them to work as musicians - and seen such spectacular success for such a long time as a composer that maybe he never learnt to graciously give in when it was time for others to take over. He took everything to heart precisely because he was a very nice soul and a complete kalaakaar, and did not have the vision and foresight to change tracks and occupy his time fruitfully with other things the way more logical people have done. Kalyanji-Anandji and Bappi Lahiri come to mind as examples of music directors who knew when times had changed and never let circumstances get the better of them.

“But as a music director, Bhai was incomparable. Laxmi-Pyare remain the only composers who made every kind of song. Whenever a song was recorded, which was almost every day, we would have a kind of family-and-friends gathering and would listen to the spool at his music room in the evening. Bhai was so much into music that in our house there were tape-recorders in every room, including in the bathroom and the toilet. Inspiration would strike him anywhere, and a recording machine had to be around!

“He had a fierce sense of self-respect, though. As the youngest and shortest musician at Rajkamal Studio, he would be teased as a boy by the cashier who shelled out the musicians’ wages after the recordings with a ‘What have you done to ask for money?’ Bhai would often feel indignant about this, and years later, when L-P signed Jal Bin Machhli Nritya Bin Bijli with Rajkamal’s owner, V.Shantaram, he made it a point to go there and ask the same cashier, ‘Aaj to nahin poonchoge na ki main yahaan kyoon aaya hoon?’

“Bhai had a great respect for Anna and his idol was composer Jaikishan - he loved his music, his style of dressing and was almost child-like in the way he imitated him in all this, considering himself lucky that he too had curly hair like Jaikishan. He was very fond of Pancham (R.D.Burman) who thus became like a brother to me too. Pancham would insist that I come to see him off at the airport whenever he went abroad. When Bhai composed the first song of Dosti and told me how he was looking for a musician to play a mouth-organ, I suggested Pancham’s name. He straightaway agreed, wondering how Pancham’s expertise had slipped his mind, and that’s how Pancham played for Dosti.

“Latabai helped Bhai and Pyarebhai a lot. I remember her, with her mother Mai, sister Meena and Hridaynath visiting us even in our humble, leaky home with silver thalis and sweetmeats on Bhai’s birthday on Laxmi Poojan day and spending the entire day with us. My mother was a fabulous cook and she would cook a great meal for them.

“As a music lover, I love innumerable L-P songs but my all-time favourite is Main na bhoolunga from Roti Kapada Aur Makaan. I asked Bhai how Pyare and he coordinated so perfectly in this and all other songs, and all he said was ‘It happens automatically!’ Today, I sincerely believe that Pyare, as the surviving half, must make efforts to keep L-P’s work in the spotlight, for it saddens me that Bhai’s music is not getting its real due.”

DR NIMISH SHUKLA
‘Compassion was his middle name!’

My family and that of Laxmikant were neighbours at Pandurang Nivas. The foremost quality in Laxmiji, apart from his musical genius, was that compassion and sympathy were his middle names. I recall how in the last years, when Laxmikant-Pyarelal were down, someone suggested a top singer for one of his songs. But Laxmiji said, ‘Let us call Munna (Mohammed Aziz, who had also fallen on bad times). Uss bechare ke paas kaam nahin hai !’ he said.

“There were of course so many occasions when Laxmiji and Pyarebhai would employ many more musicians than a song demanded. ‘Musicians ka ghar chalta hai,’ is all that Laxmiji would say about this.

“The biggest role in Laxmikant’s success was of his mother Anandibai’s. His father would lock Shashikant and Laxmikant in their house so that the two brothers could master their instruments, the mandolin and the dholak respectively. Needless to say, both became among the finest players in the country, for as a kid, I recall seeing how both the brothers’ hands would be bleeding after a riyaaz of 12-14 hours daily! Shashikant was the genius behind the beats of the dafli in Sargam and many other songs!

“Anandibai, a plump, cheerful woman with spectacles, would be out almost all day as a nurse. But she was an exemplary mother and besides being very popular and influential in the neighbourhood, she was probably the genetic source of Laxmiji’s kind nature - she never turned anyone away from her house, even when they were not well off. She would ensure that her sons got haldi milk to maintain their voices and later, when the brothers would return at 2 a.m., she would personally get up and make sure that they had a hot meal.

“There was a time when Laxmiji as a young boy of ten had fallen seriously ill and was at death’s door, so much so that they had even taken him home from the hospital as all hopes seemed lost. A sadhu came to their door and told Anandibai to light a diya. ‘If the diya remains till daybreak the next day, your son will survive aur usska duniya mein naam hoga!’ he had said. The prediction came true - and how!

“When Dosti became a hit, Laxmiji converted their room in the chawl into their music room (which remained so till Bobby) and shifted residence nearby. The day they won their first award, he threw a lavish party on the terrace of the new flat. I remember that party even now, and recall my parents staying that the happiest person that day was Anandibai.

“My friend Nishaad and I would always have unconditional access to Laxmiji’s music room as kids, even when top filmmakers, singers and stars like Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan were around! Laxmiji’s music room had an airconditioner, a rarity in 1964, and we would make sure we spent a long time there, just watching songs being created in that cool room!

Among the songs created in front of my eyes were Accha to hum chalte hai from Aan Milo Sajana and the songs of Haathi Mere Saathi, whose title-song recording was an event since producer Devar would be there in his lungi with a trademark black bag, nodding his head though he never understood Hindi, and those huge trumpets used in the song would arrive in taxis!

“Laxmiji would play cricket with us kids sometimes, but Anand Bakshi was a regular with us, for he would reach their music room before Laxmiji and Pyarebhai did. But Bakshiji would suddenly leave the game, go and sit on the stairs and start writing! Our families were so close that Laxmiji once stopped the music sessions only because he came to know that I was unwell and the music may disturb me. He resumed it the next day only after coming in and asking me how I was, but the day after that, I was back in their music room, with a bedsheet draped around me as protection from the airconditioner!

“When Laxmiji shifted to Parasmani, his Juhu bungalow, we lost touch for a while, though at every Ganpati Festival, the Ganesh idol would first come to Sangam where his elder brother now resided. The Ganpati festivities were a major event - I remember the long aartis and the prasad.

“But we were to meet again after some years - this time through Manoj Kumar. And Laxmiji was overjoyed to see that I, the kid he had known, was now a practising doctor and also taught Medicine. I became his physician too and in the last days had treated him. He had completely gone off alcohol for six months. Then one day, Manoj suggested that we go and meet Laxmiji on his birthday, and we found that he had begun to drink again. That day I had a sinking feeling in my heart, for I know that his end was near. To tell the terrible truth, Laxmiji killed himself!

“For me, the music of L-P is incomparable, my favourites being their songs with Manoj Kumar, Mukeshji and Subhash Ghai. The beats of Ek pyar ka naghma hai in Shor are truly unique and to me this composition and its lyrics epitomise the man that was Laxmiji, the genius that he was as composer as well as his music.