O. P. Nayyar

From music to miracles

Among the numerous achievement profiles of the entertainment industry in its hundred years’ span is the heart-warming story of OP Nayyar, widely known as the Rhythm King of film music. A compilation of tributes to the maestro released recently at the hands of the maestro’s idol, Bal Thackeray, reveals a life sketch that is as interesting as it is inspiring...

Believe me, I am not bitter about anybody or anything of the past. Whatever happened had to happen. I’ve been purified by an invisible fire and I am happy and contented with myself today. If my capacity to heal and cure with my medicines is God’s gift, so was the music I made and the success and good life I enjoyed ...

At present involved deeply in performing his karma, as OP Nayyar himself simply puts it, the handsome, elegantly attired music wizard is performing miracles with his homeopathic medicines at Thane, Mumbai. Ailing, suffering patients are sent to him when allopathy and ayurveda have failed to work wonders and Nayyar’s remedies work miraculously on them. How come?

“I have been blessed by my guru,” says Nayyar humbly. “God has led me from one field where He blessed me with incredible success to another field where once again He is standing by my side to give me success and this time I am experiencing an indescribable sense of fulfilment because what I am doing now is service to humanity.

“I had no formal training in music when I set out to score music for films. All I knew was that I had to do it. There was a hidden spring inside me, a treasure house of melody and rhythm somwhere deep inside me and I knew I had to draw from it and give it to the world for the happiness of those who cared to listen to my music. It was as if an unseen force was pushing me towards a destined goal.

So, at seventeen I was composing music. Wasn’t that miraculous?” he asks with a twinkle in his eyes.

Sure it was. But his homeopathy, that can’t be an untutored skill?

“No of course, not. I had some serious health problems when I was a composer and I used to be in a lot of pain and discomfort just when I needed to concentrate and give my best. It was terrible and frustrating. I tried all sorts of medicine. Then one day Asha Bhonsle and Sudhir Phadke took me to Dr SR Pathak the celebrated homeopath. He cured me and I prostrated at his feet and pleaded with him to teach me the science that worked so miraculously on me. He became my guru. I studied relentlessly little knowing then that the course of my life would alter and homeopathy would become my passion and obsession and the vehicle for my atonement.”

Thirty years of committed and diligent study and work in the field of homeopathic medicine have given a new life to the celebrated maestro who now spends his waking hours alleviating the sufferings of chronically ill rich and poor patients who knock at his door when all doors have been shut on them. There are stories of his miraculous cure of crippled arthritic patients, of mentally ill and incurably deppressive patients, of heart and kidney affected patients and so on in Thane, the suburb where he lives quietly with the loving Nakhwe family which he describes as “the family gifted to me by the almighty to share the glory of my second innings in this world.”

Appointments are given by Rani Nakhwa, the charming daughter of the Nakhwas who is being trained by Nayyar to take over from him someday “when memory fails me or I am incapacitated in some way, God forbid. My medicines are keeping me going but we are all mortals. We cannot expect too much goodness from Him. besides we have to live the life destined for us, atone for our sins, some known, a lot unknown that we have brought with us into this life and reap the good we have sown in this life and before. So who can predict tomorrow?

“When my patients find relief and cure in my medicines, they join their hands and touch my feet and that is the moment when the greatness of God and the mystery of Providence repeatedly manifest before me. I ask myself what have I done that they should touch my feet and shed tears of gratitude. It is not me or my medicines. It is His grace, His will. He sent them to me to be cured when all else had failed because they appealed to Him and He wished then to cure them through me.”

The spiritual and philosophical turn in Nayyar’s life occurred when he found himself abandoned by his family and so called friends in the industry sometime in the late Seventies. His controversial, much-discussed split with Asha Bhonsle had left him sad and disillusioned. The proud spirit in him that had emboldened him to create melody that did not require Lata Mangeshkar’s priceless voice to give it immortality had all but perished in the tempest that hit his soul when the voice he adored and which he cradled and nourished to become almost a parallel to Lata’s simply swirled out of his music room one day.

He was alone for the first time in his life and he knew the time had arrived for an upheaval within himself. His instinct and his knowledge of astrology had prepared him somewhat for this testing phase.

“Alongside my diligent study and practice of homeopathy I began to read voraciously the books of knowledge and wisdom written by spiritual gurus and I felt a new person emerging from within me.

“Believe me, I am not bitter about anybody or anything of the past. Whatever happened had to happen. I’ve been purified by an invisible fire and I am happy and contented with myself today. If my capacity to heal and cure with my medicines is God’s gift, so was the music I made and the success and good life I enjoyed,” says Nayyar.

On January 16, 2000, he will turn seventy-five. A landmark in a chequered life. From Dalsukh Pancholi’s Aasman in 1952 to Pranlal Mehta’s Zid in 1993 his professional life in the motion picture industry was marked by achievements that had only a few parallels. In the Vishwas Nerurkar compilation, Raju Bharatan, the well-known music critic, writes thus: “As OP Nayyar finally broke through with Aar Paar (1954) via Geeta Roy, Guru Dutt and Mohammad Rafi, all hell broke loose. Topmost music directors ganged up to block Nayyar’s recordings. For here was a break away music director who had ventured to bring the already written-off Shamshad Begum back through Kabbi aar kabhi paar laaga teer-e-nazar...”

Nerurkar’s compilation has insightful pieces including one by Asha Bhonsle. The carefully written piece which does not betray her personal admiration of the maestro — she used to wear a gold chain with a pendant enshrining his photograph — pays ample tribute to the composer who gave her voice much of its versatility through his compositions tailored to bring out the hidden depths in her vocal strings that other composers couldn’t touch. Describing a recording under his baton in the sixties where she thought she had failed to live up to his expectations, she says:

“I was depressed beyond words, even with thoughts that after this failure I would never be able to sing again. Nayyarsaab gave me a lot of encouragement. He said. There is no singer like you and I am telling you this that you will sing for a very long while. My self confidence grew, my keenness to sing came back. At a time of crisis Nayyarsaab stood by me and gave me immense support and mental strength.”

Nayyar has vowed not to compose music ever again. “I cannot compose what is in vogue today. Film music doesn’t require an OP Nayyar today because there is no demand for individuality and originality,” he says genially.

In the one room that is his at Thane, Nayyar lives in dignity maintaining his old life style. He still drinks only Scotch whisky and the Nakhwa family fondly serve him food of his choice. His silk lungis, suits and informal wear are classier than what passes as exclusive wardrobe in filmdom today. And the telephone still rings incessantly. Not for Nayyar, the maestro, but for Nayyar, the miracle medicine man..

And who knows, there may yet be another turn in store for this man of destiny.

UTN