During the past two decades Pakistan has lost two of its "queens"- Malika-e-Mauseeqi Raushan Ara Begum and Malika-e-Tarranum Nur Jehan, who ruled over the hearts and emotions of the music-loving people. On February 4, 2004 died Malika Pukhraj, the queen of Pahari folk songs and perhaps the senior most female vocalist of Pakistan of repute, at the ripe age of 91.
All of them have left their indelible impress on the annals of our rich melodic culture.
Born in 1912 in village Hameerpur Sidhar, nine miles from Jammu in a family (in which music was given priority over other mundane pursuits) Malika Pukhraj began her singing career when she was only nine years old. She was taken to the gunyankahana of the Maharaja of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.
She was required to sing and dance in the Darbar (court) at the pleasure of the Dogra ruler. She remained in the employment of Maharaja Hari Singh for about ten years.
With the passage of time, she became a favourite of the philandering Maharaja thus provoking the jealousies of other courtiers. The late Sheikh Abdullah,, who betrayed the political aspirations of the Muslims of the State by thwarting its accession to Pakistan, on page 60 of his autobiography Aatish-e-Chinaar has made a pointed reference to Malika's ascendance to the coveted position in the court which, according to the Sheikh " won her wide publicity" Malika Pukhraj had to leave the court of Maharaja Hari Singh and the State in 1928 to escape the wrath of the ruler, which was triggered by a cobweb of intrigues and conspiracies woven against her by the jealous courtiers.
A rumour floated by her adversaries pointed to a conspiracy she allegedly had hatched with the collusive support of Cyril Wakefield, the British Resident in Srinagar (her first husband) to poison the Maharaja. She escaped at the risk of her life from Maharaja's court and succeeded in reaching the safety of Lahore, and Delhi, the capital of British Indian Empire. She pursued her musical career by regularly participating in music programmes of the then All India Radio. It was the era of such stalwarts as K.L. Saigol, Akhteribai Faizabadi, Benaraswali Rasoolan Bai and Afzal Husain of Nagina, with whom she rubbed shoulders on many occasions. She lived for a few years in Bombay from where in the late 1940s she produced a number of successful films, including Kajil, Sabaq and Dak Bungalow. After partition of the sub-continent, she returned to Lahore and lived there until the inexorable angel of death plucked her from our midst.
A lady with charming looks, she had a rich repertoire of thumris, dadras, ghazals and nazms but her forte remained Dogri Pahari geets of different hues and shades, which originated from the hilly areas of northern India, especially Jammu. In Lahore also she produced the film Shammi for which composer Master Inayat Husain recorded a couple of songs in her voice. A disciple of Ustad Ali Bakhsh Khan of Kasur, father of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, she also benefited from the melodic wisdom of Ustad Akhter Husain Khan of Patiala gharana.
Among her extremely popular songs were Abhi to mein jawan hoon, Allah bailooa ho, Yeh baatain teri yeh fasanay terey, Lo phir Basant ayee, and Tasken ko hum naan roain jo zoke-e-nazar milay. She adroitly employed her bass voice for the rendition of thumri-accented ghazals of classical and contemporary poets. Malika Pukhraj belonged to an era, a trend and a milieu in which music of the real kind flourished and its practitioners prospered.
It was the time of Nawabs and Maharajas, whose munificence helped professional musicians to carry on with their melodic pursuits without being bothered by their mundane needs.
Included in her life achievements were a large number of Pahari folk songs, which she collected from different mountainous regions and refined these with subtle variations in their melodic leitmotifs and sang with the confidence of a seasoned vocalist. She also tailored her voice to suit all kinds of light musical genres, which she demonstrated through radio programmes and the 78-rpm gramophone discs cut in the decade of the 1940s.
Malika Pukhraj chose different modes to satiate her creative urges. One of these, besides singing, was to make embroidered portraits and scenes on various lengths of cloth, which reflected her matured taste and competence in mixing different colours in a creatively pleasing manner.
Since time immemorial people always like to sing. Even in the days before books were published, people made tune and put words on them. Their friends listened and sometimes tried to learn them by heart so that they could pass these on others to enjoy. As people repeated them, they often changed those songs so that they would sound a little better to the new hearers. The new listeners went away and look for friends to hear them, who in turn tried to make them sound better.
After these songs had been changed many a time, the first singer had already been forgotten. It could not be truly said that any of the songs had come from the mind of any one person. Nearly all the people, from whom these songs came, had contributed something towards their refinement. These songs were known as folk songs. The people have a real joy in making additions to the old songs. It is as natural for them to do so as it is for the bubbles to rise in the pure water of a mountain spring. Malika Pukhraj, in following this tradition, refurbished many folk songs through a process of creative improvisation.
I met her only on a few occasions - once at the American Center, Lahore, which she visited in the late 1960s to inquire about Western music, which she desired to practice before visiting the United States. Later, I was a co-participant with her at a seminar sponsored by the Director of Pakistan National Centre, Lahore, where she reminisced about the cultural vivacity of the senior denizens of Lahore. I heard her speaking at a 'seminar' organized by the All Pakistan Music Conference at Alhamra a few years ago, where the intrepid artiste as she was vigorously defended the traditional varieties of our music.
A votary of traditional varieties of our music, the late Malika made a passionate plea for taking urgent remedial steps, which would prevent our rich melodic heritage from fading away into historical oblivion. Emphasizing the impact of good quality music, which makes an individual a tolerant member of society, she high-pitched the three basic ingredients of ghazal-singing - tuneful voice, good composition and proper enunciation (and understanding) of the contents of the ghazals selected by an artiste for vocalization.
Some of Malika's folk songs and ghazals became memorable milestones in the world of entertainment in her lifetime and far outlived the composers and producers of these for the radio and gramophone discs. The haunting strains of her chart-bursting songs of the 1940s met with tumultuous response from music buffs, which helped in carrying her name to every nook and cranny of the Sub-continent.
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