TLI Staff
India’s partition in 1947 left deep scars in the minds of the people. Legendary ghazal maestro Mehdi Hassan was among those who pined for the soil of birth after the partition of India.
A new book has brought spotlight on the heart breaks of the people due to India’s Partition. “Legendary ghazal maestro Mehdi Hassan was born in the village of Luna, a tiny dust-laden hamlet of the predominantly Qaimkhani Muslim community in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan,” writes Author Anil Maheshwari in his book – Compulsive Nose-Picking And Other True Tales.
He also shares that the family of the Ghazal maestro had migrated to Basti in Uttar Pradesh for their livelihood earlier.
“He visited India in 1980 as a state guest, and his itinerary included a few days at Luna, his ancestral village of about 1,500 inhabitants. He was visiting his childhood home after three decades,” wrote Maheshwari in the book.
Gazing at the dunes of Luna, Mehdi Hassan spotted a small temple at the fringes of the village, wrote the author, adding: “He stopped the car and jumped out and wallowed in the sand like a child. Tears welled up in his eyes. He was ecstatic about returning to the land of dunes.”
“The Gazal maestro was overcome by nostalgia—a curious mix of joy and sorrow—and looking at his puzzled son, he said, ‘This is my land, son. This is where I used to roll among the sand dunes, wrestling and grappling with my fellow village mates. And this is where music first came to me,” wrote the author recalling the words of the Ghazal maestro.
In Mehdi Hassan’s honour, the district administration had organised a grand dinner which the musician happily skipped, adds the author.
Maheshwari shares that veteran journalist Ish Madhu Talwar, who was covering this visit, found him sitting cross-legged on a dirt floor in his country cousin’s home, relishing freshly baked bajra (pearl millet) rotis and homemade chutney.
“Although Mehdi Hassan had been provided accommodation at the state guest house, he preferred to lay on a cot on the dunes. His association with Luna came from his family’s musical heritage dating back fifteen generations in this village,” added Maheshwari.
He further writes in the book that partition had torn them apart, but as the locals said, Mehdi means ‘the guided one’, and true to his name, “Mehdi Hassan had come back to his land, much like Imam Mahdi, a messiah figure, who is believed to return to earth before Christ’s second coming.”
Maheshwari says that Mehdi still lives on in the village of his childhood, where music flows in the air, in every drop of water, just like his ghazals, with an amalgamation of the fragrance of the desert sands, the sweetness of the notes and the salinity of the poetry.
Ashok Malik, the former press secretary to the President, in the foreword for the book, has mentioned that Maheshwari has brought several accounts from the lives of the people while also spotlighting the humour.