Composer Vanraj Bhatia, who scored Tamas, Manthan, passes away

ONE OF filmmaker Shyam Benegal’s most interesting works from the 80s, Bharat Ek Khoj, the majestic adaptation of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India, opened each Sunday on Doordarshan with Rig Veda chants set to digital music — with synths and drums making a voltaic internet. It was an odd mixture that in some way labored. At the helm of affairs was composer Vanraj Bhatia.
“His ideas were extremely original and he wouldn’t imitate anyone,” says Benegal, most of whose tasks had Bhatia on the helm. Be it Ankur, Manthan, Bhoomika, Mandi, Sardari Begum, Bharat Ek Khoj or his ads — Benegal’s each venture got here with music from Bhatia. “When I look back at the music he made for my films, I think it was quite extraordinary,” he says.
A number one Indian composer of western music, who additionally composed for Indian cinema and tv, Bhatia handed away in Mumbai on Friday. He was 93 and was affected by age-related well being issues.
Benegal’s Manthan (Churning) — his important movie set in opposition to the backdrop of Varghese Kurian’s Operation Flood that was a lesson in rural empowerment, caste, gender and privilege – opened with singer Preeti Sagar crooning Mero gaam katha parey together with daflis, dholak and a bunch of ektaras. “It remains one of my best songs,” says Sagar, who gained the National Award for Best Female Singer that yr.
The track was composed in 1976, nevertheless it stored discovering an viewers as Amul continued to make use of it. “I have never known anyone with the sense of musicality that he had and how he could immediately get under the skin of anything — the cosmopolitan character of the city– the Gujarati side, the Maharashtrian side, the South Indian side. Be it Hindustani or western or a unique combination of both, he made it work,” says Benegal, who provides that there wasn’t a single assembly the place the 2 didn’t squabble. “But we were able to speak the same language.”
Bhatia grew up in a Kuchhi enterprise household in Mumbai, which had nothing to do with music. He realized Hindustani classical music as a baby. But it was a Tchaikovsky composition enjoying at his shut buddy Jehangir Sabavala’s dwelling that made him fall in love with western classical music as an adolescent. He fought together with his household to check music at Royal College of Music in London adopted by coaching underneath the legendary French composer and instructor Nadia Boulanger, whose different college students have been American composer Phillip Glass, American composer and musician Quincy Jones and avante garde Russian composer Igor Markevitch. He stays the one Indian pupil she ever had.
Bhatia returned to India armed with a wealth of information of western classical music and a base in Hindustani classical music. He labored as the top of Music Department at Delhi University for a number of years after which returned to Mumbai to work in promoting.
The world of promoting was not as conformist as that of Indian cinema, the place administrators got here with pre-conceived notions, one thing that by no means suited Bhatia. Although his ambition was to jot down music for fashionable movies, he wasn’t fairly succeeding in that. So other than nearly 7,000 jingles — together with Liril, Thumbs Up and Dulux amongst others and a few movie tasks from the marquee of parallel cinema akin to Sooraj ka Saatvaan Ghoda, Jane Bhi Do Yaaron and 36 Chowrangee Lane amongst others, he composed for a lot of TV exhibits — akin to Waaghle Ki Duniya and Banegi Apni Baat. There have been out and out classical compositions like Raah mein bichhi hain and Ghir ghir aaye badariya in Sardari Begum and out and out fashionable disco items akin to What’s your drawback by Sagar in Kalyug.
But it was Tamas — Govind Nihalani’s gut-wrenching adaptation of Bhisham Sahani’s highly effective work of the identical title showcasing the saga of separation throughout Partition – that bought him some recognition and a National Award. He was additionally awarded Padma Shri in 2012.
Bhatia beloved working with orchestras and would particularly write for every part as a result of his information of concord was extraordinary. In 2019, when a number of Grammy-winning American cellist Yo-Yo Ma carried out at NCPA in Mumbai, he chosen two of Bhatia’s items for his encore. Bhatia’s buddy and musician Zubin Balaporia was current within the viewers. “It was a celebratory occasion for a great Indian composer. But I always felt that he didn’t get his due. He deserved so much more,” says Balaporia.
Just a few months in the past, composer Ehsaan Noorani had additionally requested monetary help for Bhatia, who, in direction of the tip, was brief on cash. But he awoke each day and wrote music. He accomplished his magnum opus — an opera named Agnivarsha – earlier than he handed.
“He found himself strangely enough in a place where he wouldn’t have flowered. But he loved living in Mumbai. I wonder about the success of Vanraj Bhatia if he wasn’t in India and had embraced the west,” says Benegal.