When Nida Fazli wrote a 'ha ha, hee hee' song

An innocuous image of Nida Fazli saab stands out in my recollections of him. At the end of a long day's music session for my film, Sur, music director MM Kreem followed him to the door and extended an envelope towards him ' part payment for his work. Nida saab shoved it disdainfully into his kurta pocket and walked out into the street. The man who was a conjurer of sublime lyrics till a moment ago quickly merged into the crowds.That is Nida saab to me: a poet who was impatient with the whole matter of money and who yearned to dwell in the heart of the common man.
Nida saab's demise has left poetry lovers saddened. He was a poet's poet. Many an aspiring shayar began their initial learning with his books and lectures. One such young man told me that in Urdu literary circles Nida saab was considered a marvelous teacher, one who you remember long after graduation.
Yet, Nida saab's expression could be artfully simple, his songs easy to hum. In his writings, he would speak of the brutal truths of life and death but he could also come up with the line 'Haa haa, hee hee, hey hey, hu hu'. He wrote this for me, a mad, breathless song about a girl in the throes of infatuation in Sur. I remember bursting into laughter when he sang those words in his gravelly voice with a cheeky grin on his face, only half believing that he was serious. Here was this extremely thoughtful writer, thinker and scholar, and he had no problem embracing a schoolgirl's gibberish.
I also remember him sitting poker-faced through my lavish story narration for the film's best song, Aa bhi jaa. My arms flailing, I'd be gushing in anguished tones and he'd gazed out the window. I'd wonder if he was ruminating on some immortal line like 'Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahaan nahi milta' (the song from Ahista Ahista which went on to become an adage). I'd suspect that maybe writing songs for my film was a banal exercise for him. He would leave with pretty much the same deadpan look and then, a day or two later, he would call and announce, 'Haan ji! Likhiye!' I'd scramble around for a notepad and pen and he'd proceed to dictate the song to me on the phone ' lines like 'Main hun gagan, tu hai zameen, adhuri si mere bina,' which reflected so poignantly the egotistical music teacher of my story.
If I felt there were bits that could be improved or jiggled, he would flippantly say, 'Ok ji,' but would call the next day from the airport or some such place of transition and read out the rewritten words. 'Very nice, Nida saab,' I would begin appreciatively but he would have hung up, on his way to a mushaira or some discussion on the history of the ghazal, Kabir's couplets, art or politics.
He won an award for Sur. He never made it to the event. So, I accepted the trophy on his behalf. He never bothered to take it from me. Years later, when I called him for another project and asked if he wouldn't mind writing songs on a tiny budget, he simply asked where and when we could meet. And then he wrote some wonderful lines.
To me, a man like Nida Fazli represented the best of modern India. Secular to the core, he was an unwavering believer in equality. He was never patronizing and if in some corner of his heart, he felt that Bollywood wasn't high art, he never said it. To me, he was someone eager to participate in everything that was happening around him, in television and films, at debates and poetry recitals; he would travel anywhere he was invited.
The most unassuming of people I came across in the film industry, Nida saab was a true fakir, a wanderer, a seeker of experiences and kinship. He would've liked this haiku the 18th century Japanese poet, Banzan, wrote at his deathbed: Farewell/I pass as all things do/Dew on the grass.