A tribute to lyricist Maya Govind

Maya Govind’s passing recently has rekindled the debate on the very limited presence of female son

Maya Govind’s passing recently has rekindled the debate on the very limited presence of female songwriters in the film industry. The multi-faceted Maya excelled in theatre and dance, but eventually found her calling in poetry.

Old-timers define her as a rebel, who at the age of 17, went up on the stage without covering her head during a poetic soiree at the Red Fort. “Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, the doyen of Hindi poetry, was presiding. Female poets then addressed the gathering with their heads covered. But Mayaji had different plans. She even left her hair untied,” says Devmani Pandey, poet-lyricist, who has anchored several soirees that reached the climax with Maya’s rousing poetry performed with a dash of drama.

Equally popular were her feminist poems like ‘Ghungta Jala Doongi Main’ (I will burn the veil) and Kante Sehte Sehte Gulab Ho Gaye (I turned into a rose while bearing the thorns).

Films beckoned but Maya could not shun the poet in her. Her first brush with fame was with ‘Naino main darpan hain’, a meaningful song written in a question-answer format for Vinod Khanna-starrer Aarop (1974). Composed by Bhupen Hazarika, it was rendered by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. Yunus Khan, a senior RJ at AIR’s Vividh Bharati, who has interviewed Maya several times, says, many of her songs had literary merit. “Hazarika was initially flummoxed by the unusually long mukhda but eventually composed a lilting tune.”

She followed it up with ‘Kajre ki baati, asuan ke tel main’, an evocative song from Sawan Ko Aane Do that was marred by flawed picturisation.

Maya emerged at a time when Urdu poetry still dominated film songs, but whenever filmmakers wanted songs with pristine Hindi poetry, they looked towards Maya and Yogesh. Who can forget ‘Ab chiragon ka koi kaam nahin’ (Bawri) and ‘Teri meri prem kahani’ (Pighalta Aasman) .

As the expressions of Hindi songs began to change, Maya took to simpler words and wrote: ‘Mera piya ghar aaya’ (Yaarana) which became immensely popular. When non-film albums became a craze, Falguni Pathak made a career out of Maya’s ‘Maine payal hai chhankai’.