Early days
Anand Bakshi was born in Rawalpindi, now
in Pakistan, on 21 July 1920. His ancestors were from Kuri, near
Rawalpindi, and had origins in Kashmir. His mother, Sumitra, died
when he was 10. Bakshi's family migrated to India on 2 October
1947, in the aftermath of the partition, when he was 27 years
old.
On 15 November 1947, he joined the Corps
of Signals, trained at Jabalpur, and was later employed as a switch
board operator. He would spend much of the next ten years of his
life in and out of the army as he tried to break into Bombay's
film industry. In his spare time he would write songs and sing
to friends.
Success
After writing for several movies over
many years, he made his real breakthrough in 1967 with the movie
Milan (starring Sunil Dutt). With this, he had the opportunity
to write for star music composers in Indian cinema. He established
himself as a versatile lyricist with the song Dum Maro Dum in
the movie Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1972). After this, he wrote
memorable lyrics in many movies including Bobby and Amar Prem
(1971), [[Jeena Ki Raah] Jitender], [[Meera Gao Mera Desh] Dharmendra],
Aye Din Bahar Ke, Aaya Sawan Jhoom Ke, [Seeta Aur Geeta] Hema
Malini], Sholay (1975), Dharam Veer, Sharabi, Kalicharan, Vishvanath,
[[Pyar Jhukta Nahin] Mithun Chakravorty], Nagina, Mr. India, Hum(1991),
Mohra (1994), Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Heer-Ranjha,
Taal (1998), Mohabbatein (2000), Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001) and
Yaadein (2001).
Death
Late in his life, he suffered from heart
and lung disease as a consequence of life-long smoking. In April
2001, he caught a bacterial infection at Nanavati hospital, during
a minor heart surgery. He finally died of organ failure on 30
March 2002 at Mumbai's Nanavati Hospital, at the age of 82.
The last released movie with lyrics by
Anand Bakshi was Mehbooba (2008).
Collaborations with directors
Bakshi was a regular presence as a lyricist in all movies directed
by Subhash Ghai from the time of his third movie, Gautam Govinda
(1979). Anand Bakshi wrote lyrics for a total of 13 movies directed
by Subhash Ghai, the final being Yaadein (2001).
Another major director Bakshi wrote for
regularly in the 1990s was Yash Chopra. Their association produced
such hits as Chandni (1989) and Dil To Pagal Hai (1997). Bakshi
also wrote lyrics for all of Chopra's director/story writer/producer-son,
Aditya Chopra's movies, and the same for Rajiv Rai.
Awards
Bakshi received 40 Filmfare Award nominations,
and won four Filmfare awards as best lyricist. The songs were:
Aadmi Musafir Hain in Apnapan (1977)
Tere Mere Beech in Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981)
Tujhe Dekha in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)
Ishq Bina in Taal (1999).
Bakshi wrote the most lyrics -- for more
than 250 movies -- with the music directors duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal
as the movies' composers. Not coincidentally, he was the lyricist
on all the occasions they won the Filmfare Award for Best Music
Director, except their first award winning album, Dosti, for which
the lyrics were written by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Bakshi also wrote
the lyrics for many films whose music was composed by Rahul Dev
Burman and their association resulted in many hit songs.
He also won many Ruby Film Awards, Aashirwad
Film Awards, Sushma Shama Awards, Screen awards, and Zee &
Stardust Hero Honda Awards.
Bakshi won an award from the SPCA for
his hard-hitting lyrics for the song Nafrat Ki Duniya Chhodke
Pyar Ki Duniya Mein from the film Haathi Mere Saathi.
Miscellany
Anand Bakshi wrote the lyrics for the
very first films of several of today's stars, including Sunny
Deol, Jackie Shroff, Kamal Haasan, Rishi Kapoor, Amrita Singh,
Shahrukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, among several others.
He worked with several music directors
who were the sons of the music directors that he had worked with
in his early days: SD and RD Burman, Chitragupta and Anand-Milind,
Kalyanji Anandji and Viju Shah, Roshan and Rajesh Roshan, Nadeem-Shravan
and Sanjeev Darshan etc. He also worked with father-son pairs
of film directors like Manmohan Desai and Ketan Desai, and Yash
and Aditya Chopra.
He wrote the first recorded songs of playback
singers Shailender Singh, Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, Kavita Krishnamurthy
and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, to name a few.
Stars like Dharmendra, Jeetendra, Sunny
Deol, Shashi Kapoor, Sunil Dutt, Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor,
Rajendra Kumar, Ajay Devgan, Shahrukh Khan and Juhi Chawla opted
for Anand Bakshi when they started their own film production companies.
Anand Bakshi finally accomplished his
dream of becoming a singer by singing a qawwali "Ke Chand
Sa Koi Chehra" for R.D.Burman in Sholay along with Kishore
Kumar, Manna Dey and Bhupinder. Anupama Chopra's 'Sholay - The
Making of a Classic' mentions that "The qawwali was recorded
but never shot - the film was already longer than the requisite
three hours. Bakshi was most disheartened. 'Perhaps if they had
kept it' he wondered 'I might have had a career as a singer'."
However, Anand Bakshi finally sung a song
in film [[Charas] Dharmendra]. The song was "Ke Aaja ter
yaadi aayi" and has to satisfy himself by singing only the
"mukhda" of song - the rest of the song is sung by Lata-Rafi
pair. It was a great hit of the time.