Ameen Sayani, the most identified and recognisable voice on Indian radio, passed away due to a cardiac arrest in his Mumbai home. He was 91.
“Namaskar behno aur bhaiyon, main aapka dost Ameen Sayani bol raha hoon,” announced Ameen Sayani in 1952 from his underground outpost of Radio Ceylon in Sri Lanka and had a newly independent nation in a thrall.
It was for the first time that the warmth and affability of a voice from the radio broke down the sanctioned solemnity and sternness that came in the guise of authoritative baritones, perfect pronunciations, and diction – all of which were associated with state-owned All India Radio.
Sayani’s was a salutation in Hindustani, with all the etiquette in place and pitch-perfect inflections, friendly, simply spoken, somewhat urban, and thus, modern. The voice joked with its audiences, teased them, gave interesting trivia, interviewed celebrities, and punctuated it all with “filmi sangeet”, the kind that was a rage among the youth at the time.
For decades, one cocked one’s ears to Binacca Geetmala, as Sayani played the top 10 every Wednesday from Radio Ceylon, our loyalties bought forever by Mohammed Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Hemant Kumar, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood and Kishore Kumar.
“I wanted each listener to feel that I was talking to them and that immediately struck a chord. I didn’t expect it to become a phenomenon. They were such fantastic times,”.
Born in 1932 to Kulsum Sayani and physician Jan Mohammad Sayani, both of whom were freedom fighters, Sayani grew up amid an academic atmosphere throbbing with ideas of freedom, its significance, and how culture could play a significant role in it. While his father held charge of a hospital taking care of the wounded during the freedom struggle, Kulsum, whose own father, Rajaballly Patel, had been the personal physician to Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, started a newspaper titled Rahber. The newspaper, on Mahatma Gandhi’s advice, was brought out in Hindustani — a blend of Hindi and Urdu. Gandhi wanted Hindustani to become the lingua franca or the national language of India, thinking that it could bind the nation after independence. This was the time when Hindi and Urdu supporters were using heavy words from Sanskrit and Persian respectively to establish the superiority of either language. Rahber, which began in 1940, stuck to Hindustani, reaching out to many, especially the political prisoners.
From a young age, Sayani helped their mother bring out Rahber, learning the ideology of a secular nation and the role language could play in that.
“So right after the independence, it was a moment of pride to speak in Hindustani. More so if you did it over All India Radio,” Sayani told The Indian Express.
While he spent some time at Scindia School in Gwalior and St Xavier’s College in Mumbai, he was initiated into broadcasting by his older brother Hamid, a well-known broadcaster at the time.
Sayani famously failed his first Hindustani audition at AIR in Mumbai because of a “strong Gujarati and English accent in the spoken Hindustani”. He worked hard on getting his pronunciation right and got the job some months later.
But even after joining AIR in 1951, Sayani’s style and tone were slightly loud. When voice artiste and singer Rama Mattoo, who would marry him some years later, heard the voice for the first time, she asked her brother to switch off the radio. Sayani soon realised that he was going to be in people’s living rooms and could avoid a style that was a bit too hyper. He decided to speak to them naturally and normally using ‘bol-chaal ki bhasha‘ like he was a friend discussing and dissecting films and their songs with them over tea. The idea worked.
What began as a half-hour programme in December 1951 turned into a rage in 1952. First, it was called Binaca Geetmala, then Hit Parade, and finally Cibaca Geetmala which was how it was known for the longest time.
Soon he began to popularise film music on the radio, a time when the government-controlled AIR was attempting to define the idea of “national culture”. BV Keskar, the I&B minister banned film music on radio in 1952, calling it “erotic and vulgar” and only allowing classical music to be played. After the ban, Sayani began broadcasting his shows from Radio Ceylon.
Radio Ceylon was initially known for Hit Parade – a countdown of English pop that was hosted by their announcer Greg Roskowski and was popular in India. It was after many letters from fans requesting a similar show of Hindi film music that Clifford Dodd, Director of Commercial Service, Radio Ceylon, reached out to Sayani in India.
The first show brought in Rs 25 as salary for Sayani and 9000 letters, some requesting songs and others from women fans who liberally sprinkled romantic adulation for the voice they had fallen in love with.
Vividh Bharti, the commercial broadcast service of AIR began in 1957 and Hindi film music got back to radio then. Sayani, who stayed with Radio Ceylon for a long time, began his sponsored programmes on AIR in 1970. Some of the most significant interviews including that of Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, and Raj Kapoor among others were done by Sayani.
His favourite remained the show titled Lata Se Darte Darte, where he asked Mangeshkar difficult questions dealing with royalty issues with Mohammad Rafi, her issues with SD Burman, her relationship with her sister Asha Bhosle besides intimate questions on marriage and her personal life – one of the few times Mangeshkar spoke about her life in such detail.
Sayani worked till the end. Until recently, he’d get ready every day and head to his studio in Colaba with his son Rajil Sayani, touch up his old work, record something new, and archive his work. Towards the end, the iconic voice, its thick timbre, would sometimes be broken by bouts of cough during conversations. But somehow, even at 91, when Ameen Sayani spoke through a recording or in a phone call, you dropped everything and just listened. It took you to an India that once was.
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