Arshad Mahmud’s fondness for Faiz’s nazms and ghazals has always helped him a great deal as a composer. In fact despite his many accomplishments as a musician, it’s his remarkable work of setting Faiz’s verse to music which has earned him recognition and acclaim.

It was in the 1970s that Arshad Mahmud for the first time composed some of the ghazals and nazms of the great poet. He did so partly on Faiz’s insistence. But one other thing that was special in that endeavour was Nayyara Noor, the singer whom he heard signing at an NCA function and fell in love with her voice. He to date lovingly remembers how Nayyara Noor’s sweet and engaging voice impressed him. The first Nayyara-Arshad venture of presenting Faiz’s poetry was admired by music and poetry lovers alike. And it has taken them quite a while to churn out another such tribute to Faiz, titled Zard Patton Ka Ban Jo Mera Des Hai, and it was worth the wait.

This is an album which Arshad Mahmud has composed and produced with much warmth and affection. You can sense it while listening to it. However, it wouldn’t have been possible if Nayyara Noor, who doesn’t sing often these days, hadn’t sung on the album with the same feeling. It’s both the artistes’ unstinted admiration for Faiz Ahmed Faiz, more than anything else, that’s clearly evident in the project.

One other very marked feature of Zard Patton Ka Bun is that apart from Nayyara Noor’s voice, it also has recordings of Faiz Saheb reciting his nazms, which is why the first number on the album is the poet reading out Sabhi kuchh hai tera dia hua in his amiable style. The first poem that Nayyara Noor lends her voice to is Tujhe pukara hai be irada, and it is kind of an indicator to what’s to be expected in the rest of the collection. It is composed with care and sung in a nuanced way, as ought to be the case, because the lines have a difficult metre and are not easy to read, leave alone sing.

Anyone who is familiar with Arshad Mahmud’s work on Faiz (in Tina Sani and Nayyara Noor’s company) will endorse the observation that what he does so well is that he composes poems which don’t have a one-dimensional movement. For example, Gar mujhe iss ka yaqeen ho is a very, very complex nazm to set to music. But he did it with great ease and effect in the past making Tina Sani croon it in a fashion which may dupe the uninitiated into thinking that Faiz is a simple poet. Here too he treats Tum hi kaho kya karna hai and Iss waqt to yun lagta hai in a manner which defies the metrical ups and downs of the poems and renders them an uncomplicated feel. And much of the credit for this must go to Nayyara Noor as well. — Peerzada Salman