October 13, 2015

A pure bliss called Kishore Kumar

Kishore (Pix from Wikipedia page)
  Kishore Kumar is a religion (in a positive sense) and his fans are fanatics (again in a positive sense).  They simply don't do anything but humming, listening or crooning those immortal songs. They sing praises to Kishore, quoting this song or that song. I actually look at them with bewilderment. I am about 40 per cent of that.

   Yesterday, I bumped into a Kishore Kumar fan at a press conference. A friend for over 20 years, he told me he would go recluse for a day tomorrow, the death anniversary of the singer.
  Wearing a black dress, he said he would not talk to anybody tomorrow and just reminisce Kishore Kumar and his songs. He actually lied. He always does that. He eats, breathes and drinks Kishore and does nothing else. Our conversations never ended without a good part of it being Kishore.
  In fact, I would call him in the dead of night and utter a word or two from a Kishore hit, he sings it for me.
   A few days earlier, he gifted me two CDs with popular numbers sang by the legendary singer. He, however, doesn't accept that only those are the popular numbers.
  A singer himself, he could sing any of the 6,000 songs sung by Kishore, pausing here and there to draw my attention to Kishore's ability quickly switch from a low pitch to a very high one. "Who else can sing like this," he would say, picking up the thread again.

  His love for Kishore actually is infectious. I am not good at Hindi but am addicted to Kishore's songs. But certainly, my love to Kishore comes no where near that of my friend's.
   His love for Kishore is such that he was actually lamenting yesterday that he could not visit Khandwa, the birthplace of Kishore, in Madhya Pradesh to offer floral tributes at his Samadhi.

  He then thrust a phone on my left ear and played a BBC interview of Asha. She told the interviewer that Kishore was the best singer as he could sing with his brain and heart.

   I really immerse myself in his songs. He sings from the bottom of the heart -- perhaps, exactly the way the lyricist and the composer would have conceived. I strongly suspected he was quite well versed with the unexplored realms of the heart. He knows the music of life in its myriad facets.
As we depart I told my friend, Kishore is pure bliss and a gift to the mankind.
His eyes twinkled.

Here's one for the road.

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