“Remembering Kishore Kumar ”

                                                                          Raghav Chandra

Like many other geniuses of his time, Kishore Kumar  was  a lonely man.   In professional life – as an actor, singer, director or as a producer.   Even in  personal life – as a father, a husband, a brother, and  as a lover.

Kishore was always the mercurial maverick.    Rolling on,  winning to lose and losing to win.    Leaving behind a trail of folly and despair.  Traits  that have been charitably described  as “method in madness” by critic Derek Bose.  Facets  that could  impel us to ignore  him.  Yet, his indelible and overpowering   artistic genius goads us to commemorate him.

It is  with a sense of déjà vu  that I note yet a new attempt to build a memorial for Kishore Kumar in Khandwa.   In fact,  if there was  anywhich  way to bestow celebrity status  to this district in which I was posted as a Collector between 1988 and 1990, it was with  the epithet “Khandwawaala” that usually suffixed with Kishore Kumar’s name.  It was a godsent opportunity,   thus,  to have Kishore Kumar’s   brother Anoop, fourth wife Leena Chandawarkar   and son Amit  in Khandwa  town to pay homage to him on his first death anniversary in October 13, 1988 in East Nimar, Khandwa.  As Collector,  I invited  them over for  a hastily  rustled up high tea in my sprawling  bungalow.   While my wife lavished  them with crunchy  canapés,  I  floored them with the piece- de-resistance.  How about a Kishore Kumar Museum?  The first of its kind music memorial in India.  For this colossus of modern times.  Like the Stratford-upon-Avon Museum for the Bard in Warwikshire,  England.  Or the Graceland  Museum for Elvis Presley in Memphis, Tennessee.

    All  that I needed  to execute my plan was   a suitable building to house  such a museum.  What would be better than  to refurbish  the decrepit ancestral Ganguly home in downtown Bombay Bazaar?  I would manage to convince the Government to give me  funds to  do up this Museum with unique  Kishore memorablia, music,

    films and even a son-et-lumiere kind of show. And Khandwa would be on the international music-tourism map.  While  Amit plumbed for the idea,  Anoop Kumar grumbled.    In comparison to Ashok Kumar and Kishore,  who had hit the pot of gold with their films, he was left with only  this property.  How could he possibly be asked to give it away?  He was aghast at my sense of expansiveness.  Only after I promised to  compensate him properly, did he somewhat  relent.  Amit Kumar, of course,  appeared  excited.  He marvelled at the brilliance of the concept and  offered to send me all the Kishore stuff they had assiduously preserved. Thousands of released and unreleased songs. Also the famous car from “Chalti ka Naam Gaadi”, the first film starring all the three brothers.    All  that I needed to do was to send someone to Bombay to fetch it all.

My emissary visited the Kishore Kumar family several times in Bombay in the ensuing months.  Only to be avoided   and finally spurned. 

Not ready  to give up so easily, I then enticed   Amit Kumar and Leena Chandawarkar into my next effort.  The  “Zindagi ka Safar” Award was conceived.  An open competition along the lines of the Master Madan contest.  The elimination round was kept  in the local Nilkhantheswar Mahavidyalaya.  Only 15 singers were to be chosen for the finals.  The response was terrific.   Overall 253 entries were received for the contest in which only Kishore Kumar songs were to  be sung.  The oldest participant was a 73 year old farmer from Chhegaon Makhan in dhoti-kurta.  The youngest was a 14 year old school girl.

I had invited Kishore Kumar’s family as our guests.  After a relaxed dinner at my house, Leena,  Anoop Kumar and Amit accompanied me to the audition.   The last of the singing was getting over.  The Assembly Hall was teeming with  hundreds of students  and spectators,  some even perched up on terraces and balconies.  In rapt silence.  Never before had this educational institution witnessed such  avid student congregation.

The finals the next day  were heart warming.    The  open-air and unbounded Khandwa stadium.  Twenty-thousand citizens.  No tickets.  Three Judges – the Indore AIR Chief, Anoop Kumar and Leena Chandawarkar.   Homage was paid to Kishore, with Amit Kumar evoking nostalgic memories like “Aa chalk e tujhe mein leke chaloon…” and some  with a typical Khandwawaala  flavour,  “Mere dada dadiyon ….. mere naana naniyon…”  Leena took the mike and actually sobbed……….  Never before, neither in Bombay, nor in Goa (her former husband  was the son of the Chief Minister) had  she been showered with  so much love and affection.  Khandwa was indeed her “sasural”.  The audience shrieked for their offspring  Sumit Kumar to sing a few lines.  This small  child of  six salaamed the people of Khandwa in his father’s typical style and  sang before an  ecstatic audience,  “Zindagi ek safar hai suhana, yahan kal kya ho kisne jaana … .” 

We had earlier that day commissioned a makeshift Kishore  Kumar Sangrahalaya in a rented space in Anand Nagar  after earlier issuing a public appeal for  collectibles.  For weeks, school-teachers and  students, paanwaalas  and photographers, citizens of Khandwa and beyond,  rummaged through  albums  and attics and culled out an invaluable collection of Kishorablia that we put up in separate sections – Kishore the Actor, the Singer, the Composer and the Man.  This last section drew the maximum response.  There were naughty stories from parched yellow magazines of the 60s and 70s of his romantic interludes. And quirky ones about his genetic predisposition to miserliness  that had,  for instance, caused him  to  scrounge even on his beloved Madhubala’s medical treatment.   We had also installed a music system with every  known tape of Kishore songs.  To provide the authentic flavour, for the ribbon cutting by the family, we had secretly salted away a huge portrait of Kishore Kumar from the Ganguly house and put it up on a table with a vase of roses in front.  As soon as Leena and Anoop came to cut the ribbon, while Leena’s chest swelled with pride, Anoop couldn’t conceal his dismay and exclaimed,  “Collector Sahib, you have  removed our Kishore’s portrait … oh, please return it to my house!

This  story is not meant to discourage Shri Vithalbhai Patel, a former Minister, colleague  of Kishore Kumar, eminent lyricist and more,  who has  launched a laudable drive to collect for Kishore.  But,  to spur him to redouble  his efforts in view of the indifferent legacy.   The Gangulys of Khandwa may well fade from public memory, and that quaint  Victorian house with four-poster beds in Bombay Boulevard may well be gone, but the blithe spirit of Kishore Kumar will always  invigorate and inspire Khandwa.

Perhaps that is why, even while he unabashedly  searched for  glamorous  new experiences  in the tinsel world,  Kishore Kumar willed unequivocally that he should be  consecrated only in rustic Khandwa.

  (The author is an IAS officer who has been Collector Khandwa. The views expressed are personal).