Jagjit Singh was praised by the irrepressible Khushwant Singh as better looking than Dilip Kumar and better singer than Mehdi Hasan. This was in early 1970s. The comment courted controversy, like all of Khushwant’s comments were wont to.It is not possible to judge whether Khushwant was on the mark;but it is possible to say:
Jagjit, tera jawaab nahii.
A whole generation of music-lovers were brought-up on Jagjit’s Ghazals. The’d heard of Talat Mehmood; they had heard Begum Akhtar. They grew up humming Jagjit’s soulful and simple tunes and lyrics which rarely got complex. Aam aadmi’s ghazal, without any compromise on standard of music, words which fell soothingly on souls, notes and little taans which kept the musically initiated waiting for more, Chitra’s voice among other accompaniments of the excellent orchestra … this was Jagjit’s forte.
Many , many were the days when five or six of us would assemble at Nuzhath’s home, for ‘combined studies’. No one knows what happened to the studies. But we combined Jagjit’s tapes with the afternoons’ siesta ,following the lunches full of delicacies the Senior Hussains always conjured for us. Nuzhath would ask, ‘yeh sunaa, Subbu?’ and play Koyii yaad aaya, saveraey, saveraey/ Mujhhe aazmaaya, saveraey, saveraey in raaga Lalit. The guitar notes went “ ni re … ga ga ga/ / ni re … sa sa sa” in the Mandra saptak, using the delicate flexibility of komal dha drawing on a ‘pa’ which hovered somewhere in the background. Then came the taan in the Madhya saptak skimming the depth of a Mandrama ” ga ma dha ni sa re sa/ni dha re sa / ni dha re sa / ni dha re sa/ ni re ga/ ni re … ga / ni re … ga ga ga/ / ni re … sa sa sa ”. Between the tivra madhyama and the komal gaandhaara the so called stable panchama played hide-and-seek. I’d be lost. Then came the verse kati raat saari, terii maikadey mein/ Khuda yaad aaya, saveraey, saveraey. I was even more lost. What could one do except go down on ones knees and pray?!
Jagjit was not rigid about the raga. He’d experiment and touch unexpected notes, but get back to the matrix soon enough. Alongwith this ghazal, my mind recalled the Manna Dey-Rafi classic “Man ki pyaas bujhaaney aayii/ antarghaT tak pyaasii huun mai/ Tu hii Merii Prem Devataa”, and Rafi’s “Ek shahenshah ne banwaake hasiin TajMahal/Saari duniya ko mohabbat ki nishaanii dii hai”…., and for hours afterwards I’d keep humming silently in my mind, these songs and the raga Lalit.
That was also the time of ‘love and loss’. Jagjit gave me “Duniya jise kehtey hain, jaduu ka khilona hai/mil jaaye tau mittii hai, kho jaaye to Sona hai” to sing alongside Mukesh’s “Saarangaa teri yaad mein…”. In Duniya jise kehtey hai there is a particularly memorable verse: “Barsaat ka baadal tau / Diiwana hai kya jaaney/ kis raah se bachnaa hai,kis chath ko bhigona hai”. How should love know what is appropriate? Oh! God! He and Chitra squeezed out our hearts for us.
Many of us think Jagjit burst in on the scene at his best. Except for “Yeh daulat bhi ley lo… woh kaagaz ki kashti, woh barish ka paani” Jagjit never sang like he did in late 70s and early 80s. There was an occasional film song (“ Honthon se chuukar tum, mera geet amar kar doo” and “Tum itna kyuun muskuraa rahey ho”). India also got hooked on to Ghulam Ali and to a much lesser extent, Talat Aziz (“Kya milaega kisii ko kisi sey…). Pankaj Udhas and Anoop Jalota did the rounds as well.
But, Jagjit? Oh well there is much to recall. The accidents in his life made him a little melancholy as a singer, but what is music without that ‘still, sad, humanity”? The sadness of his voice, his choice of verse brought for us a karuna and laalitya like the pleasing , soft hues of a secondary rainbow.
Thank you, Nuzhath, for providing the space in which I could discover Jagjit for myself. And your parents, for the open-house, and our M.A. which provided the ‘bahaana’ of combined studies!
And Thank You Jagjit Saahib, for the gift of music you gave with passionate generosity.
Aapki aawaaz ke sahaarey hum jii laengey.
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