The Madman Who Outsang the Gods

Kishore Kumar was the complete artist. What made him great also made him misunderstood.

Had he lived, Kishore Kumar would have turned 96 on August 4. But the mercurial artist, born Abhas Kumar Ganguly in the dusty town of Khandwa, was never the kind to mark birthdays. The man who sang of solitude often lived it. Though adored by generations of Hindi music lovers, Kishore spent most of his early years being dismissed or simply ignored. He never quite forgave the world for that. And the world never quite figured him out either.

His genius was unmistakable, yet, for years, invisible. As a child, he idolised K.L. Saigal, India’s first superstar singer, to the point of mimicry. That mimicry might have lasted had it not been for the perceptive eye (and ear) of composer S.D. Burman, who visited the Ganguly household where elder brother Ashok Kumar was already a megastar and overheard the young Kishore singing a perfect imitation of Saigal. “Respect others, but develop your own style,” Burman reportedly told him. Kishore obeyed, with a vengeance. After being introduced to yodelling through Western records brought by his brother Anoop from Austria, he locked himself in a room for a week. When he emerged, he could yodel better than the original Tex Morton. That vocal tic - playful, elastic and impossible to imitate - became his signature.

Still, Bollywood was not convinced. Kishore wanted to sing, but the music directors wanted Rafi. He took up acting reluctantly and was quickly typecast as a comic. Even when he acted in films, nine of his own songs were sung by someone else. A young Kishore approached the eminent composer Salil Chowdhury in 1954 and asked to sing. Chowdhury reportedly waved him away and demanded proof of prior recordings. Kishore would later have his revenge. When Chowdhury approached him in 1971 for the film Mere Apne, Kishore made him follow his car through the city for three hours before finally consenting.

His bitterness was not imagined. Biographer Derek Bose writes of a time when Kishore, too poor to own a car, would turn his back at bus stops when passing actors, who frequented his brother’s home, rolled by in fancy vehicles. These slights lingered even after he became a star.

The 1960s were lean years. Though he survived as Dev Anand’s preferred voice, even that pipeline dried up as Dev became choosy with roles. Kishore contemplated returning to Khandwa for good. Then came Aradhana. But even here, he was cautious. Before agreeing to sing for the then-unknown actor, Rajesh Khanna, Kishore insisted on meeting him first. He studied Khanna’s gestures, his mannerisms, the way he used his hands. Then he crafted a vocal persona that fused with Khanna’s screen presence so seamlessly that it created a phenomenon. It was, as one critic wrote, “two bodies, one voice.”

The success was electrifying. Khanna became India’s first true superstar, and Kishore became his voice. The music, much of it composed by R.D. Burman and Laxmikant-Pyarelal, truck like lightning, song after song. Hindi film music entered a new epoch: pre-Aradhana and post-Aradhana. Kishore Kumar had finally arrived, and he would dominate the next decade and a half. From Amitabh Bachchan to Jeetendra, Sanjeev Kumar to Shatrughan Sinha, every male star wanted Kishore’s voice behind their face. Only Dharmendra and Rishi Kapoor held out.

Yet Kishore never quite let go of the sting of earlier rejections. He developed a reputation for eccentricity, often refusing to work unless paid in advance. It was not greed, he insisted, but insurance against being cheated again. The only time he broke this rule was for Rajesh Khanna’s home production AlagAlag, offered as a thank-you to the man who had helped relaunch his career in 1969.

His personal life was equally turbulent. Married four times, most famously to actress Madhubala, Kishore remained emotionally detached from Bombay’s social whirl. In one rare interview with PritishNandy, he admitted he had no friends in the city and instead conversed with his trees, each of which he had named. This only fuelled his reputation for madness. But those close to him knew it masked a deeper loneliness, a bruised idealism never quite healed by fame.

On January 24, 1981, he suffered two heart attacks in one day. Ten days later, discharged from hospital, he recorded a song that now seems like a premonition: Akela gayatha main. It was for Rajput, picturised once again on Rajesh Khanna. Six years later, on October 13, 1987, Kishore Kumar died of a final heart attack. He was just 58.

Eight Filmfare Awards, a nation in thrall and no shortage of imitators. Yet not one matched his range or unpredictability. He was a genius not because he chased perfection, but because he made imperfection divine. To the end, he maintained his favourite mantra: “The world is crazy, not me.” History has sided with him.

(The writer is a political commentator and a global affairs observer. Views personal.)