The Hindi film industry, despite its strict and demarcated roles such as acting and directing, have housed those who held multiple aspirations. Some actors want to become directors, some directors want to be singers, some singers want to be actors, and so on.
And then, there was Kishore Kumar, who did everything.
Known primarily as a singer for several generations of superstars, and then as an actor in some quirky comedies, he was a complete film package. He was a lyricist, screenwriter, music composer, producer, and director in his over four-decade-long career.
Kishore Kumar, who was born in 1929, was also the Hindi film industry’s biggest prankster and eccentric. A memorable exploit is when he bit a producer’s hand when he came to deliver his money. He also often left his co-actors and singers in splits on sets with his antics, among others.
Nevertheless, his contribution to films is immense and difficult to summarise.
Take his singing career, where his mellifluous voice reverberated for stars such as Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan.
Gentleman gentleman to Khwab ho tum ya koi haqeeqat to Pal pal dil ke paas, Zindagi ke safar mein maqam to Khaike paan Banaraswala, are just a mere trace of his oeuvre.
That is not to forget Ek ladki bheegi bhaagi si, Ham to mohabbat karega, Mere mehboob qayamat hogi, and many others, which he sang for his own character.
He is estimated, as per one biographer, to have sung 2,905 songs between 1946, when he became part of the industry, to 1988, when he succumbed to a heart attack. An overwhelming majority of this, were for Hindi films. There were also a handful of songs in Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Marathi, Odia, Assamese, English, Punjabi, Kannada, and Malayalam.
Whilst he made singing look effortless, he always endeavoured to present the essential spirit of a song and had a penchant for improvisation.
Then, there was his uncanny sense of gauging the mood of the composer. Brother Ashok Kumar, in an interview, recalled that once, Kalyanji-Anandji were miffed with Kishore Kumar as he did not show up for rehearsals but came straight away on recording day. But before they could even say something, Kishore Kumar told them he knew what the tune would be, picked up a harmonium, and proceeded to render it. As a flabbergasted Kalyanji asked him how he had come to know it, the singer just smiled.
Kishore Kumar was not a very enthusiastic actor, despite doing 100-odd films in Hindi and Bengali and is perhaps the only one to turn down Satyajit Ray, and that too twice – for Parash Pathar (1959) and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1968).
Many filmmakers were so desperate to cast him that they even created roles specifically for him as was the case in the film Padosan, where he played one of his most famous characters. But there were certain roles which he took great pains to escape. For example, he escaped playing the main character in Anand by shaving his head!
He was truly, one of a kind.
READ MORE: Meena Kumari: A life steeped in tragedy on and off-screen
