The passing away of Jagjit Singh, and a conversation about him with my friend Sanjib Ganguly last evening, rekindled some fond old memories. “Jagjit ko sun kar gham ghalat kiya karte they”. “Bahut saath diya tha Jagjit ne apna.” :-)
Those were the days when Jagjit Singh played in our room for most of our awake time. There wasn’t much gham then, just that we would make ourselves ghamgeen to immerse into his rendered ghazals. Animated lyrics from his ghazals often barged into our conversations, usually with humorous effect. There was no situation to which Jagjit could not be applied then.
My collecton of Jagjit, which wasn’t too bad, sadly got misplaced one of the times I was to travel abroad. That was also the time when the world had started to move away from Cassettes-CDs to mp3s, and as life got faster paced, melancholic ghazals started to take a back seat for me as well. Post ‘Sarfarosh’, I hardly listened to any ghazals anymore, I still cannot reason why.
Ask me ever to sing a song (not that you would want to ask), and I can bet you will get to hear ‘Yeh Zindagi Aaj Jo Tumhari’ from the album ‘Insight’. As a collection, ‘Face to Face’ remains undoubtedly one of my all time favourite albums; every ghazal equally pleasing, not one of them out of place.
Here’s wishing Peace to the Melodious Maestro’s soul. He may be no more, but his soothing immortal voice will continue to live with us and bring us joy for ages to come.
