jeevan ke safar mein rahi (munimji 1955)

ZIDDI was a milestone in my career, since it was the first film that brought me into the limelight as an actor to reckon with. It brought me very lose to Ashok Kumar and his youngest brother, Kishore Kumar, who had just arrived from his hometown Khandwa clad in his kurta-pajamas, with a phenomenal singing voice that years later was going to hypnotize the world with its resonance. The very firs song of his career was sung by me on screen in ZIDDI. The song became a hit, and people started associating Kishore’s voice with mine, and his playback singing with acting on screen. We complemented each other. He always sang my songs with an eye on how I would perform them, and gave the necessary nuances to his voice with my acting style in mind. His famous yodeling, which he pioneered in Indian films, was encouraged by me; it sounded like the cry of a solitary voice in the loneliness of the hills, a call for romance. After he became a star-actor, and the artist in him grew in great measure, Kishore never sang for anybody except for me, barring a few exceptions. Whenever I needed him to sing for me, he was ready to play Dev Anand in front of the microphones in the recording studios. He always asked me in what particular way I wanted to perform the song on the screen, so that he could modulate and style his singing accordingly. And I would always say, ‘Do it with all the pep you want, and I shall follow your way.’ There was that kind of rapport between the two of us. He was a great funster, though this was not apparent to the outside world. Since we were both childlike, we made jolly good friends. He often confided in me, like a child in his elder brother. Before he got married to his first wife, he asked me if marriage was a good idea. I told him, ‘If you like the idea, and are in a mood for it, it is the best thing in the world.’ But Kishore remained an enigma to me, a very loveable enigma. A great singer who never learnt singing professionally from a master, a great comic actor who never went to a training school, a reasonably good director who conceived and directed his own movies, having never been an assistant to any director. And finally, one day, without giving any warning, he was gone, suddenly. He was recording what was to be the last song of his life for me, in one of my films called SACHCHE KA BOL-BALA, when he called me into the recording booth and said, ‘Dev bhai. I’m going abroad for my last concert. This time it is my wish that you too come along, to make an introductory speech to the audience. It is everybody’s wish in America.’ ‘I would love to do it for a darling like you, Kishore. Do let me know when,’ I responded. But the darling changed his mind and left us all, leaving me stunned along with the rest of the world. I stood by his dead body in his bedroom all alone, closed my eyes and silently sang all the songs he had sung for me, in a deep moment of sorrow. Then I rushed back to my car outside, and cried and cried, crying all the way back home. In the words of the song Kishore had sung for me in the film MUNIMJI Travellers on the road of life Meet only to part And parting leave behind memories To torment the lonely times.