A tribute to Jagjit Singh, the master of melancholy

On October 10th, while I was at Varanasi (and dealing with the
melancholy of my moods -- I have always associated Varanasi with
the cremation ghats and the Kasidaasins -- and the cacophonies
of the city) Ghazal Maestro Jagjit Singh passed away after a
protracted illness.

He was 70, but like most singers (and poets, painters and
artists) he will never have an age, never die for those who
have known and experienced the spellbinding depth of his voice.

I am not a music aficionado, nor can I claim to be any kind of a
connoisseur -- of the fascinating world of "old Hindi" -- of quiz
details like who wrote the lyrics of which song, who composed the
music and who were the lead pair and so on.

Heck, I am one of those rare ignoramuses who cannot decide for
sure if a particular song has been sung by Rafi or Mukesh. And at
the very outset, I need to make a clean breast of the fact that I
know zilch about the intricacies of music, I cannot differentiate
between a khayal and a thumri or whatever...

But -- though I am a layman and have absolutely no "ear for
music" -- for as long as I remember, I have been singing old
hindi songs to myself and since most of these songs used to be
slow, sad, melancholy numbers in which the song is more or less
a lyric accompanied by music, in the repeated singing to myself,
I have ingrained those cadences and rhythms...and also burnt
those lines...on my being.

You could also say that somewhere in the singing of those songs
is when I developed the "ambition" of becoming a shayar / kavi /
poet and long before I really had to deal with any loss, I
probably realized (and made peace with the realization) that
immaterial of how true the lie called "happiness" is, life's
underlying truth is that it is melancholy, and dark and
layered with pathos, more or less as expressed in the lines

राही मनवा दुःख की चिंता क्यों सताती है
दुःख तो अपना साथी है

सुख है एक छाँव, ढलती आती जाती है
दुःख तो अपना साथी है

(from the film Dosti)

And yes, (as I keep telling everyone) somewhere along the same
time I realised the depth of meaning (three layers of
imagination, location, analogy, metaphor, whatever) in the
lines

कहीं दूर जब दिन ढल जाये
सांझ की दुल्हन बदन चुराए, चुप के से आये

and have always wanted to write lines that are as vivid, as
imaginative, as powerful. And yes, for me Hindi will always be
the the language of gravitas, meant for writing down and
chronicling the occasional untranslatable line that is truest
the way it comes and not for the frivolity of communicating
banalities like

फ्रेश फ्रूट जूस पार्लर

So maybe immaterial of all my known and unknown shortcomings,
I am qualified to write about Jagjit Singh, considering that
most of his songs had an unsurpassable element of gravitas
and melancholy, if not downright gut-wrenching sadness and I
have connected to them, heard them on a radio, a cassette player,
etc.; heard them sung by friends and sang them to friends while
high on rum and coke in a bonding that was in all probability
more about teenage angst than it was about the rum or the song
itself. And yes, most of those lines are burnt in my being, the
same way lines of poetry are.

So they still reverberate in me, even these days when I don't
listen to any music thanks to my bum ears.

So they still reverberate in me, and in fact I can creditably
sing some of them, closing my eyes and going along with the
flow of blessed memory, of remembered song.

Like, for instance this song that a friend (here in Hyderabad)
used to repeatedly sing -- at cafes, in the college parking
lot, at his place ostensibly for combined studies (in the balcony
while sharing a smoke) up at 2.00 in the night, and at all
those Rum Coke sessions.

प्यार का पहला ख़त लिखने में वक़्त तो लगता है
नयी परिंदों को उड़ने में वक़्त तो लगता है

Need I mention that those were the days when my friend was
going through a phase of "should I propose?", "dare I propose?",
"what if she rejects me?" and all those questions that run pell mell
through a young man wooing a young woman?

Or, the exquisitely hummable, oh-so-simple, right from the heart
echoing call of

होंठों से छु लो तुम
मेरा गीत अमर कर दो

बन जाओ मीत मेरे
मेरा प्रीत अमर कर दो

that I used to sing along with the cassette player and while
serenading my own loneliness in buses (and the occasional Auto)
while still into my second year in Hyderabad. Did I mention I
was lonely? Oh yes, its confession time, I used to keep a diary
those days and almost every week used to start with the entry --
"Need to decide what to do in life and need to get a girlfriend
soon"...So maybe, that song was Jagjit Singh singing to my elusive
girlfriend, or he and I singing together, or me singing it to
myself, while Jagjit Singh would lip synch to a spell bound
audience.

There were other Jagjit Singh songs too -- that I listened
to in rapt attention (and sang to myself) as I would beg borrow
and steal any Jagjit Singh (and Yesudas and other Ghazal / Old
Hindi) cassettes that I could and since I never got around to
getting hooked to "pop music" (maybe because I couldn't get the
lyrics over all that high frequency "music") and just had
three other cassettes -- Yanni, Khaled and Eric Clapton to
listen to, I would get bored of the "change" pretty soon and go
back to Jagjit Singh.

And thus, I got to hear the wonderfully knowing

तुम इतना जो मुस्कुरा रहे हो
क्या गम है जिसको छुपा रहे हो

The intensely romantic

तुम को देखा तो ये ख्याल आया
जिंदगी धुप तुम घना साया

and so many others, that though I can't recollect them now -- are
as familiar and permanent as the memories of old friends.

But the one song that made Jagjit Singh what he is to me is the
one where he is less of melody, technique and nuance but completely
and absolutely a requiem of grief, a gut-wrenching voice calling
out in the totality of the pain of loss. The song (if I remember
right) he sang after the death of his only son --

दर्द से मेरा दामन भर दे या अल्लाह
फिर चाहे दीवाना कर दे या अल्लाह

In all probability someone more knowledgeable or well read than me
had told me this and maybe I read more into this song because I
know (or think I know) what Jagjit Singh means by "dard" and
"deewana" in the song...I could be wrong about all that...
but somehow this has to be the ultimate song when it comes to loss
and grief for me.

The ultimate.

You will be the ultimate ever for me Jagjit Singh Ji, the
ultimate, and forever alive, because I don't even need to listen
to your songs to connect with the blessed oeuvre that you have
voiced for us, left behind for us...

For your ultimate songs reverberate in me, resonate in me, reside in
me.

As found poems.

And memories where I can find more poetry.

Thank you.