Daily Times

When I remember my childhood days, a lovely melody; a duet “Yaad Kiya Dil Ne Kahan Ho Tum”, resounds my ears. This melody was composed by Shankar Jaikishen (SK), rendered by Lata Mangeshkar along with a heavy but melodious male voice, Hemant Kumar. The film was Ommayah Chakarvarti’s ‘Patita’ starring Dev Anand and Usha Kiran, the side heroine of Ommaiyah’s earlier success ‘Dagh’. SK’s choice of voices of Talat Mahmood for Dilip Kumar and Hemant Kumar for Dev Anand was remarkable. The ‘antra’ (stanza) of the above quoted song starts with a “Ho” that fades in softly and is not jarring to ears. In my lifetime I have seen Kumar wearing three caps simultaneously; a singer, a music composer and a filmmaker.

For this submission I chose to concentrate on his first quality, that of he being a singer. The affiliated rest would follow naturally in my other submissions. Our lives were spent in listening to the rich melodies of the subcontinent music including those of Kumar. He was born on June 16, 1920. His original name was Hemant Mukherji Mukhopadhyay. Music was his true love. My memories of him are fresh for his contributions in Indian film industry’s music in the 1950s and 1960s. A conservative estimate for his recorded Urdu/Hindi and Bengali songs is about 2,000.

Kumar became popular as a playback singer, especially when he sang for Dev Anand in films like ‘Jaal’ the song “Yeh Raat Ye Chandni Phir Kahaan” and for the film ‘Solva Saal’ the song “Hai apna dil tau awara”. The latter was Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman starrer film produced by Chandrakant C Desai and directed by Raj Khosla. Rahul Dev Burman played the mouth organ under the music direction of his father SD Burman.

Hemant was from Bengali origin and Urdu/Hindi was not his mother tongue. His Urdu pronunciation therefore left much to be desired. The music composers of that era tried to take the best out of his voice despite this drawback. The film ‘Anarkali’ was music composer C Ramchander’s film. The song “Jaag Dard-e-Ishq Jaag Dil Lo Beqarar Kar” filmed in Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court on a court singer who tries to awaken the emotions of the courtesan Anarkali by singing this song. She awakens by not only joining him in the song but also dancing to an orchestra at the end of the vocals. Now it was Sunil Dutt’s turn to get restless in singing Kumar’s lines in the song “Neend Na Mujhko Aaye” where the gorgeous Shakila mimes Lata Mangeshkar’s portion from the film ‘Post Box #999’.

The best song of this film is “Zindigi Kitni Khoobsurat Hai” sung by Lata and Kumar separately.

The film ‘House # 44’ was made in 1955 with music by SD Burman. Kumar and Lata sang a duet where Kumar used his voice of a happy-go-lucky teenager singing “Ho Ho Ha Ha” only in a teasing tone. The song was “Peeche Peeche Aake Chu Lo Humay Paa Ke”. This movie had the leading pair Dev Anand, Kalpana Kartik. The lyrics were by Sahir Ludhiyanvi. One popular duet was “Aa Neele Gagan Tale Pyar Hum Karain” in the music of SK for the movie ‘Badshah’. The cast comprised Pardeep Kumar and Mala Sinha. Its music composer Ravi came out with a very catchy tune for a Bharat Vyas penned song “Ye Jhoomte Nazaare Tum Paas Ho Hamare” in the film ‘Nai Rahain’. Much later in 1965, the duo sang another catchy song in Kalyanji Anandji’s composed song “Itna Tou Keh Do Humse” for the film ‘Saheli’. My all-time favourite song is “Chupa Lo Yu Dil May Pyar Mera” from Roshan’s ‘Mamta’ and “Pukar Lo” from ‘Khamoshi’.

Kumar had three brothers and a sister, Nilima. In 1945, Kumar married Bela Mukherji, who was also a Bengali singer. Although Bela had sung some popular songs in a Bengali movie, ‘Kashinath’, with music by Pankaj Malik, she did not actively pursue her music career after marriage. They were blessed with two children, one boy named Jayant and one girl named Ranu. His son Jayant married the 1970’s film actress Moushmi Chatterji.