Jagjit Singh the singer is famous. But I came to know him for his spontaneous warmth, charming old-world courtesy,
and down-to-earth modesty
By Azim Ghani
It was one of those memorable things that just happen. Jagjit Singh, then all the rage in India and Pakistan for singing ghazals written mostly by old and contemporary masters, in discussion over the finer points of poetry with one of Urdu’s last major poets, Shanul Haq Haqqee. The occasion, a dinner at my family home in Karachi in February 1979.
It was the result of sheer coincidence that I, a non-musician, had struck up an unlikely friendship with the singer and his wife Chitra in the early days of their visit to Karachi. We met during the break in a programme at a hotel in which he and Chitra Singh regaled their audience (everyone seated on the carpet the desi way). Jagjit was delighted at my keen interest in our great film music of the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s, interest in which even then was beginning to fade in Pakistan. He was pleased by facts and information I had about quite a few of those songs, their singers, composers and poets, and anecdotes related to the melodies.
Thereafter, on his strong insistence, I visited the couple’s hotel room for lunch almost every day in the nearly two weeks he and Chitra were in Karachi, staying at what was then the Metropole – now a decaying building that remains one of Karachi’s beloved old landmarks. The chats during lunch invariably included discussion of popular Urdu-Hindi music, which sometimes turned into good-natured arguments when our opinions clashed, particularly regarding a certain Pakistani singer Jagnit loved but I was less enthusiastic about.
Soon the geniality and banter led up to that dinner, at which we invited some close members of my family, including my uncle Haqqee Sahab and his wife Salma Haqqee, a professor of Urdu since before Partition whose own scholarship was eclipsed by her husband’s stature. Jagjit had set two firm conditions for coming over: that the food served include nahari (it’s another matter that Sikhs, like Hindus, typically avoid beef), and that he not be requested to sing. Too bad Chitra was unable to come.
Haqqee Sahab noted with much appreciation Jagjit and Chitra’s fine selection of ghazals, some of them by poets whose poetry is seldom part of popular singers’ repertory: Raghupati Suhae Firaq Gorakhpuri, for instance, one of the topmost ghazal poets of the 20th century. Or Andaleeb Shadani. Or Raana Akbarabadi’s “Sunte hain ke mil jaati hai har cheez dua se…” The Beloved in the Jagjit-Chitra ghazal with its extremely moving melody is the late poet’s young son, who left home back in 1951 (it was Haqqee Sahab who later ascertained the year) and was never seen or heard of again.
Who could predict that a similar tragedy would befall the couple a decade later. Jagjit and Chitra lost their own son, Vivek, to a road accident in July 1990. Vivek, whom Jagjit was grooming to be a musician, was only 19 when he was killed. Jagjit mourned the loss in a song written by poet Javed Akhtar. The opening line, addressed to Vivek, is: “Main bhool-haun tumhen, ab yehi munasib hai.” Chitra Singh gave up singing after losing Vivek. And then… on May 30, 2009, Monica Chowdhary, Chitra’s 49-year-old married daughter from her first husband, committed suicide at home in Bombay, while the mother was staying with her.
Jagjit’s career started with the singing of popular ghazals and songs by Talat Mehmood. (Chitra, meanwhile, had been singing mostly Lata Mangeshkar at non-professional events, as she told me.) That singing took Jagjit to the East African countries with their large South Asian communities, and to the Far East. But his singing made for little regular income. So Jagjit, and Chitra after they met up and married in 1969, “went professional,” so to speak – but merely singing jingles for television commercials. Thus, what started out as something meant to keep the pot boiling developed into the couple becoming international icons.
Everyone knows Jagjit Singh the singer. But In the days we were together, I came to know the person behind the singer for his spontaneous warmth, his charming old-world courtesy (although he was then only 38), and his down-to-earth modesty despite his fame. Just a couple of examples of this. Because an over-speeding car tailing me had smashed up my car’s boot, I was forced to keep the spare tyre on the backseat until I could have the repairs done. Any time I had an extra passenger when he and I were going somewhere in my car, Jagjit would invariably give up the passenger seat and sit next to the dusty spare. And what a host. At his hotel room one afternoon, singer Mohammad Ali Shekhi and radio journalist Saleem Jaffree dropped in. Before any of the musicians having lunch with us could offer to do the job, or me, a younger friend, Jagjit picked up some used greasy dishes to take to the bathroom sink to wash them for the new guests.
He was an ardent admirer of Talat Mehmood, and of Mehdi Hasan he was a virtual devotee. But Mohammad Rafi was the “most complete” singer in his opinion, because he was equally at ease with light and semi-classical singing. Jagjit told me he’d love to compose and sing a jingle or two for Pakistani television. With my good contacts in advertising those days, I tried to get him offers but those I approached were cool to my suggestions – probably some form of professional insecurity.
But such was the atmosphere under Zia-ul-Haq (and in those tense days just a few weeks before the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) that Haqqee Sahab, himself a senior PTV official at the time, failed to get the couple invited to Tariq Aziz’s Neelam Ghar. Not even as members of the audience, let alone as stage guests. Because Jagjit and Chitra Singh were from India.
The writer is a businessman with lifelong interest in Urdu-Hindi popular music of the 40s, 50, 60s and 70s.
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