It started on a normal sultry night of 1996 in Surat. 90's, the decade of awesome bollywood music and walkmans with AA rechargable batteries. A summer vacation plan always had a list of cassettes to be tugged along and this trip was none too different. The only problem was that I had heard my lot of cassettes a gazillion times and was looking to listen to something new. We had our regular cassette shop opposite the railway station where we used to make our last minute purchases. I went to the store and was generally browsing through the collection when a cassette in one of the new plastic covers caught my attention. What really amazed me about the cassette was the fact that it had a small booklet inside it, a first for me. I got it on gut instinct without the knowledge that this Rs 45/-was to start a love affair that would last forever. The album : Face to Face...The artist : Jagjit Singh...The love : Ghazals.
The journey from Dairo haram(Surat) to Pyaar ka pehle khat(3rd round by time we reached Delhi) had an impact which no other album before or after ever has had on me. The small booklet had the lyrics of each song with the meanings of the Urdu words in hindi.By the time we reached Delhi I was an official to-be Jagjit fanboy and I had already embarked upon the journey to be a true fan. I started buying his albums one by one and in no time had almost all his albums. While my friends were going gaga over "Raja Hindustani" all I could do was pity at their shallow taste in music. My cousins thought I was heartbroken or something and used to give me wierd looks when I used to go gaga over each song. I never understood why they could not appreciate these songs as I did. At one point during my "fan" days, if you gave me a jagjit song I could name the album, the side and the order in which it would come! and this was by 1998!!
For me and I am sure most of the young kids those days, Love was this untold admiration of someone which was not to be shared with the concerned individual so as to save yourself from the public ridicule it ensued. Love in this form needed a voice of passion that could drown the pain that it brought and to the young kid in me it was Jagjit's. Every heartbreak made you understand the depth of each song a little more and you could relate to the soulful longing in each song. Baat niklegi tho, Hum tho yun apni zindagi se mile, kaun ayega yahan, munh ki baat sune har koi created this bond with the lyricist based on the knowledge that he too would have gone through the same pain to pen down the exact emotion so beautifully.
The summer of 2000 gave me opportunity to meet the voice that had consoled me on so many occasions. Jagjit was performing in Surat and I had to watch him in concert. The stumbling block? The ticket price of 300/-. I am sure you can understand the enormity of the amount if you ever were a hostelite in an engineering college. Your cash in hand in the beginning of the month used to be zilch after repayment of the previous month debts on the arrival of the money order. But I was determined to not let go of this opportunity so I sacrificed 150 cups of tea/30 dosas/ 30 cold drinks to fight the Surat summer to attend 3 blissful hours of the concert. Jagjit took us all to a magical place starting with hoton se chulo tum and ending it with Sarakti jayein hain rukh se. I floated back to my dorm on cloud nine.
The journey from a kid to a young man had its share of heartbreaks and logically leading to further appreciation of the lyrics and the voice that made you feel the weight of each and every word.
Times change and so do we and our choices but the beautiful memories of the past always make you appreciate life more. I am married now and recently was on a long drive with my wife when the mp3 player in the car started playing the live recording of Jagjit and Chitra in Royal Albert Hall in London. I had no idea how my wife will react to ghazals but with each successive song she too was falling in love with my love. Those 1:30+ hours, the duration of the recording, took us back to our courtship days and made me realize that I had found the voice that loved mine.
Jagjit is no more but his voice will continue to define love and longing for generations to come. Rest in peace my friend.
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