The legend of Kishore Kumar began 37 years back, when a young lad
from Khandwa turned up in Bombay, to meet his brother Ashok Kumar, then a superstar, and
wangle an introduction to K.L. Saigal, the great singer whom he idolised.
He never got to meet Saigal, but was coaxed, cajoled, bullied into
stardom and ended up becoming the most successful comic hero Hindi films has ever seen.
With a long string of hits to his credit and an unfulfilled ambition to be the most famous
singer in the land.
The ambition he realised much later, as his songs began to find a
bigger and bigger market in the land. So he quit the grime and greasepaint and stuck to
warbling. Becoming a bigger and bigger star in the process.
Today, he is on the top. The unquestionable king of the disc. Paid
an incredible amount for every song he sings. And chased by a virtual army of income tax
officers, hoping to get their hands on part of the money.
Married to four of the most interesting women in filmdom, at
different times of his life -Ruma Devi, Madhubala, Yogeeta Bali and Leena Chandavarkar -
Kishore Kumar's penchant for the comic and the bizarre has created a strange reputation
for him. Everyone thinks he is crazy and the stories doing the rounds are absolutely
incredible. If rumours are to be believed, he has turned cuckoo several times already.
Pritish Nandy met the singing superstar last week, just after his
announcement that he was quitting everything and going back to his ancestral village at
Khandwa. To sit back and watch the sun set in its glorious hues.
Who would like to stay in this hell hole?, declaims Kishore Kumar.
Bombay stinks. So does this stupid, juvenile film industry where money alone speaks the
language of power, talent and authority. I'd rather go back to my roots.
He doesn't smoke. He doesn't drink. He has no friends and never
socialises. And there's one thing he treasures more than money. His solitude. That's
Kishore Kumar for you, the man with the golden voice, who has reigned over the world of
popular music for almost two decades now.
A madcap genius, fiercely committed to the bizarre and the
outrageous, he has over the years nurtured carefully his image as a strange, unpredictable
man who defies definition. At the same time he has sung and danced his way into the hearts
of millions of Indians who swear by him. So the film industry, always a worshipper of
success, has chased him with money and accolades. In the hope of taming him, as it has
always tamed the talented. But, to Kishore Kumar, this has meant nothing. He has wallowed
in solitude, yodelling at the moon. He has married four of the most interesting women in
the industry and picked up more money than you and I can ever dream of. And, what is
perhaps most important, done it without compromising anything whatsoever. On his own
terms. Always.
At his peak, when for almost a decade he was number one to number
ten, all rolled into one, and there was no one to be seen anywhere around, he would be
running from one recording studio to the next. Singing sometimes four to five songs a day.
And charging exactly one rupee less than Lata Mangeshkar - in deference to her seniority.
What precisely does that mean in terms of actual figures? Well, if rumours are to be
believed - and usually relaible industry sources - every song recorded would make him Rs.
15000 richer. Multiply that by several songs a day, and a reign over almost two decades,
and you have Fort Knox at Juhu.
Not bad for a man who never had any formal training in music nor a
guru. Who still can't read notations and cannot name more than three classical Indian
singers without prompting. He has only four idols in life. K.L. Saigal; Marlon Brando;
Boris Karloff; and Topol of Fiddler on the Roof fame. All over his house you will see
their giant-sized photo- graphs and posters framed. And, if you share his enthusiasm for
them, he might just condescend to give you the time of day. Otherwise you might never get
to see the man - so ferociously does he preserve his privacy. Interviews are out. Visitors
rarely get past the front gate.
Kishore Kumar Ganguly, for that is his full name, arrived in
Bombay in the late forties, in the hope of meeting K.L. Saigal, his childhood idol. But
pecualiar circumstances - and the fact that his eldest brother Ashok Kumar was already a
hit hero of those days - forced him into bit roles as an actor. He hated acting but was
too scared to tell his elder brother that. So singing got pushed into the background and
he started to make a living as an actor.
Luck stood by the shy young man and within a couple of years he
hit the big league. As the funny hero, who sang, danced and entertained - as against the
usual dour-faced, romantic kinds, who would break into tears at the slightest pretext. It
worked. And Kishore Kumar became a runaway success. So popular was he in those days that
he could hardly keep track of the number of films he was doing. And his habit of trying to
always play truant began the legend of the eccentric. Producers and directors were always
chasing him - and he was perpetually trying to run away from the sets. Where? To the
privacy of his home, where he lived alone. For Ruma, his first wife, had already left him
and gone to Calcutta - where she settled down with a little-known film-maker.
So busy was he in those days that once in a while someone else had
to playback for him. Like Mohammad Rafi did in Shararat. Unbelievable for someone whose
first love was singing and who was determined to ultimately get down to it seriously.
He now married for the second time. Madhubala, the most exquisite
heroine that Indian cinema has perhaps ever produced, was his second wife. But, she, alas,
was a very sick woman then and they spent nine tormented years together - during which
period he virtually sat by and watched her die of a congenital heart ailment that no one
could cure.
Meanwhile the legends grew. Of his weird ways. His strange,
outlandish lifestyle. His miserliness. His quirks. His kinky behaviour. Legends he
encouraged because they helped him to preserve his solitude and kept the industry at a
distance. An industry he had nothing but contempt for.
The stories are legion about how he taught erring producers
lessons. Particularly those who failed to pay him his dues in time. Once he turned up on
the sets with exactly half his face made up because the producer had only settled half his
dues. Another time, an unluckier producer found him with half his head and half his
moustache shaved off because he had not paid him more than half his money. The shooting
schedules had to be cancelled for almost a month. Mehmood, one of the few people in the
industry he can still call a friend, has described how he once had to hire a pistol to
threaten Kishore Kumar so that he could come to the sets. He laughs off most of these
stories today as exaggeration but concedes that he had to try every trick in the trade -
and many outside it as well - just to make people pay him his legitimate dues in an
industry notorious for its unkept promises.
As for the money he has made, he claims that the income tax
authorities have virtually reduced him to penury by taxing him on not just whatever he has
earned but adding on interest on all delayed payments. It will take me more than another
lifetime to settle all my dues with them, once and for all, rues the singer in one of his
rare serious moments.
After living alone for quite some years after the legendary
Madhubala's death, Kishore Kumar tied the nuptial knot again. This time, with the young
and upcoming actress, Yogeeta Bali. It was his shortest marriage and collapsed even before
it got going, thanks to the bitter feud between the actress' ambitious mother and the
irritable husband. A quick divorce, and a reportedly large settlement, and she was out of
his Gaurikunj like a shot - to marry Mithun Chakravarty, the actor, shortly thereafter.
In the meantime, Kishore - who had switched lanes from the singing
star to the king of the playback empire - kept doing better and better, for those were the
golden days of both the film industry and the music business. Piracy had still not arrived
on the scene and big films were raking in big money. The record companies were competing
with each other for the high stakes in the music business and everything was ticketty boo.
The king of the bompitty boom boom boom boom was yodelling away to glory, sitting on top
of the heap.
But things are no longer the same these days. The death watch is
on in the movie business, with rampant video piracy and popular television wooing away the
audiences. The bottom has dropped out of the music industry and the recording companies
are virtually counting their last days. The great music directors have died or have simply
faded away. And even though Kishore still remains on the top, he is a sad, dis- illusioned
man filled with memories of better days.
He is now married again. To actress Leena Chandavarkar, who has
borne him another son. And they live together as a happy family, surrounded by thousands
of horror film cassettes and memories of years gone by.
The kinks remain. The skull in the bedroom with red light emerging
from its eyes. The upturned chairs in the living room. The relics of the old car that
played the protagonist in Chalti ka Naam Gadi. The large photographs and posters of his
idols staring down at you from every corner of the house. The cuckoo clock in the living
room. The board outside Gaurikunj that warns you to enter at your own risk. The phone that
rings and rings for hours before anyone attends to it.
If he keeps his word and quits Bombay, as he has threatened to
last month, tinseltown will be poorer. And it's just possible he might. For his native
Khandwa still beckons to him: the call of the skies, the trees, the good earth - for a
simple man who loved all these and lost them, chasing the quick buck in Bombay's asphalt
jungle. He never loved the city. He hated the movie business and had honest contempt for
its people. All he did was make money and hope for a miracle. The miracle never happened.
The void in his heart just grew and grew. And less and less people understood the agony
and the ecstasy of his stardom, as he found himself pushed more and more into the privacy
of his own world, searching for his own truths.
They call him crazy. But who is more crazy? Kishore Kumar or those
who try to perpetuate this ruthless, insensate rat race where only the winners count. What
victory? At what price? Let's ask Kishore himself.
From : Filmfare's special issue (Nov 1-15, 1987),
less than a month after KK's death