Woh kagaz ki kashti...

"Tum chale jaoge to sochenge,

Humne kya khoya, humne kya paaya,

Zindegi dhoop, tum ghana saaya

Tumko dekha to iye khayal aaya..."

I was just an average kid from 80s. I was from a very middle class family, where the television belonged to the whole locality and VHS tapes were still in fashion. I had a bunch of cousins who were in their youth at that point of time and they liked music. They had a two-in-one and some cassettes. One of their distant relatives used to sing ghazals and thumri. Once or twice, she sang in the AIR Calcutta A. That was some feat then. Not everyone was a singing star performing in TV shows, radio channels or pubs. Pubs were considered low culture, TV had just one channel and radio was state run. Marriage functions were great places to hear some original voices. But Hindi film songs were considered too vulgar. That's just to give you the idea why the ghazal made a way in the middle class milieu and became an integral part of the middle class identity. Later, while doing my masters thesis, I'll find out "classical music was too heavy for the middle class, Hindi film songs were too lowly. The pop-ghazal had the perfect balance." 

   I'm grateful too my cousins for introducing me to a lot of music I'd later develop a taste for. Little did they know how music gets engraved in our mind. I was just a school boy. It is among those bundles of audio cassettes I heard Jagjit Singh's voice for the first time, along with Chitra Singh. I can't remember the name of the album, but it was a compilation of film hits by the pair. The cassette inlay had a black background with the face of the pair and had the song that'll become one of my all time favourites. At that point I had no idea what it meant, nor did I understand the musical technicalities. I recall now, I somehow retained the memory of the sound. It was the 80s, music came in magnetic audio tapes, films were in Eastman-colour, something called "Parallel Cinema" was still there, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Raj Babbar, Farukh Sheikh, Amol Palekar were stars of the 'intellectual' middle class, Jagjit-Chitra or Bhupinder Singh were preferred voices for music.

   As I grew up to my own teenage during the 90s, cassettes were still in use. Digital technology did come in, but it was still too costly for the middle class. Some of my friends had them, but they were a still a little more revered to be treated as entertainment gadgets. So we had our Walkmans, two-in-ones, tape-decks... The wealthier could afford a Music system, that had two cassette players and a CD player. One of the cassette players could also record anything from the other cassette, the CD or the FM radio. Oh yes, private FM channels had already come in, but they were not as many or as talkative as today and their reception depended on the position of the antenna! Being able to record was quite a technological challenge. You had to time the two devices, push the switches in the right order and be able to handle them. It demanded practice and efficiency. If you missed something, it meant a series of rewinding and fast forwarding and doing it again. Buttons have not appeared and switches had to be pushed and not touched. I was kind of a techie already. So I mastered the art. One of my close friends had a music system and I had the urge. Initially, we tried that to copy whole cassettes. We were simply unaware of the term "piracy"! Then we started recording stuff for plays at school and locality. But the triumph was the compilation cassette. We sourced a variety of songs from  multiple origins, recorded them in a well thought order and gifted them to the person we wished to impress. CDs were too costly and too complicated to burn. In fact, the cassette was just the right size. A CD would've provided too much space. The number of songs on a compilation cassette could range from 8-12. All that effort just to say a three letter word. Hell, I miss the 90s! Needless to say I was quite a champion of it, doing it for myself and for my friends as well. It was the 90s, music was changing, it was the time for remixes and remakes. Cinema was changing, so were its preferred stars. But, there were a few songs that would appear on almost all such compilation cassettes.

   That was the second time I encountered Jagjit Singh's voice and fell in love. My friend could afford the original cassettes, I would just record. Many of our teenage afternoons were spent listening to them. He was on a singing spree. My friend predicted he'll become silent in a few years. He didn't, and thank god he didn't! As I grew up my music changed. I shifted from one genre to another, but somehow I always felt comfortable in melody and in baritone. The romantic intonations and the brilliance of words somehow kept going with me. I grew older, and after quite some experiments with music, a few years back I started coming back to Hindustani Classical music. Once again ghazal was my way in. As I struggled with the concepts and grammar of it, I downloaded a whole collection of Jagjit Singh's works. Those who understood Hindustani music better than me, told me he isn't good enough. But then, one just doesn't have to be good to make one feel at peace. Before the technical knowledge comes the inexplicable liking for it. That's why when a popular artist fades away, they take too many memories with them. Too many to consist an era.

   I had an affinity for Ghalib's poetry. I don't know why, I think I can trace it back to the same period when the TV serial on his life was being telecast. There is something about that period, that determines my middle class existence, my cultural roots. I now know there are a lot of things about it that's not politically correct or very mediocre, but I refuse to grow old without my childhood and teenage reality. In the past few weeks I've had a new friend. That is not so normal given the person I've become these days. She has re-introduced me to the world of Urdu poetry. In one of our very early conversations she text me some lines from Ghalib. I had downloaded all episodes of the Mirza Ghalib TV serial from torrents a few months back. It is the new millennium, everything's on the internet, poetry is available as e-books, music can be transferred and heard through phones, every computer is a film archive. As I am blogging this very personal and unusual obituary, I'm thinking I'll listen to the complete works of Jagjit Singh once more, and fall in love again.