The Stranger.....

Mahendra Kapoor is no more....

His demise happened couple of days back. I am surprised I am late to mention it in this blog.... Because he is one of those singers who has sung such a gem of songs- especially sad and patriotic numbers, that I really love to hear repeatedly..

I am used to hearing hindi songs from a long time... I started watching Rangoli program in DD when I was around 10 years. But I started hearing them seriously from when I was 15, when I bought an audio cassette of Kishore Kumar songs sung by Abhijeet. I started collecting cassettes of Kishore, Rafi and Mukesh which where available in plenty. I was not aware of Mahendra Kapoor then. After 5 more years when I was working at Bangalore my room mate bought an old cassette of a collection of sad songs, of which many I had heard before. I thought they were sung by Rafi. My friend corrected me and explained about Mahendra Kapoor.

After repeatedly hearing them I really started loving those soulful, melodious numbers. Some of those songs were 'Andhere mein jo baithe hain', 'Mere desh ki dharti', 'Cahlo ek baar phirse', 'Tum agar satth dene ka' etc. He was the voice of Manoj Kumar as Mukesh was to Raj Kapoor.

After some more years I happened to read an article about poet Sahir Ludhiyaanvi who had written the lyrics of the song ' Chalo ek baar'. In it was the circumstances that led him to write the song. After reading that I started loving the song much more. I was more humbled by the singing of Mahendra Kapoor, because he was able to portray the true emotion that may be felt by Sahir while penning the poem.

'Chalo ek baar' Video