Words fell short when one begins writing about one of the greatest actors in the history of Hindi Cinema, the legendary Dilip Kumar. And the veteran thespian actually needs no introductory lines mentioning the commendable achievements in his splendid career span of almost half a century.
However, despite having seen his famous epic movies more than once, many die-hard fans of the maestro still might not have the information about the one instance wherein he actually rendered a classical song in an unbelievable manner in the late 50s. So Subhash Ghai’s KARMA is not the only film where Dilip Kumar gave his voice for a song (in its opening lines only) in 1986. But he did sing a rather difficult traditional, raag based composition in his film titled MUSAFIR too in the year 1957.
Interestingly the movie MUSAFIR, which was a light hearted, simple film talking about three different families coming to live in the same rented house one by one, had its own important value for few other reasons too.
It was Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s first film as a director after working with Bimal Roy as an editor and also the first Hindi film for the comedian Keshto Mukherjee. Besides it had a fabulous talented team working together, with Salil Choudhary as the music director, Ritwik Ghatak as script writer (along with Hrishi Da), dialogues by Rajendra Singh Bedi and lyrics by Shailendra. Written (story), produced and directed by Hrishi Da the film had Suchitra Sen, Durga Khote, Nirupa Roy, Kishore Kumar, Nazir Hussain, David and more playing the key roles.
Returning to our main focus here, it is said that after listening to Dilip Kumar humming something in his own mood, composer Salid Choudhary aksed him to sing along with Lata Mangeshkar for a sequence in the film. Agreeing to the thought (probably because of the respect felt for the maestros), Dilip Kumar performed the song confidently and the rendition really came out to be a truly touching one with great depth and feel, as if it had been sung by a trained classical exponent with perfection.
The song had the words, “Laagi Naahin Chhootey, Chahey Jiya Jaaye” and you can thankfully hear the song easily available in various uploads on the web. Listening to it for the first time, you probably would not believe that this is Dilip Kumar singing himself. But the fact is indeed a pleasant surprising truth and needs to be told, revealing another hidden gifted talent of the living legend, Dilip Kumar.
Thankfully at the time of writing this article, the complete movie “MUSAFIR” could also be seen at the following link:
and the exclusively rare song at :
Cheers!
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Dilip Kumar Sing a Classical Song, Dilip Kumar Sing in Musafir, Hrishikesh Mukherjee first film, Keshto Mukherjee first Hindi film, Rare Bollywood Facts by Bobby Sing, Exclusive Bollywood Trivia by Bobby Sing, Unknown Bollywood Facts at bobbytalkscinema.com
