This magnificently romantic number was filmed on Salim Khan, the handsome father of Salman Khan, who came to Bombay from Indore to become a hero. Now comes his third best: Mujhe tumse muhabbat hai magar main kah(not ‘keh’, this is erroneous English transliteration of Hindi/Urdu terms) nahin sakta (Film: Bachpan, Lyrics: Hasrat Jaipuri, Music: Sardar Malik, 1963, print and video unavailable). Rafi didn’t take any money for this song. Rarely played nowadays, Shammi Kapoor cried after listening to this song and Roshan Lal Nagrath asked Anand Bakshi after its recording, “ Recording room mein koi farishta gaa raha tha kya?” (Was there an angel singing this song in the recording room?). Contrary to Shammi’s flamboyant image, this is one song which is very sombre. In this film, Rafi jokingly nudged Shammi Kapoor that, ‘ Parde pe aapko ye naghma zara sanjeedgi se gaana hai‘ (You’re supposed to lip-synch on celluloid with controlled emotions). The song, which he considered to be his second-best, was: ‘ Gham-e-hasti se bas begana hota, khudaya kaash main deewana hota‘ (Film: Wallah Kya Baat Hai, Lyrics: Anand Bakhshi, Composer: Roshan Lal Nagarath, 1962). Rafi had many songs that remain unreleased till today. This song has the longest prelude - one minute and 16 seconds - in the history of film music and it’s on the Stradivarius violin, first and last time used in Indian film or popular music, played by Kunwar Mahendra Pratap Singh, the scion of a royal family in Rajasthan.
But its song ‘ Kaise kategi zindagi….’ survived and was brought to listeners’ notice only after the demise of Rafi in 1980. The film had to be shelved owing to lack of funds. Had it happened, it would have been Uttam’s maiden foray into Hindi cinema. This song was the closest to the great man’s heart as it was to be picturised on his best friend Uttam Kumar, the icon of Bengali cinema. To start with, the first song that Rafi always considered as his best was: Kaise kategi zindagi tere baghair(Film: Kaise kategi zindagi, unreleased, 1963). Well, when I met Sadiq Ali in Sargodha, Punjab-Pakistan for my second Doctorate on ‘Rafi ki aawaaz ki naghmai baareeqiyan‘ (the musical nuances of Rafi’s voice), he provided rare insights into the songs which Rafi shared with him. This proves that a creative person’s perceptions dramatically undergo a sea-change to accept something altogether new and novel. Way back in 1961, when Vimala and Kamini Ganjwar of Radio Ceylon interviewed him for a Hindi magazine and asked Rafi about his best songs, the singer replied, “ Muhabbat zinda rahti hai, muhabbat mar nahin sakti (Changez Khan, Qamar Jalalabadi Hansraj Bahal, 1956), Maine chaand aur sitaron ki tamanna ki thi (Film: Chandrakanta, Lyrics: Sahir Ludhianavi, Music: Dutta Naik aka N Dutta, 1956) and Aaye bahaar ban ke lubhaye chale gaye (Film: Raajhath, Lyricist: Hasrat Jaipuri, Music: Shankar-Jaikishan, 1958).”īut, when late Sadiq Ali of BBC interviewed him in 1979 and later for The Jung Group of Newspapers in Pakistan, Rafi selected some amazingly beautiful, but very rare songs as his best and didn’t mention any of the three songs that he liked in 1961. When it comes to picking up Rafi’s five best songs, one really gets confounded because the man sang so many fabulous songs that choosing just five best is akin to looking for a needle in the haystack. Mohammad Rafi with former prime minister Indira Gandhi. I’m afraid, even writer Raju Bhartan’s Rafi Geet Kosh doesn’t have these songs like, Ae meri jaane-tamanna, meri jaan-e-ghazal….‘ (Film Sundari, 1950), Ek jaam pila de saaqi, raat abhi hai baaqi (Tere Do Nain, 1951), among others. All India Radio, Urdu Service and Vividh Bharati also don’t have many songs that the stalwart sang in his distinguished career. Nearly 70 songs have no official LP records and were never uploaded on YouTube. Out of the 7,405 songs (not 26,000 that’s an exaggeration by hardcore Rafi fans) in several Indian languages, Rafi sang 4,334 Hindi songs.
Ek maamooli mutrib hoon, faqat gaana jaanta hoon (I’m but an ordinary singer I know just to sing), he had once said. Even after almost four decades, the genius of Rafi is still discussed and deified. The last line of Shakeel Badayuni’s immortal quatrain seems apt to define the boundless musical greatness of the one and only Mohammad Rafi, who breathed his last 39 years ago on Friday, July 31, 1980.
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