I believe I have talked about Kishore Kumar's skills as a composer earlier and if I have, then I would unfailingly have expressed my deep, deep admiration of a masterpiece from Door kaa raahi, pa.nthii huu.N mai.n us path kaa. This post is only about that song because it is playing on my upgraded Mac OS X (Lion) system right now and I feel tears welling up again as I hear the melody play out.
Songs such as this capture the deep sensitivity of Kishore Kumar, a factor that he appeared to conceal by performing diametrically opposite characters in films. This glorious song is perhaps the brightest gem of the literal treasure of melodies that Kishore created in this off-beat film that ffew cared to watch. Its the store of a man in search of himself.. it stays away from adding any glitter-glamour of the typical Bombay film world. Its a throwback to the simplistic mode of films perfected by Bimal Roy and leter Hrishikesh Mukherjee albeit without any major leading heroes and heroines of the time barring Tanuja to an extent.
panthii huuN mai.n is beautiful poetry written in pure Hindi by A.Irshad. Kishore has brought to life the words through a brilliant composition that relies almost entirely on a simple, minimal Indian orchestra -mostly sitar, violin and the tabla. The prominence is on the emotional depth of the rendition,Kishore does what you would typically expect only a Lata or Talat or Mukesh to do - just pull the tears to your eyes. It is a depth of rendition that Kishore rarely got the oppurtunity to render during his prime. It is a sad loss.. because you listen even to his lighter romantic songs like vo dekhen to unakii inaayat (Fantoosh) and tum jahaaN jahaaN (Apna haath jagannaath), you realize the potential of the man. You wonder how things would have been if he had gotten to sing more for the likes of Anil Biswas, Khemchand Prakash.. those masters. But even as a composer of this one song alone, he deserves posterity..
Sheer magic !!
