Music doctor

At his Rajat Apartment in Malabar Hill,all noise is shut down between 5.00 pm and 6.00 pm. “No one does any carpentry work or anything noisy. Because that is when I sing and the entire building listens,” says eminent physician Dr O P Kapoor.

The 77-year-old known for his marathon,12-hour lectures for final-year MBBS students is the ‘permanent’ president of an unusual group: the Bathroom Singers Association (BSA),now into its 25th year.

“I used to be shy and was petrified of singing in public but I would spend time in the bathroom humming songs,” recalls Dr Kapoor. Today,over 100 of his friends and colleagues are BSA members.

Born in Pakistan,Dr Kapoor graduated from GMC and is recognised as the doctor of Bollywood’s Kapoor family and other actors and actresses. He had detected a kind of cancer in Prithviraj Kapoor and had later treated Raj Kapoor. The next four generations of Kapoors have been taking his medical advice.

After 30 years in practice,he retired from GMC in 1985.

“Until then,I had been spending every minute either practising medicine or teaching students. After retirement,I wanted a change,” he says. His long-suppressed hobby,of which none of his friends and colleagues,barring his medical college roommates,had a clue about until then,came to his aid.

For his hobby,he cut down visiting hours at Jaslok Hospital and kept up only his private practice at Colaba,which he continues.

He converted one of the rooms in his flat so that he could sing in company of live musicians. “I started singing and recording songs with a few of my patients who could play instruments,along with a professional tabla player. I would sing and invite friends and colleagues along with families to hear me,” he says.

He has over 30 hours of recorded songs from Kishore Kumar to Mohammed Rafi and Mukesh to K L Sehgal. Dr Kapoor has his own studio complete with files of lyrics and a digital recorder,digital mixer and a microphone. “I just put the CD of my old recorded songs and sing along. I get lost while singing.”

He practices for an hour every day singing 16 songs of one CD. After 25 years of singing,he has mastered the art of copying the deep-throated Rafi to the nasal Mukesh. “I have got better with age. My voice has improved. I have graduated from a bathroom singer,” says Dr Kapoor.

All the rooms of his flat are fitted with speakers so that people in the house,including his wife,can hear him when he sings in the music room.

As Dr Kapoor started his musical ‘mehfil’,he forced others to join him. “People would tell me they have never done this. I would still make them sing and make them hear their voice on a recorded cassette and they would never believe they could flex their vocal chords so well.”

Word soon spread about the BSA and reluctant friends and collegues started joining in.  “I record songs and gift it to them. People would be surprised to find they have a good voice.”

Female doctors and students would join him for duets and he would record them. Dr Kapoor now jokes that he doesn’t need a female company to sing duets. “I just play the CD and sing the male version.”

In 2000,he released an audio CD at the hands of Kalyanji-Anandji.