Retrospective

Siingh,with music in his family,had always admired the composer but his decision to make a film was made in Karachi where he was attending the Kara Film Festival nearly four years ago. He reminisces: “Busy with my own life till then,I was hoping that as opposed to compiling a 10-minute tribute on his birthday every year,someone would make a comprehensive documentary on Panchamda. But I took it upon myself when,in Karachi,during one of the closing dinners,a small band started to play a series of songs composed by him. Their Sufiana rendition of Musafir Hoon Yaron had me in.”

After three years of active work,which involved interviewing 40 musicians,actors and family members of the composer,the filmmaker finally had his work ready. “One would ideally presume that most of the content came from Asha Bhosle,who was extremely close to him,but I wanted the distilled reality to emerge and hence chose a variety of people,including radio jockey Ameen Sayani,Louis Banks,Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia,or even contemporary composers like Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Vishal Bharadwaj.”

Siingh says that one fact that he unraveled about the musician which touched him the most is that in an industry where back-biting is the way to be,Burman is still loved by all. His documentary,says the filmmaker,focuses on Burman’s work and how it has influenced the industry.

The documentary has already travelled to a host of film festivals,including the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles,Imagine India and the Indian Film

Festival in Stuttgart,Siingh has also compiled a coffee-table book with some rare photographs of Burman as a part of the collector’s edition.