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Journalism of Courage
With the passing away of Mahendra Kapoor, we have lost yet another of the very few left from Hindi cinema8217;s golden era. My first cinema 8220;movie8221; was not vogue yet experience was a Kapoor. It was Upkaar and I have memory only of the number, 8220;Mere desh ki dharti8221;, and Manoj Kumar singing it as he ploughs a field. It was only much later that I got to connect that voice to Mahendra Kapoor.
When, trying to make sense of my inner world of sound, I recollect my tranquillity 8212; I track those moments which I8217;d, in my musical solipsism, termed aural orgasm. They come from diverse voices, from different traditions. Mahendra Kapoor, to me, is another melodic cue altogether. His singing leaves me distinctly refreshed: a booming voice that bears you along in expanding cascades, clearing the subliminal desiderata of the day8217;s clutter. Most compositions do that when beautifully conceived, most music does that when ably rendered. However, with Kapoor it8217;s particularly so: you start imploding as if the sound of a conch shell is filling you out, unpicking you and then piecing you together anew, at least for a musical while. There is an irrepressible verve, a fullness of articulation. That full-throated effusion makes Kapoor a class of his own. Many awards had come Kapoor8217;s way. Starting his career with what the music world in the late 8217;50s called a Rafi stamp on his style, Kapoor broke through with something entirely his own before the decade closed: 8220;Adhaa hai chandrama8221; for Navrang 8212; that gossamer caress to V. Shantaram8217;s cinematic lyricism. His oeuvre is as full-bodied as any illustrious singer of the times, in which we have had the best of India8217;s 20th-century popular music: he sang variedly and in regional languages too, including in far-flung Oriya. The last memorable crescendo his conch-shell voice rose to was in the signature song that preludes the television serial, Mahabharat.
