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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