Source: CC.Lehigh.EDU ! netnews.CC.Lehigh. EDU!netnews. upenn.edu! dsinc! spool.mu.edu !howland.reston.ans.net !swrinde !news.dell.com !tadpole.com !uunet !boulder!spot.Colorado.EDU!parrikarFrom: parrikar@spot.Colorado.EDU (Rajan Purshottam Parrikar) Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.misc
Subject: From the KK-Klan Headquarters Date: 28 Sep 1994 05:46:28 GMT Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Lines: 210
Message-ID: <36avvk$r1i@CUBoulder.Colorado.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host:spot.colorado.edu Namashkaar.
Here is yetanudder piece on Kishore Kumar, in commemoration of The One and Only’s seventh death anniversary which falls on October 13.

Rajan

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In the meantime, Kishore – who had switched lanes from the singing star to the king of the playback empire – kept doing better and better, for those were the golden days of both the film industry and the music business. Piracy had still not arrived on the scene and big films were raking in big money. The record companies were competing with each other for the high stakes in the music business and everything was ticketty boo. The king of the bompitty boom boom boom boom was yodelling away to glory, sitting on top of the heap.

But things are no longer the same these days. The death watch is on in the movie business, with rampant video piracy and popular television wooing away the audiences. The bottom has dropped out of the music industry and the recording companies are virtually counting their last days. The great music directors have died or have simply faded away. And even though Kishore still remains on the top, he is a sad, dis- illusioned man filled with memories of better days.

He is now married again. To actress Leena Chandavarkar, who has borne him another son. And they live together as a happy family, surrounded by thousands of horror film cassettes and memories of years gone by.

The kinks remain. The skull in the bedroom with red light emerging from its eyes. The upturned chairs in the living room. The relics of the old car that played the protagonist in Chalti ka Naam Gadi. The large photographs and posters of his idols staring down at you from every corner of the house. The cuckoo clock in the living room. The board outside Gaurikunj that warns you to enter at your own risk. The phone that rings and rings for hours before anyone attends to it.

If he keeps his word and quits Bombay, as he has threatened to last month, tinseltown will be poorer. And it’s just possible he might. For his native Khandwa still beckons to him: the call of the skies, the trees, the good earth – for a simple man who loved all these and lost them, chasing the quick buck in Bombay’s asphalt jungle. He never loved the city. He hated the movie business and had honest contempt for its people. All he did was make money and hope for a miracle. The miracle never happened. The void in his heart just grew and grew. And less and less people understood the agony and the ecstasy of his stardom, as he found himself pushed more and more into the privacy of his own world, searching for his own truths.

They call him crazy. But who is more crazy? Kishore Kumar or those who try to perpetuate this ruthless, insensate rat race where only the winners count. What victory? At what price? Let’s ask Kishore himself.

Rajan Parrikar :-email: parrikar@spot.colorado.edu rajan@anteng.ssd.loral.com

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