North Calcutta is an intricate mesh of lanes and by-lanes, winding their way round usually dilapidated, often big, houses — uninviting to the uninitiated, but repositories of history, or almost. More labyrinthine than Manna Dey’s memoir Jibaner Jalsaghare (Memories Come Alive), the north is acknowledged to have more character, as, say, residents of Madan Ghosh Lane nonchalantly live with, their locality intimately, and inextricably, linked to the history of Indian cinema. All thanks to the nonagenarian just nominated for the Dada Saheb Phalke Award for 2007 albeit, as his own legendary stoicism would bear out, an award here, an honour there would make little difference to his legacy.

Dey’s ancestral house, 9, Madan Ghosh Lane, however, has had musical precedents — in his elder brother, Pranab, and, more famously, in his blind uncle, Krishna Chandra Dey (“Kana Keshto”), who laid the groundwork for the legend his nephew would become. That legend is well-documented, having dominated Bombay’s playback arena for more than two decades in the last century, with a discography exceeding 3000 songs. Dey also boasts a formidable non-film repertoire. But a life defined by music, wherein he uniquely bridged Hindustani classical music with the popular, makes it easy to overlook that Dey was also a serious wrestler in his youth and almost became a lawyer out of filial loyalty.

Dey began with Tamanna in 1943 and had his first hit in Mashaal (1950), with an S.D. Burman solo, in a career that would see him record a duet with Bhimsen Joshi as well as bequeath generations of Indians “Yeh Dosti” (Sholay). That near-anthem of youthful bonding finds its sad denouement in his latter-day Bengali hit “Coffee Houser Shei Addata” (That Coffee House Adda) — an elegy on times and friends lost. Things do change; it’s a legacy that perpetuates our existence and efforts.