He then goes on to describe his encounter with an interior decorator. “I told him that I wanted something very simple for my living room. Just water — several feet deep — and little boats floating around, instead of large sofas. I told him that the centre-piece should be anchored down so that the tea service could be placed on it and all of us could row up to it in our boats and take sips from our cups. But the boats should be properly balanced, I said, otherwise we might whizz past each other and conversation would be difficult... I told him that I wanted live crows hanging from the walls instead of paintings — since I liked nature so much. And, instead of fans, we could have monkeys farting from the ceiling. That’s when he slowly backed out from the room with a strange look in his eyes. The last I saw of him was him running out of the front gate, at a pace that would have put an electric train to shame. What’s crazy about having a living room like that, you tell me? If he can wear a woollen, three-piece suit in the height of summer, why can’t I hang live crows on my walls?” What a man! Salvador Dali meets Frank Sinatra.

I think, more than anything else, we love him because he was a true hallmarked original. There never will be another like him. His voice could transport you, and he had many voices, depending on which actor he was singing for, but all of them maintained a virility and a realness that I have always found missing in singers like Mohammad Rafi: even Rafi’s happy songs have always sounded a tad mournful to me and — sorry — a bit effeminate, and there’s too much training, too much technique behind those high pitched notes. In contrast, Kishore Kumar’s voice and his singing are guileless and straight from the heart. But he was much more than the voice. If ever there was a man who was living life to the full without making any concessions to any perceived wisdom, it was him. And it showed in his best songs, whether joyous or melancholy.

... contd.