DO PYAAR MEIN JEENE WAALE, ISS DUNIYA KO ALVIDA KAR CHUKE !

MASHOR SANGEET KAR KHAYYAM KE MARNE KE DO SAAL BHI PURE NAHI HUE KI AZAADI KE JASHAN KE DIN PAR UNKE JEEVAN SAATHI JAGJIT KAUR UNKO MILNE CHALI GAYI - Ali Peter John

I have been observing couples who have been in love and have got married and have been together for years who seem to resemble each other , believe me or not , it happens, observe any such couples you know and you will know what i am saying .....

I have seen many couples going through this kind of a change in them and the most well known couples i have seen are flim makers like Dr. B R Chopra and his wife Prakash and Dr. Ramanand Sagar and his wife Leelavati Sagar .

They were both married for over sixty years and they stood by each other in good times and bad times .

They were not lovers like Romeo and Juliet and Laila and Majnu but i believe they were greater lovers than the greatest lovers of all time and couldn't live without each other .

Dr. Ramanand Sagar died and exactly after a week , his wife Leelavati died . She kept telling her family that life was not worth living after her husband died .

It was almost like a story repeating itself in the case of Dr. Chopra and his wife Prakash who were married for more than seventy years and Prakash use to be with her husband to the very end .

I had seen them sitting together while they had their breakfast and Prakash dressed like a bride exchanging her thoughts and views and thoughts about every little thing associated with the family and the flims her great husband made .

Dr. Chopra had started falling sick regularly and Prakash grew closer to her husband and did not leave his side even for a moment.

Dr. Chopra died after a long battle with Alzheimers and other age-related problems and from the day he died , Prakash turned into a recluse and showed no interests in life and she too died after a week of her husband’s death.

The same story happened in the case of Prithviraj Kapoor and his wife Ramsarni when both of them died within a matter of days and there are many other stories like these both in the world of flims and even out of it ....

The latest story that comes to my mind is the long and amazing story of Mohammad Zahoor , who is better known as the master composer Khayyam and Jagjit Kaur .

Khayyam was still a struggling composer when he met Jagjit Kaur , who was an upcoming Punjabi folk singer .

Jaan E Wafa (1990) Bollywood Movie Poster

Their common love for music brought them together, they fell in love and got married in 1954 .

It was one of the first inter-faith marriages , Khayyam was a Muslim and Jagjit was a Punjabi Hindu but ,their belonging to different religions did not make any difference to their lives and their work .

They had a son who they named Pradeep , the son wanted to act in flims and got his break in a flim called Jaane wafaa with Rati Agnihotri as the leading lady.

The flim flopped and to add to the misery of Khayyam and Jagjit , Pradeep died of a massive heart attack soon after his first flim . Life was playing strange and even nasty games with the couple.....

Khayyam went from sucess to more sucess and scored music for flims like Kabhi Kabhie ,Bazaar , Umrao Jaan, Razia Sultan and other big and small flims .

And even a major T.V serial like " Bikhri Aas Nikhri preet , directed by Khayyam's friend's Lekh Tandon and produced by Dr. Trinetra Bajpai .

Khayyam also won several major awards which included the Padma Bhushan of the government of India. ....

Khayyam worked with all the major playback singers and made his wife Jagjit only sing the songs he believed the other singers could not sing.

And yet , he had recorded some of the best songs in the voice of his wife , Jagjit Kaur, songs like
" Dekho Dekho ji gori sasural chali" "(Shagoon) , "Tum apna-ranj-o-gham apni pareshani mujhe de do "( Shagoon), "Khamoosh zindagi ko afsanaa mil gaya" (Dil-e-Nadan) , "Chale aao saiyaan rangeele main vaari re" ( Bazaar) , "Dekh loo aaj humko jee bhar ke "( Bazaar), "Kaha ko byahi bides" ( Umrao Jaan ) , "Saada chidiya da chamba ve" ( Kabhi Kabhi) , "Chanda gayee ragini "( Dil - e- Nadan) , "Pehle toh ankh milana" ( Shola aur Shabnam ) , "ladi re ladi tujhse aankh jo ladi "( Shola aur Shabnam) and "Nain milake pyaar jata ke aag lagaa dee" ( Mera bhai mera dushman) .

Life continued for the couple and i have not yet seen a couple so loving and caring even after 65 years of being married.

They lived on the seventh floor of a building called " Dakhshina Murthy " in Juhu where they had moved into after Khayyam found big success after the music of Yash Chopra's Kabhi Kabhie .

I had the very good fortune to spend several evenings with them and it was very moving to see the couple help each other to play the perfect hosts.

Khayyam started falling sick after he was eighty and Jagjit took care of him . And eight years ago both of them started falling sick at the same time and i could see how much they cared for each other.

I had seen how a very sick Khayyam use to make tea for both of them and even for me whenever i visited them. ...

And then Khayyam died on August 19, 2019 and was given a State funeral and he was buried at the Chaar Bangla Kabristan.

And Jagjit Kaur was left alone in that apartment with a care takers to look after her . But when i saw her last , she seemed to have lost the will to live.

She was admitted to hospital in a critical condition and on the morning of the 75th celebration of Independence Day, she found the freedom to fly away into some other world, she perhaps flew to be with her husband wherever he was living in peace .

The love story had ended only to be remembered for long by those who knew them , like me .

KABHI KABHI AISA LAGTA HAI JAISE KHUDAH AUR KISMAT DONO KO MOHABBAT KARNE WAALO SE KUCH AZEEB SA NAFRAT HAI . ABHI MEIN KOI FAISLA NAHI KAR SAKTA , LEKIN AGAR AISA HI CHALTA RAHA, TOH MEIN MAJBOOR HOKAR KUCH FAISLA KARO, TOH MUJHE MAAF KARNA .