Birth Anniversary Kishore Kumar - The strange story of Kishore Kumar Khandwewala

The number of stories I have heard about Kishore Kumar Ganguly (he liked to be called Kishore Kumar Khandvewala) can fill a whole book which I can call 'The Manny'. He was a brilliant and extraordinary personality! I have a lot to tell you about him, some of which are my experiences and some are his. I don't know why he chose me, Nachij, to share his experiences with.

I first went to meet him with my old editor who was invited by the King of Eccentricities. We were in a hurry to reach his bungalow 'Gauri Kunj' in Juhu at 2:00 pm on Saturday afternoon. He had warned us, 'Be sure to reach at 2 o'clock because after that I have a meeting with Shani Dev', so we finished our work early and reached 'Gauri Kunj' just before 2:00. We rang the gate bell, the sound of the bell was like the sound of a church bell during a funeral procession! We looked at each other but said nothing. Before we could understand anything, the sound of different types of music started coming from the premises. Just then we saw a Christian priest with a long grey beard and shiny robes coming down the stairs. We were stunned by what was happening. Immediately a crowd of about fifteen huge dogs started barking at us and we were completely scared. The old priest raised his right hand and all the dogs went back into their kennels. Then he asked me who I wanted to meet.

I replied in a trembling voice, "Kishore Kumar Ganguli". He said, "Shor Kumar, I don't know". He said, "I am two hundred and twenty-two years and twenty-two days old but I am younger than you and I can see and hear more clearly than you. I am the Most Reverend Father Gregory Lobo. This is St. James Cathedral. Yes, I have heard that there was an old singer, whom you are calling 'Shor Kumar'. He used to live here but he died five hundred years ago. His body is buried under my church. He still comes, visits me every night sings some songs which I don't understand, and then hugs me and goes away. You can come inside and I will give you some good wine that Jesus has given". We couldn't take it anymore. We wanted to run away. We knew it was Kishore Kumar playing a strange role. We decided to leave them in our cathedral and run away from this horror to the nearby Santa Cruz station but before that, all the dogs barked unanimously at us as if to say goodbye. With this, the grey figure said, 'Please come again. Tonight 'Shore' will come again, I will tell him all about you and see how he reacts. He is a madman sometimes. We did not tell anyone about our experiences with the two hundred and twenty-two-year-old highly respected Gregory Lobo. 

The next time Kishore Kumar Ganguly sent me an invitation to his birthday party at 'Gauri Kunj'. The invitation was brought by a man dressed in smart, immaculate white clothes and whose English was a strange kind of language I had never heard. I decided to go to 'Gauri Kunj' despite my first horrible experience. Kishore Kumar, dressed in a lungi and kurta and with a garland of flowers in his hand. He put a huge garland around my neck and said, 'Keep wearing this till you leave the party, else Lord Shani will get angry'. I decided that this time I would not make any mistake in following his instructions. He then took me along and showed me hundreds of photographs of L Saigal and also showed me a gramophone which he said was 'Baba Adam ke zameen ka' for the first man on earth'. I could not make any sense of it. After a couple of drinks, the only thing I remembered was that the dinner was delicious. A white man in his foreign English offered me to reach home before midnight because 'Kishore da' had asked him to warn me that if I did not reach home on time then some harm would happen. I did not want to take any risk and reached home. At about the same time, five minutes before midnight, lightning started flashing strangely. The next morning they sent the man in white to my house because they wanted the mala back from me. It was all very strange but absolutely true.

I kept meeting him again and again. Each time he asked me for my full name because he couldn't believe that 'Ali Peter John' could be someone's name. He even promised to make a film based on my name. But when he came to know that Manmohan Desai was making a film called 'Amar Akbar Anthony', he broke his promise. 

One evening Kishore told me about his four wives. First about his first wife Ruma Guha Thakurta, about whom he said that she was 'too English for a simple man from Khandwa'! He said that they had separated, but he still had the same respect for her because she was the mother of his first son Amit. Then he said about his second wife Madhubala, 'She was like a beauty descended from heaven who came to this world.' And she was called to heaven by God as soon as possible because there was a shortage of beauty in heaven! Talking about his third wife Yogita Bali, he remembered his first night with her. She saw many human skulls dancing under the roof at night and was scared to death. Due to similar reasons, the marriage with her also broke and Yogita then married Mithun Chakraborty. Kishore said, 'I could have got her a more handsome man. What did she find in that dark and ugly Bengali?” Finally, he had all good words to say about his fourth wife Leena Chandavarkar. He said that she was the only woman who inspired him, appreciated his good qualities, and encouraged him. She also gifted him a son named Sumit.

He called all his wives 'Bandariya' (Monkey). The reason given by him was that all of them were originally from Bandra before marriage. But the real reason for this was known only to his very close and trusted friend Abdul because he used to laugh whenever he called them 'Bandariya'. 

He also shared memories of the time when he called his unit to shoot a film away from the location and himself reached late but when he came, he served them all a picnic and delicious food and every unit member was gifted gifts to take home. He also remembered the time when he refused to acknowledge his producers and once pretended to have lost his voice until his secretary clarified that the money had arrived.
He changed the interiors of the house, especially the colour of the walls and changed the direction of the doors of his house to avoid unwanted guests especially the 'income tax years'. 

He was fond of making films according to his own wishes and he not only produced and directed his films but also acted in them, composed music, wrote lyrics, and edited them. He used to say that if no one watched his films then I would sit and watch them, this world is crazy and they think that I am crazy. We will see one day who is really crazy. He used to joke about the end of his life that 'I will go away like this and no one will believe it to be true.' Something similar happened when he died in his sleep. It was a night in the month of October. No one could really believe that he was no more. His body was kept for two days but that mischievous and mysterious smile was still intact and remained a mystery just like him. Along with this smile, he also wished that his last rites should be performed in the quiet fields of his village Khandwa, far away from the city of Bombay, where he was born.

Till the last day of his life, he used to hurry, joke, and sing songs of life and the day he passed away, his elder brother, Ashok Kumar had said, 'Don't think of him as dead yet, he can get up any time and make fun of all of us. But that could not happen. But Kishore Kumar Khandvewala was not dead then and will never die...

Ajab Hai Dastan Teri Ye Zindagi Lyrics
Ajab hai daastaan teri ai zindagi 
Kabhi hnsa diya rula diya kabhi 

Kali khilane n paai thi ki shaakh hi ujad gi 
Abhi zara se the ki ham se pyaari maan bichhad gayi
O asamaan bata kiya hamane the kya 
Jo mili ye saza  
Ladakapan men hi ye duniya luti 

Tum ain maan ki mamata lie to muskuraae ham 
Ki jaise fir se apane bachapan men laut ae ham 
Tumhaare pyaar ke isi anchal tale firase dipak jale 
Dhala andhera jagi roshani 

Magar bada hi sngadil hai ye maalik tera jahaan 
Yahaan maan beton pe bhi log uthhaate hain ungaliyaan 
Kali ye pyaar ki jhulas ke rah gi
Har taraf ag thi 
Hnsaane ai thi rulaakar chali

Film- Shararat
Cast:- Kishore Kumar, Rajkumar and Meena Kumari
Music:- Shankar-Jaikishan
Lyricist:- Shailendra
Singer:- Mohammed Rafi

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