The Day of Titans

Today morning Google reminded me that this is the 136^th birth anniversary of Munshi Premchand; and a little while later, it was Facebook’s turn to remind that this is also the 36^th death anniversary of Mohd Rafi. Two unparalleled stalwarts, who had enriched our culture like none other, born and died respectively, exactly 100 years apart. This fact makes this day really unique.

The credit for whatever fiction/non-fiction I have read in life should go to Premchand. It all started when, as a little child, I found a partially torn copy of some old magazine, which contained the story ‘Panch Parmeshwar’. The little child, that was me, knew little about Munshi Premchand or about Indian villages; but the story touched some cord somewhere, and the child had read the story umpteen times before he put the magazine down. And soon afterwards, as destiny would have it, I was given a small book, titled ‘Munshi Premchand ki Shreshtha Kahaniyan’ – and I was hooked. Pretty quickly I had finished all the volumes of Mansarovar (the novels came later) available at the local Hindi Pustakalaya, and then I moved on to other Hindi authors, and finally to English ones.

I was introduced to Rafi much later in life. Though I had always enjoyed the melody of Hindi film music, I never really cared about the singer(s) or music-director(s). Somewhere in my early teens, the song ‘Pukarata chala hun main’ from the film Mere Sanam forced me to check for the singer – and Rafi had won a life-time admirer. In those early days, my passion for Rafi was limited only by the availability of audio cassettes at the local music shops – but after the arrival of YouTube, I could find scores of previously unheard (by me at any rate) songs which are unmatched in melody, and are unknown treasure troves of Rafi’s talent.

In addition of their immense talent and having an ardent fan in me, these two personalities have much more else in common. Both were extremely down-to-earth, and – in their lifetimes – were the living embodiments of the virtue of ‘hard work and simple living’. It is especially surprising in the case of Rafi, as he – in spite of belonging to the glamour industry – always lived up to his middle-class values.

If we measure success in the terms of money, power, or awards, both of them were more-or-less failures (Rafi could win only one National Award, that too at the fag end of his career; and Premchand was mostly at loggerheads with the British government on account of his radical views). But if we measure success in terms of the impact on our society, they were unqualified successes. Both of them have established standards in their respective fields – and have inspired whole generations of practitioners as well as fans/followers in their chosen fields. Even today, in every by-lane and every corner of Hindi speaking/understanding regions, one can find fans who can put any expert to shame by their nuanced understanding of these maestros’ arts. And above all, we have had many talented and prolific writers and singers, who took up writing or singing just because they had a Premchand or a Rafi to look up to.

Hindi and Indian culture would not have existed, as it exists today, without these doyens. We will always be indebted…