Remembering Mukesh: The Heartfelt Voice Of India That Still Lives On

On the pleasant Friday evening of 27 August 1976, there was widespread excitement among the South Asian diaspora in Detroit. The magical musical concert at Ford Auditorium featuring Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh was sold out. Around five in the evening, the phone rang in a room on the twentieth floor of the Hotel Pontchartrain. A voice informed Lataji that Mukesh had suffered a heart attack.

Pressed for time, paramedics rushed Mukesh in the ambulance through the streets to the emergency room of the Detroit General Hospital. Mukesh’s son, Nitin, saw him clutching to his copy of the Ramayana and softly calling out his mother’s name. About an hour later, he was gone. Lataji felt as if all her strength had left her, and took to the nearest sofa, numb. Hridaynath Mangeshkar walked into the Ford Auditorium and broke the shocking news to the audience about Mukesh’s cardiac arrest. The concerts in Detroit and Philadelphia stood cancelled. For Nitin, it was the darkest day of his life. His father had just turned fifty-three.

Decades earlier, as the world was tearing itself apart in the middle of WW2, an amazing singing voice rose in the crowded household of Dilliwallahs, Chand Rani and Zorawar Chand Mathur in Darya Ganj in Old Delhi. Their son, the young handsome teenager, Mukesh, sang his heart out at his eldest sister Sunder’s wedding. Something in the room stilled as he lifted his voice. Among the guests, an elegantly dressed, striking-looking man wearing a felt cap and a well-cut suit drew everyone’s attention. That man, Motilal, was the prominent film star who had carved a name for himself in Indian cinema for his natural style of acting. Motilal listened the way people rarely listen, completely mesmerised by Mukesh’s incredible raw talent inspired by the legendary singer Kundan Lal Saigal. He recognized the gift the family had discounted and decided, then and there, that Bombay needed to hear Mukesh too. It would have been easy for the Mathurs to say no. Cinema was not where educated families sent their sons. However, Mukesh’s mother, Chand Rani, believed in her son even before anyone else did, and asked him to follow his heart.

Bombay did not open its arms right away. The city that would one day carry his voice into millions of homes first made him wait, made him struggle, made him wonder if Motilal’s faith had been misplaced. He tried his hand as an actor-singer and went largely unnoticed. It was during those uncertain years that he met a young singer named Lata Mangeshkar at a recording session, a meeting that would grow into one of music’s most enduring friendships. She called him bhaiya (brother); he, though older, called her Didi (elder sister), out of respect. Mukesh’s untrained but intuitive voice got shaped under the tutelage of Pandit Jagannath Prasad. One day Motilal dropped Mukesh at the doorstep of music director Anil Biswas, stating, “He says he sings; I know that he does, I have heard him”.

Mukesh won the heart of Biswas with his voice’s timbre and tonal quality; there was an ache in the voice that couldn’t be taught. In 1945, a song composed by Biswas called “Dil Jalta Hai To Jalne Do” carried Mukesh's voice into the public imagination for the first time. Soon after, Naushad Ali chose him to sing for Dilip Kumar in ‘Andaaz’, and almost overnight, a voice that seemed to carry sorrow even in its warmth became the sound Indian cinema reached for when it needed to feel something real.

If one relationship defined the shape of his career, it was the one that began by accident at Famous Studios, where he crossed paths with a young actor named Raj Kapoor. No association defined Mukesh more than his bond with Raj Kapoor. The two men created such a seamless artistic partnership that it’s hard to distinguish the actor’s face from the singer’s voice.

Kapoor’s everyman persona, seen in films like ‘Awaara’ and ‘Shree 420’, felt truly expressed through Mukesh’s singing. “Awaara Hoon” and “Mera Joota Hai Japani” did not stay within India's borders. The songs travelled across Soviet Russia, where millions who had never seen India sang along anyway. They were heard in China, in Eastern Europe and East Africa, even under the lights of Cannes, carrying the dreams of a newly independent nation discovering its place in the world.

Away from the studios, Mukesh’s life carried its own quiet drama. In 1946, on his 23rd birthday, he had married Saral Trivedi against her father's wishes at a temple in Kandivali. Together, they raised five children, including Nitin, who would carry his father's musical legacy. Not everything Mukesh touched turned to gold; his ventures into acting, producing and distributing films mostly ended in loss, and in 1965 he faced a personal blow when Motilal, the man who had first believed in him, died suddenly while making “Choti Choti Baten”. Mukesh finished it in his mentor’s memory, calling on Biswas once more to compose the score. The film did not succeed. But something in Mukesh’s steadiness, his refusal to let failure sour him, kept the finest composers of his era returning to his door.

Holding on to his favourite possession, his hero K.L. Saigal’s harmonium, he sang some of the best-known songs as a playback singer for top stars including Dharmendra (Purnima), Sunil Dutt (Milan), Feroz Khan (Safar), Manoj Kumar (Shor), Rajesh Khanna (Anand), and Amitabh Bachchan (Kabhi-Kabhi), each performance distinct, each one somehow still recognizably, unmistakably him.

Recognition came, though it never seemed to be what he was chasing. A National Film Award arrived for “Kai Baar Yunhi Dekha Hai”, in 1974, alongside four Filmfare Awards (Anari, Pehchaan, Beimaan, and Kabhi Kabhi), across a career that would eventually total nearly a thousand recorded songs. He poured himself into recording ‘Sampoorna Ramayana’, a devotional undertaking that still finds millions of listeners on YouTube today, decades after it was made. And yet, by every account, the fame never changed the Dilliwallah he was. He handed out woollens to the poor each winter. He stood in temple queues like anyone else, with no expectation of being spared the wait. He gave his own car to his son and went back to riding the local bus.

In July 1976, Mukesh, despite a history of multiple heart attacks, embarked on a hectic multi-city concert tour in North America organized by his friend Mohan Deora. On 27th August, Indian journalist M.V. Kamath was preparing dinner at his home in Washington DC, when the phone rang. It was bad news - Mukesh was no more. The news of Mukesh’s unexpected departure left the entire nation heartbroken.

Raj Kapoor walked away from the shooting at a film set in Pune, stating, “I have lost my voice...”  With a heavy heart, Lataji and Nitin Mukesh accompanied the mortal remains to India. The flight landed at Santa Cruz airport at 1 am on 30th August. Among the thousands of fans, Raj Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar were at the airport to receive the body. Kapoor recalled, “There was Mukesh, my soul, my voice; I was a mere body. It was he who sang to the hearts of the people all over the world, not me.” Kapoor made all the arrangements for the funeral at the Banganga crematorium, bequeathing a farewell befitting Mukesh. The funeral drew the entire film industry, priests of every faith arriving to send him off in a way that matched the breadth of what he had given.

Fifty years on, the ache in that voice hasn’t faded. Mukesh continues to live in the hearts of millions of Indians, and his heartfelt songs remain memorable. And Mukesh will be remembered eternally for...

“Kisi ki muskuraahaton pe ho nisaar,

Kisi ka dard mil sake to le udhaar,

Kisi ke waaste ho tere dil mein pyaar,

Jeena issi ka naam hai...”

(Bhuvan Lall is a biographer, author, filmmaker, and creative entrepreneur)