New Delhi:
Kishore Kumar was “crazy” about “spooks”. Alfred Hitchcock was his favorite director. (Pointing to a skull he used as part of his decoration, which had red light emanating from its eyes) The legendary singer said at the end of an iconic interview, “Look, is it my glasses? Doesn’t it look good with its non-existent nose?”
Kishore Kumar further said, “You are a good person. You understand the real things of life. You will look like this one day.”
The interviewer Kishore Kumar was addressing was the talented Pritish Nandy.
Prominent journalist, adman, producer and poet Pritish Nandy died of a heart attack on January 8 at his Mumbai home.
40 years ago Nandi shocked the world by giving an interview to Kishore Kumar. The Illustrated Weekly of IndiaKishore Kumar was featured on the cover of the magazine in its April 28-May 4, 1985 issue… along with the bespectacled, Nandi-looking skull with which we started this article.
Kishore Kumar on the April–May 1985 cover of The Illustrated Weekly of India
Kishore Kumar’s “closest” friends were Janardan, Raghunandan, Gangadhar, Jagannath, Budhuram, JhatpatJhatpatpa. They were not people, but trees in his garden.
During the bizarre interview, Kishore Kumar talked about showing “dead rats” when Income Tax officials asked him for the documents. They also used those dusty income tax records as “insecticides”.
Finally, Kishore Kumar said (on the record), “Wives should first learn how to build a house.”
Before 1985, no one knew about Kishore Kumar, until the talent of Pritish Nandy showed Kishore Kumar’s extraordinary talent to the world.
The world learned about her love for Alfred Hitchcock, a music legend, his many wives; A musical legend who was probably heard at every occasion in most Indian homes at that time.
The world also took notice of the ability of Pritish Nandy, the journalist who was able to drop truth bombs on stalwarts one after another.
Some of you may have posted excerpts from my Kishore Kumar interview here and others may have seen it elsewhere, reproduced especially on his birthday. Here’s the actual cover photo from that interview done in 1985. After years of searching I found a tattered copy. pic.twitter.com/OWIQf8TCMQ
– Pritish Nandy (@PritishNandy) 24 June 2019
“Wives must first learn how to build a home.”
Pritish Nandy’s interview gained some popularity in later years, as Kishore Kumar spoke candidly about his four wives.
When Kishore Kumar was asked about his first wife Ruma Devi, he said, ‘Wives should first learn how to run a home.
“She was a very talented person but we couldn’t get along because we looked at life differently. She wanted to have a choir and a career. I wanted someone to build a house for me. How did the two reconcile Can? You see, I am a simple minded person and I don’t understand how women can make a career out of it, these are completely different things. Why did we go our separate ways,” he asked Nandi. Said to.
When Kishore Kumar was asked about his second wife Madhubala, he said, “She was a completely different matter. I knew that she was very ill even before I married her. But a promise is a promise. So I kept my promise.” The matter was kept and I brought her home as my wife, even though I knew she was dying of congenital heart disease.
“For 9 years, I raised him. I watched him die before my eyes. You can never understand what it means until you go through it yourself.
“She was a very beautiful woman and she died very painfully. She babbled, boasted and screamed in frustration. How could such an active person stay in bed for 9 years? And I had to make fun of her all the time. This is what the doctor told me to do. I will laugh with him till his last breath.
Kishore Kumar calls his third marriage with Yogita Bali a “joke”
Kishore Kumar’s words were, “I don’t think she was serious about marriage. She was only obsessed with her mother. She never wanted to live here.”
Did Kishore Kumar ever find happiness in marriage?
“Lena is a very different kind of person. She is also an actress like all of them, but she is very different. She has seen tragedy. She has faced grief. When your husband is shot dead, So you understand the ephemeral quality of everything… I am happy now,” said Kishore Kumar about his fourth wife Leena.
“I was Dadamoni’s brother, and he was a great hero.”
Kishore Kumar, brother of ‘Dadamony’ Ashok Kumar, never wanted to become an actor. Kishore Kumar kept “screaming, screaming” to get out of the clutches of the directors (whom he called “school teachers”). But, at the same time, he kept running from one set to another as he ushered in a new era of stardom after Dilip Kumar.
When Pritish Nandy asked the veteran actor how he got into acting, he said, “I was drawn into it. I only wanted to sing. Never wanted to act. But somehow, due to strange circumstances, I got into it. Persuaded to act in films.”
“I suppressed my lines, pretended to be mad, shaved my head, acted tough, started shouting in the middle of sad scenes, told Meena Kumari what I should have told Bina Rai in any other film – But they still didn’t let me go. I screamed, screamed, but who cared? They were just intent on making me a star,” Kumar said.
Pritish Nandy had only one word to ask: “Why?”
Kishore Kumar replied in one line, “Because I was Dadamoni’s brother. And he was a great hero.”
Pritish Nandy’s interview about Kishore Kumar is one for the books. You can read the full interview Here,
