: Raj Kapoors favourite and also Benazirs: Mukesh and his melodious career #IndiaNEWS #National,SHOWCASE By Vikas DattaFew singers are so fated as a later rendition of the song that launched their career

Raj Kapoors favourite and also Benazirs: Mukesh and his melodious career #IndiaNEWS #National ,SHOWCASE
By Vikas DattaFew singers are so fated as a later rendition of the song that launched their career happens to be the last one of their life. This Hindi film singer, whose smooth and sonorous voice rendered a gamut of iconic songs for three decades for top heroes from Dilip Kumar to Dharmendra, Raj Kapoor to Rajesh Khanna, and Sunil Dutt to Amitabh Bachchan, was one of these few.
Mukesh, who would have turned 99 on Friday (July 22), rose to prominence with Dil Jalta Hai from Pehli Nazar (1945), a song he so faithfully essayed in the style of his idol K. L. Saigal that when the legendary singer heard it later, he said it was so strange that he had absolutely no idea of having sung it.
And Dil Jalta Hai, which he introduced to the audience as his lifes first, was the last one he sang in his 1976 US and Canada concert trip, during which he succumbed to a massive heart attack in Detroit.
As Mukesh became a leading singer, and subsequently, the preferred voice of Raj Kapoor in all his films those made under the showmans own R. K. Films banner or otherwise, it was all due to two musical titans who weaned him off being a Saigal clone.
The first was Anil Biswas, who told him that like there could be only one Saigal, there should be only one Mukesh and he should develop his own style, not imitate someone else, and then Naushad Ali, who made him the voice of Dilip Kumar in films such as Mela and Andaz (also co-starring Raj Kapoor, whose voice was Rafi).
How did the son of a leading Delhi-based engineer who wanted him to follow in his footsteps, end up in the Hindi film industry, and as one of its accomplished singers?
Mukesh Chandra Mathur had displayed an interest in music right from his childhood, convincing his elder sisters music teacher to tutor him too. After a brief stint in a conventional job, he was lured to Bombay by his relative, actor Motilal, who heard him sing at a family wedding and was impressed by the amount of pathos and sensitivity he could bring to bear in his voice.
Though he began as an actor-singer in Nirdosh (1941), Mukesh, as he would be subsequently known, switched to playback with his debut being Dil Jalta Hai, pictured as it happens on Motilal itself. And with the way he expresses thrice the final Dil jalta hai with discernible anguish, anyone could be forgiven for thinking its Saigal himself.
After he began singing in his own style, Mukesh soon became the favourite of Raj Kapoor, though he sang for many other top and not-so-leading actors too. He was never so prolific as Rafi or Kishore Kumar, but still went on to create such a valuable corpus of melodies that he acquired legions of admirers from googly maestro B. Chandrashekhar, who was listening to his songs before bowling India to its first victory against England at Lords in August 1971, to Pakistans late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who kept cassettes of his songs in her car while on the campaign trail.

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