Pankaj Udhas on his first love

Singer Pankaj Udhas opened up about his inspirations and setbacks back in 2018. The ghazal legend’s family said he died due to an illness yesterday.

Transcript

00:00Somewhere in my heart I knew that I was up against a huge competition because they were all

00:06Great maestros and one fine day with a lot of hesitation

00:11I gathered courage to ask him if he could teach me Urdu. I'm talking about the hippie era

00:18So I had long hair and I used to wear bell-bottoms

00:21When I was growing up when I was a child, there was no television.

00:51Obviously there were no computers and there were no mobile telephones and so the only

00:59source of entertainment was radio. I think the first influence during those years was

01:09Begum Akhtar, the famous Arhazal singer. She had a peculiar voice. Her voice was very,

01:15very different than the normal female voices. I guess that impression lasted

01:22forever and I think that was my initiation into Arhazal singing and then obviously

01:31came the issue of language because Arhazal as you know is basically the medium, the language is

01:37Urdu and it was again a coincidence that my eldest brother Manohar Udas who was a very famous

01:45playback singer. Manohar was learning Urdu from a very, very renowned Urdu teacher. One fine day

01:56with a lot of hesitation I gathered courage to ask him if he could teach me Urdu. Let me tell

02:03you that his first reaction was like he was aghast. I'm talking about the hippie era. So I was like

02:11obviously studying in college and I was swayed by that era. So I had long hair and I used to

02:17wear bell bottoms. My elder brother came to college and he told me that there was an urgent need

02:31for a film song. There is a wonderful music composer, a lady composer called

02:39Usha Khanna. She was composing for a film which had a new star cast. All the actors in that film

02:48were newcomers. So they wanted a different voice. They wanted a young voice and I'm talking about

02:54the era when we had stalwarts like great maestros like Mahmood Rafi and Kishore Kumar and Mukeshji

03:04and the film was released and obviously with new star cast and with not much of a gloss.

03:14The film was not a big success at the box office. I guess I was probably 20-21 years old. Somewhere

03:21in my heart I knew that I was up against a huge competition because they were all great maestros

03:28and I was a newcomer basically. However, I tried and obviously I didn't succeed

03:40as a playback singer in cinema. My heart was always with Ghazals and cinema was,

03:48though it was an attraction, I wouldn't lie. But it was never the first choice. The first choice

03:54was always Ghazals and even today it's Ghazals. What I see today is that the level of patience

04:05has run out and you know nobody wants to spend years together to pursue something,

04:13to achieve something. I guess there is a sense, there's a feeling that you want to achieve

04:21something very fast, you want to achieve lots and you want to achieve it fast.

04:26And that's where I think even the artists, that's where the singers

04:34do not want to pursue this form of music because I guess everyone wants a hit.

04:51you