Manna that happened to music!

Raju Korti
The irony couldn't have come through more resonatingly to someone who swamped the pages of Facebook with an incessant stream of glowing tributes all through the day. While paens were being sung to Hindi cinema's arguably most accomplished classical singer, there were hardly 75 mourners at Manna Dey's funeral in Bengaluru.

Sketch courtesy my DNA colleague Bhagwan Das

Life strung cruelest of ironies for Manna Da all through his almost five-decade career, but the gentleman to a fault that he was, he always remained grounded and had the grace to place even some of his less illustrious contemporaries notches above himself.
Composer Jaidev once said that when Manna sang in a classical strain, no other singer could come anywhere close to him and that probably also meant the almighty Mohammed Rafi who more often than not managed to steal a march over the former many times.
Comparisons are odious, yet they happen -- wittingly or unwittingly. Both Manna and Rafi could match each other note for note and competition always invariably brought the best out of the two legends. It is just that though classically more tuned than Rafi, Manna couldn't make himself as flexible as Rafi did in terms of word throw, mood creation and fitting the protagonist's persona.
Yet clash when they did -- vocally of course -- it would be a veritable feast for the Kansens. Take for instance Meri Surat Teri Aankhen (1963) when Dada Burman got Manna Da to evocate an intense tear-jerker like "Poocho na kaise maine rain bitayee" and summoned Rafi's vocals in "Tere bin soone nain hamaare" on the same blind Ashok Kumar. And when you knew how finicky Dada Burman could be about his choice of singers, all you could do was to bask in those melodies without getting into a harangue on who sang better or which song made a deeper impact. In all fairness to Manna Da, he did edge past Rafi.
The supreme irony here is for all his strong classical repertoire, Manna Da could never create any equations. Mukesh was the considered voice of Chaplinsque tramp Raj Kapoor, Talat Mehmood the voice of Tragedy King Dilip Kumar and with the advent of Baiju Baawra in 1952, Rafi the universal donor. Hemant Kumar filled in the blanks.
If Manna Da managed to get a sneak preview of the RK camp, it was more by default than design. Remember, Raj Kapoor wouldn't settle for anyone else except Mukesh in those days. However, both Talat Mehmood and Mukesh -- given their handsome looks -- were bitten by the acting bug. So when Mukesh agreed to do Mashooqa in 1953, RK seethed for reasons that could be well understood from his point of view. That was when Shankar of Shankar-Jaikishen chipped in and reasoned out with Raj Kapoor that Manna Da could be an ideal foil. To the latter's credit, he grabbed the opportunity with all his vocal versatility and made his presence felt in the RK camp via Aawaara, Chori Chori, Shri 420, Parvarish.
Just as when one would have thought Manna Da had become an integral part of the RK apparatus, came in another irony. Having recorded "Zindagi khaab hai" with Salil Da for the Karlovy Vary winner Jaagte Raho, Manna Da had the mortification of seeing the more vibrant Mukesh version on Raj Kapoor's lips. The RK-Mukesh equation was rewritten.
Paradoxes kept punctuating Manna Da's musical sojourn. Shankar (Jaikishen), who wore a different identity when they performed outside the RK banner, plumped for Rafi's vocals like most other composers of that time. And mind you, between the two, Shankar was more steeped in classical music and logically therefore should have rooted for Manna Da. But then Rafi threw up different vistas for different heroes with a range and versatility that Hindi cinema had hitherto not seen and probably will never see. Asked why he preferred Rafi over Manna Da, this is what Shankar said without mincing words:
"There was no easing out of Manna. It was just that Rafi had greater clarity of expression, better enunciation, better diction. Language was never a bar to Rafi's sense of expression, whereas with Manna there could be at times be problems in this direction. Why, to this day, certain top singers in our midst have this problem with language and diction which affect their clarity of expression. Rafi's soz no singer could match. His voice had aatma", it was "Bhagwan ki den. There will not be another singer like Rafi."
The wheels of irony turned a full circle when Manna Da, in a freewheeling chat heaped praises on the same SJ years later saying they were the only composers who thought his voice was hero material unlike many composers of that time who used him fleetingly on the lead actors and more on comedians and character actors. Although that did rankle him, he never made a public issue out of it and kept acknowledging gracefully that he could never beat Rafi except when they pitched their kites against each other in the skies of Mumbai's suburban Bandra. Ironically, in the recording room Manna Da manfully took on Pt Bhimsen Joshi in Ketki Gulab Juhi champak ban phoole in Basant Bahar and Rafi in Tu hai mera prem devta (Kalpana).
The same SJ who put Rafi on the higher pedestal, could do precious little but to put him and Manna Da on an even keel when they were saddled with a theme as musically encouraging as Basant Bahar. Manna Da's one "Bhay bhanjana vandana sun hamaari" had the potential to confront Rafi's two bhajans "Badi der bhayi kab loge khabar mori Ram" and "Duniya na bhaaye mohe ab to bula le". What's more, he overtook the famed Rafi oeuvre to sing the romantic "Nain mile chain kahaan" for the poker-faced hero Bharat Bhushan.
Never the one to rest on his laurels or blow his trumpet, Manna Da always acknowledged Rafi's superiority. I will quote him verbatim: "He was an academy. A university on his own. He was self-taught and his voice always had that something extra that made even trained classical singers not to take him lightly in the recording room. You never knew when he would steal a march over you."
This lavish praise also was tinged with an irony when you knew that Rafi said he was always overawed at the way Manna Da could raise his vocals to the highest level without compromising on the sanctity of the "sur". Perhaps both understood each other well. Right from the time when as an impressionable youngster raring to go, Manna Da saw with chagrin the song his uncle KC Dey had composed went to Rafi from right under his nose. The same Manna Da who had the humility and candour to accept -- in his own words -- that Rafi did a much better job than what he could have done.
In the quick sands of film industry, where equations are made and destroyed at the altar of commercial and vested interests, Manna Da carried no baggage. And that was his strength. While most people lauded Rafi's 180-degree scale that could take on a comedian or a hero, few realized that Manna Da too did that with similar distinction. Manna Da was, simply put, a class apart. 
A thoroughly simple man at heart, Manna Da let his classically sublime vocals do all the talking, never once getting into the rat race. Not that he did not have his share of refrains, but he held them to himself. Even in death.
The time you feel lonely is the time you need to be by yourself. Manna Da exemplified that irony. That someone who could negotiate the trickiest of classical notes with the kind of practiced ease that he did, it was another of those ironies of his life that he had to sing "Sur na saje kya gaoon main..."