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.
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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