Ghazal loses its voice

From tiny living rooms made entirely of floral cotton tapestry to large drawing rooms with striped silk curtains, the voice of Jagjit Singh cut across the middle- and upper-class barrier in India during the '80s and the '90s.

As the sun set, the first bars of Jagjit and his wife Chitra's music started wafting across neighbourhoods in small towns and bustling metros. Woh kaagaz ki kashti, they sang nostalgically, woh baarish ka paani.

On Monday morning, Jagjit Singh, now 70, breathed his last. He had been in hospital since September 23, when he suffered a sudden brain haemorrhage a few hours before he was due to perform with compatriot Ghulam Ali at Shanmukhanand Hall.

Two surgeries were performed over the next couple of weeks but doctors could neither save him, nor revive him from a coma. There was some improvement over the last three days, but a cardio-respiratory arrest on Monday morning was the last straw. "Our efforts to revive him failed," said Dr Nitin Dange, a neurosurgeon at Lilavati.

Wife Chitra, who hadn't left the hospital since his admission, was informed a few minutes later. Even As film and music stars - Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, Subhash Ghai, Gulzar, and Sanjay Khan, to name a few - rushed at the hospital to express their condolences, Chitra was too distraught to speak.

By evening, his brothers, Jaswant and Kartar had flown in from Jaipur and Delhi, and taken his body to his Warden Road home. The cremation will be held at Chandanwadi at 4 pm on Tuesday.

"When I was eight, I would put Jagjit on my lap and play with him. He was everybody's laadla. From the age of six, he showed a flair for singing. Watching people listen to Jagjit sing would fill my heart with pride," his elder brother, Jaswant, told Mumbai Mirror. "It hurts me immensely that he is younger than me and yet passed away before me. Last year, he come down to Jaipur and stayed with us for a concert. He seemed happy."

Among the few hundred people who thronged the hospital by afternoon were admirers and numerous fans who had never known his personally; just through his music. Tardeo's Hema Ahuja, a 39-year-old who says she hasn't missed a single Jagjit Singh concert in 20 years, talked about his last performance at Worli in September. "After all these years, I had met him for the first time then. My husband and I got a photo clicked with him. We had no idea it was the last time we'd see him live," she said, weeping.

Another fan at the hospital was Harish Baijal, a police officer from Nashik. He said a concert in Aurangabad in 2005 stood out as his greatest Jagjit Singh memory. "It was a concert for mentally challenged kids. When we went to him to pay his fees for the show, he chased us away, saying he never charged for a good cause."

Jagjit is survived by his wife Chitra, with whom he performed successfully until their son Vivek died in a freak road accident in 1990. Chitra has not performed publicly since then. His step-daughter Monica, who was Chitra's daughter from a previous marriage, died two years ago.

Brother Jaswant said that since Jagjit was a brilliant student, their father, Amar Singh, had wanted him to become an IAS officer. "But by becoming a singer, he truly made him Amar."