A tribute to musical genius Madan Mohan : Bollywood News

Madan Mohans secret cupboard

Even while I was in college, my friends used to know all the commercial composers. But they were unaware as to who Madan Mohan was and what his music was like. I used to tell them that my father was a great composer too. I was still in college before he died. At his funeral, we had Amitabh Bachchan, Rajendra Kumar, Vinod Khanna, etc. Even the singers were present. But in The Times Of India the next morning, in bold Madan Mohan is dead story had a picture of Amitabh Bachchan and Vinod Khanna carrying my father. So when I went to the college after ten days I was more popular than before. Only after his death, I managed to open his cupboard and found out a beautiful spool tape recorder. Those days everything used to be recorded on spools, there were no cassettes. They were imported and were not made available in India. Whenever he used to come home, he used to cook his own food, invite some friends over to hear the song and play it on the spool. That cupboard was something that I always wanted to open and get my hands on.

Madan Mohans re-birth

After I inherited the cupboard, I listened to some of the spools and found out a lot of songs which I had not heard before. They were sung by Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Talat Mehmood, etc. I could hear the announcement of the film but not the name of the film they were from, because those times they only had working titles. But for some reasons, those songs never saw the light as the film was shelved for reasons nobody knew. I thought those were a rare treasure which needs to be heard. The second spool I found was of my father singing to himself. I was eighteen years old and thought if only he had an Amitabh Bachchan film and a Yash Chopra banner, his lost songs couldve been born again. Couple of months after his death, it was at the Mausam film premiere that I over heard Yashji say, Madanji ka music kamaal hain. Mausam was dedicated to my father. But I felt that day if only he couldve given music for a Yash Chopra film. The dream came true thirty years after his death when Veer Zaara released. It was his re-birth and I was also working for Yash Raj Films.

Madan Mohans only award

Lata Mangeshkar was Madan Mohans muse. Without her the circle was incomplete. People and critics also questioned Latajis existence in his songs. She had sung every song of his. A lot of the industry people and my seniors were not happy on me reviving my fathers music in Veer Zaara because they thought that I was pushing them down. The proudest moment for me was when he won the IIFA Award for Veer Zaara and I went to receive it in Amsterdam.