According to Rabindranath Tagore, it is futile to discover the genius of a poet in his autobiography. If one seeks to know about the poet, reading him is the best option.

Listening to a singer is the best tribute to his songs and a prodigiously successful singer must crave for musical immortality through his songs only. But is any knowledge of Van Gogh complete without Irving Stone’s Lust for Life?

Manna Dey’s autobiography in Bengali titled Jibaner Jalsaghare (‘In the Music Room of Life’) was published in 2005.

But Dey sang a large number of songs not only in Bengali and Hindi, but also in many other Indian languages like Bhojpuri, Magadhi, Punjabi, Maithlee, Assamese, Oriya, Gujarati, Konkani, Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam.

I was once told how Maanasa Maine varu— a Manna Dey number from Chemmeen (1965)— is considered a Malayali classic.|

For the entire spectrum of a multi-lingual listening audience of India, spanning generations, here is his autobiography in English, a reasonably competent translation by Sarbani Putatunda, who did yeoman’s service for lovers of the prodigious musical oeuvre of Manna Dey in helping them lay a claim to the making of this legend. A CD, showcasing fourteen of his memorable songs, also comes free.

The fairly comprehensive list of his recorded songs (over 3,500), in scrupulously stacked categories, from 1942 to 2006, added as appendices at the end of the book (and the index) shows the painstaking research undertaken to compile them.

Probodh Chandra Dey (he came to be publicly known as Manna later) was born in 1919. Though sound came to Hindi cinema with Alam Ara in 1931 and playback singing started in 1935, the recording techniques of those early days were really crude.

But the three decades from the 1940s to the 1970s threw up a golden age for Indian music and Manna Dey can be said to have inherited the spirit of the age, richly tied as he was to all forms of Indian music with masterful ease: Be they lusty qawwalis, breezy romantic duets to intricate songs based on Hindustani classical music besides dhrupad, dhamar, khayal, tappa, thumri, bhajan, ghazal sung with remarkable versatility.

In this autobiography, we become privy to not only the great songs but of the times of Manna Dey: The cementing force of the joint family in north Calcutta, he grew in an atmosphere of love from his uncles and mother who instilled in him the right kind of values.

The chapter that marks “the beginning” gives a cosy picture of the large, extended family of the Deys.

He had the privilege of seeing famous musicians of the time like Ustad Badal Khan, Ustad Jamiruddin Khan, Rai Chand Boral and Sachin Dev Burman in reyaz and Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, Ustad Faiz Khan, Begum Akhtar, among others, joining in to give scintillating performances in the concert summoned by his legendary uncle— Krishna Chandra Dey.

Strength to strength

Manna Dey, the consummate singer that we know, is the handiwork of his uncle (Babu Kaka to him) who groomed him so rigorously that he would later forsake his other passion, wrestling, to take up singing as his lifetime career; a choice for which he had to face opposition from his family.

“My childhood days in Calcutta” gives the picture of an outdoorsy Dey, who loved sports— kite flying, football and wrestling and punching people: “While sports consumed my early years, music remained a mere curiosity”.

In 1942 he accompanied his uncle to Bombay and his exposure to a host of music directors like Anil Biswas, Khemchand Prakash, Shyamsundar, Sachin Dev Burman and C Ramachandra proved extremely rewarding.

His competitors included Mohammad Rafi, Talat Mehmood, Mukesh and G M Duranni. His first break came when he recorded a solemn number for the character of Valmiki in Vijay Bhatt’s Ram Rajya. “Upar Gagan Vishal” (the melody was created by Sachin Dev Burman), the marching song from Mashaal, turned into a super-hit and catapulted him to instant fame.

Immortal songs

Delectable nuggets on how some of his famous songs came to be written and composed, stories of his durable relationship with Raj Kapoor (who was partial to Mukesh) and Majrooh Sultanpuri, Pulak Bandopadhyay and Sudhin Dasgupta, have been well recounted.

He won the Filmfare award for his toe-tapping number “Aae bhai zara dekh ke chalo” (compositions of Shankar-Jaikishen) from Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker.

Some legendary duets (and duels) he recorded like the “Ketaki Gulab Juhi” with classicist Bhimsen Joshi, “Yeh Dosti Hum Nehi Todenge” (Sholay) and “Ek Chatur Naar” (Padosan) with free-wheeling Kishore Kumar stand out. The one actor who always wanted Manna to playback him was the great comedian Mehmood.

It was the chance of singing Rabindra Sangeet in duet that gave him the love of his life. Her name was Sulochana Kumaran, a Malayali lady born in Kerala. Her mother and her wife are the two most glowing influences in his life.

“Songs today are utterly devoid of melody”, Manna Dey tells us and reminds us that the “possibility of enjoying the great music of bygone days is sadly remote.”

“Those among us who fail to come to terms with this bitter reality, and remain tied to a past that has vanished forever, are liable to suffer”. But the music of the earth is never dead and the immortality of Dey’s magic will survive as art always survives the artist.

Memories Come Alive— An Autobiography by Manna Dey
Translated from Bengali by Sarbani Putatunda, Penguin, 2007, pp 415, Rs 450.