Manas Ranjan Mohapatra
My editorial interests include Art, Education, Music, Dance and Sports, etc. It was Sri Aurobindo Center of Calcutta where I met Singer Kumar Sanu a decade ago courtesy Prof. Ranjan Mitter, its Secretary.
I remember the King of melodies Kedar Nath Bhattacharya better known as Kumar Sanu. Born in 1957 in Seenthi area of Kolkata, he was blessed to have Pasupati Bhattacharya, a vocalist and composer as his father who taught him music. He was inclined to singing songs of Kishore da from the beginning and considers him as God. Sanu Dada has sung in many languages, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Punjabi, English, Spanish, even Chhattisgarhi!
Kumar Sanu is the first Indian playback singer to be honored by the United States in Ohio, when the mayor declared 31st March as Kumar Sanu day. He has won Filmfare five times in a row which is a record. He also holds the record of recording the most number of songs (26 songs in 24 hours) in a single day (161 songs in thirty days). He is equally conversant with Tabla and piano.
Once he was called for a stage programme where there was a crowd of 22000 persons. He got nervous, however gathering courage he started with “Wada tera wada” a song sung by his Icon Kishore Da’, and this won him applause.
He regained his courage and sang songs one after another. He first sang for a Bangladesh film “Teen Kanya”. He was named Sanu by Kalyanji Anandji and immediately after being rechristened he got to sing for Amitabh Bachchan (Jaadugar). This Padmashree awardee has sung over 20000 Songs for More than 350 films. He had an early affair with Meenakshi Sheshadri but his first wife came to know about it and they had to part ways. Meenakshi later left India and settled in the US.
He was first married to Rita. They were blessed with three sons Jessy, Jeeko and Jaan, and later to Saloni (his present wife) and is blessed with two daughters Shannon who is a pop singer and Ana from that marriage.
He is the best living singer of India now with a variety of songs.
(The Author Manas Ranjan Mahapatra is a former editor of National Book Trust, New Delhi. Views are personal)
Tags: #KumarSanu #HindiPlaybackSinger #RetroSongs #KedarNathBhattacharya #KishoreDa #BollywoodMusic #LiveMusic #IndianSingers #BollywoodHitSong