Before I came to Mumbai in the early 90s, I was in Kolkata and Manna Dey was one of the heroes of the city. You thought of him almost as a god and, of course, I was a huge fan. When I first came to Mumbai, I was newly married and was teaching music in a school in Juhu. Since I was a dab hand at tuning harmoniums even then, one day, I simply decided to go and pay him a visit at his Juhu home.
He was very professional, very brisk and asked me to check his harmonium and tell him if the tuning was correct. The entire time, I was terrified, because how could I tell the Manna Dey that his harmonium was out of tune! The tune was indeed just a tad bit off and when I told him — rather apprehensively — he got a machine and measured it, and realised that I was correct. He gave me the job then and there, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, tell whether he was pleased with me or not. It was much later, when he was praising me to one of his contemporaries that I realised that he was indeed very happy with my work.
The one thing he insisted upon was professionalism. The first time that he told me to come in at nine in the morning to collect money from him, I felt really bad. Here was someone I had worshipped as an artiste most of my life and I was going to take money from him and that too this early in the morning! In my hesitation, I went 15 minutes late. He was pacing his hall when I got there and he was furious. He told me to set all sentimentalities aside and that if I had to survive in Mumbai, I would have to understand that time is the most valuable resource. He shooed me off with my money saying that I had wasted 15 minutes of valuable recording time. Just as I was about to leave, he had called me back and asked me how much time I would take. That was the beginning of our association, which spanned nearly a decade.
He was unpredictable to say the least. He would play with my daughter and give her chocolates. He asked her to call him ‘dadu’ (grandpa) instead of uncle and would teach her Bengali while she sat in his lap, with him in a casual lungi. Sometimes he would get sweets from Kolkata and offer them to me; sometimes would complain about the high price of the vegetables and I would forget that I was sitting with a great musical genius.
Unlike many other great musicians, who have their egos, he was very frank in his admiration of his contemporaries. He used to be a fan of Mohammad Rafi. I remember him saying, ‘I have probably done many more classical taans than he has, but I wish I had a voice as beautiful as his!’
However, he also had a hair-trigger temper. He used to get so angry if you couldn’t recognise him on the phone when he called! Once, while I was in school, he dropped in, furious with me because I had told him that I would come that day to look at his harmonium and had been too caught up with work to do so. He had come down in his lungi, since he lived close by and the security guard, who did not recognise him, said, ‘koi buddha, takla aadmi aaya hai aap se milne’ (some old baldie’s come to see you). I shushed him as quickly as I could and told him who he was. He was flummoxed — both at the fact that Manna Dey would come and visit the likes of me and in his humble attire.
Despite everything though, he was a thorough professional. He did not fall for flattery or praise; he measured you according to your talent. He told me a story once about one of his songs — a Bengali number called Tumi ki sei ager moton acho. He had gone for a programme and a lady there had presented him with eight songs. He had brushed her off and told her to send him songs via mail. But when she did mail them, he took time to look through them and actually liked one of the songs and sang it.
After he left Mumbai, we lost touch, but I will forever be grateful to him. He opened up the world of music for me by introducing me to his friends, many of whom were renowned musicians themselves. His practical sense and humility, mixed with his tremendous talent truly set him apart from any other musician I have met since, or will ever meet again.
