[Reader-list] The Private Life of Vinod Sehgal

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

The Private Life of Vinod Sehgal
 *The battle of a ghazal singer to rediscover himself and his art away from
the spotlight

by Rahul Pandita
Open Magazine*

*Link* -
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/the-private-life-of-vinod-sehgal

AMBALA -- Inside a moss-ridden room in a seedy hotel in Ambala, Haryana,
Vinod Sehgal holds a cigarette and bottle of beer in one hand and his mobile
phone in another. The room reeks of dampness and love-making. Apparently,
the hotel is used mostly by couples in need of snatches of privacy to
acquaint themselves with each others’ bodies. The sound effects right now,
though, are incongruous—noisy fighter planes flying overhead from a nearby
Air Force base.

“Yes, yes, I know, I am not drinking at all,” Sehgal assures his wife over
the phone in response to an agitated voice that almost jumps out of it. “For
years,” he says a little later, “I have felt *ehsaas-e-kamtari* towards
her.” It’s an Urdu phrase for an inferiority complex, but Sehgal means his
own helplessness in doing much for his wife. “But wives also need to
understand an artiste’s temperament if they are married to one,” he adds,
taking a long puff of his Wills Navy Cut.

NATURE’S OWN DEVICES

Chances are you wouldn’t have heard of Vinod Sehgal. But to anyone familiar
with the crests and troughs of *ghazal* singing, Sehgal’s name is more than
a name, it is a crescendo that few could achieve. He is a star who almost
turned into a supernova much too early, crumpling inwards before his time,
leaving an afterglow that’s everlasting. Those who have heard his *ghazal*s
like *Shaayar-e-fitrat hun mein*, from an album called *Kahkashan*, don’t
care much about what he could have been. For such fans, his voice and music
are enough. In a way, Vinod Sehgal’s own life song is the one he sang for
Gulzar’s *Maachis: Chhod aaye hum woh galiyan*.

It was about seven years ago that he returned to his hometown Ambala after
struggling in Mumbai for over 35 years, a period long enough to see the
music industry from close quarters. “I have had music directors tell me in
the 70s that in the next two years they’d be the biggest thing in music,” he
recalls, “Three decades later, some of them just earn their livelihood by
music tuitions for uninterested daughters of wealthy businessmen. And from
evening till midnight, they just drink.” At least he is still composing
music. There are small serials on TV whose title songs he has composed. He
still gets invited for private shows by fans. Some of them get drunk on his
voice more than alcohol. He is, after all, ‘*Shaayar-e-fitrat*’: a poet by
nature’s own command.

“I am established, *yaar*. I’ve no regrets. You see, God cannot only exist
on Pali Hill,” he says, referring to a Mumbai locality of Bollywood’s who’s
who.

Vinod Sehgal remembers every moment of his life. “You know *Shayaar-e-fitrat
hun mein*, how I sang it?” He tells the story. It was the late 1980s, and
he’d returned to Ambala depressed since he couldn’t find any work in Bombay.
For days and days, he wouldn’t talk to anyone. It went on for three months.
Until, one day, he got a call from *ghazal* maestro Jagjit Singh, also his
mentor in some ways. “Come over immediately,” he said. It was for the
recording of *Kahkashan*, for which Sehgal got to sing *ghazal*s of famous
Urdu poets like Jigar Moradabadi and Firaaq Gorakhpuri. Also present in that
Bombay studio was Jalal Agha, the late actor, smoking opium in a *chillum*.
Just before Sehgal was to record his first song, Agha held the *chillum* out
for him and said: “Vinod, *ek* drag *le le* (Vinod, take a drag)”. He
refused. “*Laga na, kucch nahin hoga *(Come on, nothing will happen),”
persisted Agha. Finally, Sehgal took a drag or two, and in less than 15
minutes, he was on. That is how he recorded his first *ghazal* for that
album.  It remains a favourite among his fans even today.

The second time he was forced back to Ambala, since he couldn’t afford good
enough accommodation in Mumbai for his newly-wed wife, was in the 1990s. But
then, one fine day, someone turned up at his door from Mumbai, saying
Gulzar had been hunting high and low for him. “*Hausla kyun gira liya*? (why
have you lost courage?)” he remembers Gulzar asking, before offering him the
lead song in his forthcoming film on Punjab militancy, *Maachis*. In the
song *Chhod aaye hum*…, sung alongwith such singers as Suresh Wadekar and
Hariharan, his voice is especially stirring, and when he sings the lines ‘*Ek
andha kuan hai ya, ek band gali si hai*’, you feel yourself staring at an
abyss.

HARMONY OF HARD TIMES

I first met Vinod Sehgal on a balmy evening in Chandigarh in 1996. A college
student then, I was lying drenched in sweat staring at a listless fan in my
rented room, when I heard beautiful voices singing a nice song from a bad
film: *Maine kiye paar saat samandar* from *Rajkumar*. It was the twin
daughters (roughly ten then) of the musician family living upstairs. Amazed,
I sought them out and implored them for an encore (even now, whenever the
power fails, I can’t help being reminded of the song). A few days later,
their music-teacher father turned up with another man. “*Pehchaano
inko*(recognise him),” he said. “
*Arre bhai*, Vinod Sehgal *hai* (He is Vinod Sehgal).”

We knew the man’s work well. In fact, *Kahkashan* would be played in our
room in a loop. There were several *ghazal*s in the two-volume set that we
thought outshone Jagjit Singh’s own. As my room-mate Kamal rushed off to get
soft drinks, I got talking to Sehgal. He told us about this song he had just
recorded for Gulzar. “It is from a film called *Maachis*,” he said. In a few
minutes, the music teacher brought down his harmonium, and Sehgal sang aloud
for us—the song of the bottomless well, the song of the dead end.

We left college that year, and two years later, heard that the music teacher
had died. After *Maachis*, Vinod Sehgal also disappeared—lost in the abyss
he conveyed so searingly, it seemed to us.

And now, 14 years later, I had found him again. He was the very same man I
had met in my college days. No airs, no dramatics, just wedded to his
music.

Even if it’s a song for the Haryana Police that he composed recently.

Sehgal’s family comes from Sargodha in what’s now Pakistan, and both his
father and grandfather used to sing, though not professionally. As a child,
his father Sohan Lal Sehgal would run to a nearby *mohalla* of
Mirasis—ballad singers. At Partition, the family fled to Delhi, and then was
sent to Ambala for rehabilitation. The senior Sehgal worked in India’s Post
& Telegraph department, and would encourage Vinod to learn music. As a young
boy, Sehgal went to various music teachers to pick up the basics of his
sargam. “Those days, the career spectrum ranged from peon to clerk,” Sehgal
quips. The family’s financial condition was bad, and he had to work at a
cloth shop to supplement the family income.

It was around then that Master Anil, who had played the role of actor
Dharmendra in the megahit *Phool aur Patthar*, came to Ambala along with his
mother to visit relatives. “The whole *mohalla* flocked to see him,” recalls
Sehgal. Curious, he went too. There, the neighbourhood kids boasted of
Sehgal’s voice. Master Anil’s mother, who was sitting on a chair, knitting,
asked him to sing. Sehgal sang a popular Rafi number of those times: *Mere
dushman tu meri dosti ko tarse*. She liked it so much that she told him to
come to Bombay and stay with them once he grew up a bit. The mother happened
to be music maestro Master Acchi Ram’s daughter.

Meanwhile, Sehgal would continue working in the cloth shop. But he never let
his dream fade.

Finally in 1970, Sehgal spoke to his parents, and landed up at Master Anil’s
house in Bombay. Initially, Sehgal would visit struggling musicians to seek
work. “They would hit the bottle and then ask me to sing till late in the
night.” This daily affair got the household worried, and he was ordered back
to Ambala. There, the same old fate awaited Sehgal: cloth salesmanship. From
Rs 50 a month, his salary rose to Rs 140 a month. And when a writer friend
got him to join college, he spent all his time in the music room.

ARROW SHOT AGAIN

It was at college that Sehgal’s music teacher Chiranji Lal Jigyasu told him
of his disciple Hansraj Behl in Bombay who had composed the famous song, *Jahan
daal daal par sone ki chidiya karti hai basera*. Sehgal established contact
with Behl, and found himself invited back to Bombay. The year was 1975.

Sehgal again stayed with Master Anil’s family (“I sent them a telegram from
Ambala”), and Behl asked him to become his third assistant director. His
first director was S Balbir, the original composer of the famous Punjabi
song, *Mein koi jhooth boliyan*. After Balbir’s death in 1976, Sehgal was
made first assistant. “I used to sing for big singers to make them
understand the composition, after which they sang it,” he reminisces, “And
all this while, I would wonder when I would get to sing myself.” He would
not have to wait for very long. Serendipity struck.

In 1980, Sehgal was introduced to Jagjit Singh, who took a liking to him and
helped him record his first-ever song, *Tu kya jaane deewane*, for a film
called *Raavan*. It was the same day that Jagjit Singh recorded his
legendary *Honthhon se chhoo lo tum, mera geet amar kar doh*.

Later, Sehgal got his very own album. It was titled *Jagjit Singh presents
Vinod Sehgal*, but did not get very far. New voices were sprouting up all
over at the time. After Mohammed Rafi’s death, singers like Shabeer Kumar
and Munna Aziz were trying to take on his mantel, even as voices like
Kishore Kumar’s made opportunities for newcomers harder to come by. “My
whole concentration was on films and not shows,” he says, “And anyway, you
need a lot of networking skills to get shows, which I didn’t have.” He got
some work in Punjabi films, but that was not enough to get by as a singer.

After *Maachis*, Sehgal got a few breaks in offbeat films like *Train to
Pakistan* and *Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar*. But Vinod Sehgal was growing older,
the opportunities scarcer. Finally, he decided to turn back, and this time,
for good. “I also wanted to take care of my parents who were ageing. It was
also good that my wife, who felt quite left out in Mumbai, would be closer
to her family.”

And so he returned. His father passed away in 2006, and his mother last
January. In a small colony in Ambala, Vinod Sehgal lives now with his wife
who must bear his ‘artistic temperament’. Luckily, he remains optimistic. “I
am doing an album of Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s songs,” he says. And another album
that includes an entrancing *ghazal* written by Pakistani poet Saleem
Qausar.

The phone has stopped ringing. The wife has given up. And, in the
moss-ridden hotel room that reeks of dampness, Vinod Sehgal begins to sing.

“Valve *kholna padta hai *(one has to open one’s valve),” he jokes. And he
lets out a sonorous *taan*, followed by Saleem Qausar’s *Dekhna yeh hai kaun
bachta hai, teer to ek sa laga hai humein*.

Let’s see who survives, go the lyrics, it’s the same arrow that’s hit us
both.

I think of congruity.

I think of couples making love in other rooms… to the sublime sound of Vinod
Sehgal’s voice. Surely, God cannot exist only on Pali Hill.