I heard Manna Dey, not from him, but from a hawker.
Years back I was coming from Kolkata in a Howrah-Burdwan chord-line local. The local was bursting with people who were jostling for a space for toe! It was impossible to believe how little a place like the floor of a compartment could accommodate so many people.
“Let’s have some Manna,” someone said, rather shouted in a light-hearted manner.
Someone from the crowd, from the melee, sang out “Sobai to sukhee hote chae, tobu keu sukhee hae keu hae na….”
Like a magic the bustling compartment fell silent at once.
I looked around in search of singer, found none except the stilled throng of passengers.
Against the background rumble of fast-moving wheels, the unseen singer sang on one after another Manna hits in an impeccable melody and pitch.
He got down at Madhusudanpur along with many other. Now I realized the remarkable man was standing right in front of me all this while with his back turned against me. In dhoti and Punjabi he ambled across platform to the emerging shadow of evening.
“Who’s he?” I asked my fellow passenger.
“A hawker. Like me. We all hawk plastic things on Kolkata street during day and take this train everyday,” he answered.
Reaching home the first thing I did was to listen to Manna Dey non-stop on youtube for hours. What made me wonder was how he mesmerized common people with such difficult classical-based songs generation after generation.
It might be for pathos. I thought.
Everybody wants to be happy; some are lucky enough, some aren’t. But there are people on this very planet who are happy only by singing songs of Manna Dey. They need nothing but only Manna to cling to after day’s hard labour to soothe the stress of distress.
“Main na rahungi/ Tum na rahoge/ Phirbhi rahenge nishania…” Manna sang with Lata once.
He can rest assured, hundred years after his birth, that future generation will continue to listen to him on a train of journey after a day’s tiredness takes its toll towards the long shadows of twilight.