Pankaj Udhas May 15, 1951- February 26, 2024
In the days before smartphones, social media, and Skype, when immigrants relied on handwritten letters from home, songs like -“Chitti aayi hai, aayi hai, chitti aayi hai,” (from Mahesh Bhatt’s debut film Naam,) filled our immigrant hearts with Udhasi, and made us feel less homesick.
The veteran ghazal singer passed away on Monday, February 26, after a prolonged illness at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai.
Pankaj Udhas, the youngest of three brothers grew up listening to his father play a stringed instrument called the dilruba. The family lived in Jetpur in Gujarat. When the siblings showed musical talent from a young age, their father enrolled them at the Sangeet Academy in Rajkot. His two older brothers, Manhar Udhas and Nirmal Udhas became singers.
Udhas began Hindustani vocal classical training with Ghulam Qadir Khan Sahab though initially started learning the tabla.
Later, after moving to Mumbai to train with Navrang Nagpurkar from the Gwalior Gharana he developed an interest in ghazals and learned Urdu, which led to a career as a ghazal singer.
In 1980, Udhas released ‘Aahat’ an album of ghazals which became the first of over fifty albums and hundreds of compilation albums. He received the Padmashree in 2006.
My other favorite ghazal by Pankaj Udhas, which I still hear some evenings is – “Ghungroo toot gaye.”
