It was simplicity that defined this great artiste, say fans

Aloke and Arundhati Biswas of Maam Entertainment have had the fortune of knowing Manna Dey closely. They’ve organised concerts of the singer in the city, the most recent one being in May 2009 when he turned 90.

He was a father figure to me: Arundhati Biswas
If one were to describe him, I’d say, Manna Dey was like a coconut where the outer shell was rough- people thought he was temperamental- but in truth, he was a very soft, down-to-earth person.

I remember an incident from way back in 2005 or ‘06 that reflected this quality of his. Manna Dey and his wife were looking for a maid and asked me if I could help them with finding someone. When I informed them that the charge for a maid would be Rs2,500 to Rs3,000, Manna da’s response was “Are you mad? How can I afford it?”

Despite being such a legendary singer, he never minded travelling in autos, even to go to his own concerts. As organisers of his shows, we’d always send him a car but he’d tell us, “You don’t have to send me a car. Autos are there.”

Manna Dey was a man who would travel economy class for his concerts organised in other Indian cities. And he didn’t mind it one bit. He would say, “People are organising music programmes out of love they have for you. One shouldn’t burden them unnecessarily.”

Talking of travelling by economy class, he once narrated a story to us. This one time, NR Narayan Murthy happened to be flying in the same flight as Manna da, but he couldn’t believe that someone of Murthy’s stature would be travelling economy. He eventually approached Murthy, who funnily enough, was not sure it was Manna Dey he was seeing. The two of them ended up becoming good friends, and later, Narayan Murthy even invited da and his wife to the Mysore campus.

He would say, “The day I stop practising my music, that’s the day I die”: Aloke Biswas
I still remember the first time we met Manna Dey. It was quite the unexpected meeting. We’d gone to have the Rs5 MTR Softy ice-cream. When we were having it, we saw this Maruti 800 stop and an elderly looking gentleman getting out. We thought he bore a startling resemblance to Manna da. But we were not sure if it was him, because we didn’t know he was living in Bangalore.

Anyway, after a while, our suspicions only got stronger and so we asked him if he was Manna Dey. To which his response was, “Yes, I am.’ And that’s how our relationship with Manna Dey started.
I found Manna da to be an extremely approachable person. In fact, there have been times when we’d meet him without any appointments. And every time, a simple 10 minute meeting would turn into a two hour long conversation.

Manna Dey had elephantine memory. He’d share many anecdotes with us, not only about Bollywood, but other experiences too. Many people think that there might have been a rivalry between Manna da and Mohd Rafi, considering they were contemporaries. But that is far from the truth. Manna da was a big admirer of Mohd Rafi. Not many know that the two of them would fly kites together.

He was also extremely close to SD Burman, though the latter didn’t give him too many songs to sing. He also had tremendous respect for his contemporaries in the Bengali music industry — especially Hemant Kumar, despite the fact that he had to work hard to create his own space there. Manna Dey was a very simple man and the only thing I’d like to share in terms of advice he always gave us was, “There is no substitute for riyaz.”

He would practise music every day, even as recently as two years back. Interestingly, people would take their morning walks around his house because they knew they would get to listen to the unadulterated Manna Dey. He was 92 then. He would practise every day with his harmonium and he would always tell us that, “the day I stop practising my music is the day I’ll die.”

As told to Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran