Singer of all the world, the world of Rafi 'Saheb'

Polite, unmistakably cultured, and endowed with creativity, my London-based friend Achala Sharma becomes uncharacteristically stern when someone refers to the great Indian singer, the late Mohammed Rafi (1924-1980), merely as Rafi.

- Salman Akhtar

Looking intently into the eyes of the offender, Achala ji, the former chief of Hindi BBC Radio Service, raises a finger and firmly states—her voice gone from supple to steely—“Rafi Saheb, please”. The emphasis upon the suffix leaves no doubt about her reverence for the maestro nor does it permit others to be any less respectful of him.

Now, we all know Mohammed Rafi and it is only to check a few boxes of formality that I note he was born in a village near Amritsar, spent a few years of his childhood in Lahore, and at the age of 14 arrived in Bombay. He gave his first stage performance at age 13, recorded his first song for the Punjabi film, Gul Baloch, at age 20, and got his break in the Hindi film industry at the age of 21 with a solo rendering in the 1945 movie Gaon Ki Gori. The rest, as they say, is history. The increasingly popular singer worked with all the great music directors of his time and lent his voice as a playback singer convincingly to actors as diverse as Dilip Kumar and Shammi Kapoor, Dev Anand and Bhagwan, and Balraj Sahni and Johnny Walker. All in all, he sang about 7,000 songs in 13 Indian and seven foreign languages.