Mohammad Rafi’s 34th death anniversary was observed in Delhi last week with special music programmes and commemoration functions at many venues. Hailed as a legendary singer who sang in several languages, Rafi had humble beginnings. He was born in a village near Amritsar, from where his father migrated to Mumbai, where he opened a barber salon at which the young Rafi worked as a head masseur.
Anil Ahuja of Mayapuri, who is a walking encylopaedia on Rafi, says that once a friend of Naushad Ali heard the boy singing and recommended him to the great music composer. After that there was no looking back for Rafi. From a “champi-wallah” he became the doyen of Bollywood’s playback singers.
Anil, who observes Rafi’s birth and death anniversaries with great devotion, has a huge picture of him in his shop-cum-LIC agency with a garland of fairy lights. Ask him anything about Rafi Sahib (he insists on the suffix) and he promptly gives a detailed reply. Anil Ahuja says the singer was fond of Kabuli tea, boiled in milk, with no water, and those of his guests who did not enjoy it were never invited again. Rafi was also fond of sweets, the liking for which meant that his tea was extra sweet. He died young, before reaching the age of 56, but his sons (he had seven children) did not follow in his footsteps. One of them, Shahid Rafi, tried but failed and is now a famous cloth merchant of Mumbai. One of his sisters was killed in a car crash in London. Rafi passed away suddenly on 31st July, 1980, but just a day earlier he was able to complete his last song on an inner urging.
Anil’s one big regret is that he couldn’t attend a recent programme on Rafi Sahib at Gurgaon, compered by the noted writer on the Raj days and K.L. Saigal’s biographer, Pran Nevile, because of late intimation, as he missed the announcement in The Hindu .
