Indian cinema legend Salil Chowdhary was a multifaceted artist. He was a musician, a lyricist, a poet, and a writer. As a composer in his film career, Salil Chaudhary gave music in more than 100 films which included multiple languages such as Malyali, Bengali, Oriya
Salil Chaudhary’s father was very fond of Western classical music. His childhood was spent listening to his father’s western classical music collection. He could play many musical instruments. I hereby narrate an incident relating to Salil Chowdhary which I heard on radio 92.7 FM channel by Annu Kapoor in his program “Suhana Safar with Annu Kapoor.
In the year 1958, there was a famous shop in Los Angeles, America, where Indians used to mix musical instruments. The name of the owner of the shop was Devin Bernard and the shop had some Americans, including many Indian-origin people, who worked in this shop. Salil Chaudhary was then just 35 years old, and one day he reached that shop. No one knew who he was. He was dressed simply and looked ordinary due to which the salesmen and salesgirls present there were not giving him any attention. He started looking very carefully at the instruments present in the shop.
Since the job of the employees is to handle the customer who came to their shop, then a salesgirl named Christina came to Salil Choudhary asking if he was interested in buying any instrument. Salil Chowdhary told Christina that he wanted to see some Sitar. Christina showed him few Sitars, but Salil’s eyes fell on a Sitar which was kept at the highest height in the shop. He asked Christina to show him that Sitar.
Since that Sitar was set too high and Christina was not interested in handling this ordinary looking man anyway, she tried to avoid it. But Salil Chaudhary was resistive that he wanted to see the same Sitar. The owner of the shop, David, came to make inquiry. When he understood Salil’s interest in that one Sitar, he asked his staff to take down the same Sitar. Showing the Sitar to Salil, Christina said that it is called Boss Sitar. Common sitar players cannot play it and it is used in big shows.
After listening to Christina, Salil told her that in America it is called Boss Sitar, but in India is called the evergreen Sitar. After this, Salil asked for permission to play the Sitar, which David gave him. As soon as Salil Choudhary started playing the sitar, the people present in the shop got mesmerised by his stationary and transverse style and they were awestruck by Salil’s ease yet mastery of playing the sitar. They all gathered around him. When Salil Chaudhary finished the raga, there was complete silence. Salil Choudhary fascinated everyone present there with his music.
The shop owner, David, was so impressed with Salil that he asked Salil, “who are you? I have heard Ravi Shankar. No one plays the sitar like him, but you are no less than him, I am so glad that you came to my shop”. Salil told David that he wanted to buy that Sitar. David himself was an avid music lover and he was so impressed by Salil, that he gifted the Sitar to him.
This was the time when Salil Chowdhary was composing music for the film Parakh (1960) and the story of the movie was written by him. One of the songs which is evergreen till today is “oh sajana, barkha bahar ayi” based on rag Khamaj and the main instrument in the song is Sitar.
Christina stood with tears in her eyes after listening to the melody. She kissed Salil’s hands and gave him a dollar, saying that she usually underestimated Indian people and took pride in Americans. She further said that she very reluctantly showed Salil the sitar and she apologized for her rude behaviour. She requested him to give his autograph on the dollar note. Salil smiled and looked at Christina and wrote his name on the note given by her – Salil Choudhary.
Listen to the beautiful and evergreen song “Oh sajana” in Lata Mangeshkar’s voice picturised on simple yet classy looking actor Sadhana.
