Jagjit Singh: An Admirer

From the archive: first published October 11, 2011 — a day after Jagjit Singh's death.

He was never just a singer. When Jagjit Singh's baritone filled a room — on "Hothon Se Choo Lo Tum," on "Tum Itna Jo Muskura Rahe Ho," on a quiet night of Mirza Ghalib on Doordarshan — it felt less like a performance and more like a confidence shared between friends.

Born on February 8, 1941, in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, Jagjit Singh came to Mumbai with his wife and musical partner Chitra Singh and did something nobody thought possible: he took the ghazal out of the mehfils and concert halls and made it the soundtrack of middle-class Indian drawing rooms. Their 1977 album The Unforgettables — the first digitally recorded ghazal LP in India — broke the form wide open, pairing classical training with simple, modern instrumentation.

The film world followed: Prem Geet (1981), Arth (1982), Saath Saath (1982), and later the Mirza Ghalib television serial, which introduced Ghalib's poetry to a generation that had never opened a divan. He composed for others and sang for everyone, from the connoisseur to the cab driver humming at a red light.

Tragedy struck in 1990 with the death of their young son Vivek in a road accident; the couple never fully recovered, and Chitra withdrew from public performance. Jagjit kept singing — through the pain, through the decades — collecting honours including the Padma Bhushan in 2003.

On September 23, 2011, he suffered a brain hemorrhage; he died at Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai on October 10, 2011. He was 70.

The ghazal survived for centuries before him. But for millions of Indians, it lives in his voice — warm, unhurried, and utterly without pretension. We were lucky to have heard it.

Editor's note: this article was rewritten during our editorial review. The original 2011 body was unrelated placeholder text about technology; the tribute above is original.