The Victoria Terminus Station in Bombay is a landmark for tourists. Declared a World Heritage building by UNESCO, its mind-boggling mix of Gothic and Indo-Saracenic architechture has visitors and the occasional local standing in awe as they take in the leaping gargoyles and the perfect dome with the statue atop it. Today, Bombay has become Mumbai, and other rail hubs have been developed for outstation trains to terminate at.

But in 1965, when Jagjit Singh stepped out of the Pathankot Express as it steamed into the terminus, he must have, like a million others before him, been overwhelmed by the immensity of the place, as much as by the crowds that thronged the platforms.
The young man, however, was by now familiar with the city.

Preferring comparatively cheaper and quieter lodgings to his earlier hotel near VT, he found a small room in Gope House near the Elphinstone Road station. Within days, his easy camaraderie and friendliness won him a small circle of friends. But life is never easy in any city for a newcomer with slender financial means. And Bombay is a relentless, cruel metropolis that keeps her own beat, rejecting those who cannot keep step with it, and rewarding a few who manage to accept her demanding ways.

Jagjit found himself adrift in no time.

Thrown out of the tiny room at Elphinstone Road, he found accommodation in the Sher-e-Punjab hostel in Agripada for thirty rupees a month. It was crowded and dirty, and a far cry from the clean and meticulously run home his parents kept, or even the college hostels he had inhabited; but he had little choice.

Moreover, his entire concentration was on making it as a singer. This then, he thought, must be just a rite of passage. He took it in his stride, even joking wryly about the bedbugs who grew plump and shiny feeding off the floating population who occupied the four cots in the room, and the fact that one night a rat took a bite off his heel. A small joy lay in the fact that the room was blessed with ‘room service’. A teashop stood just below it, which he could call down to for bed tea.

Still chasing his dream, Jagjit would take the local train as it rattled emptily in the evening towards Churchgate where it would load on the working millions heading back to their suburban homes. At Churchgate, he would meet like-minded seekers of the stardust and while away the evening. Among them was his old friend, Subhash Ghai.

“We came with different dreams,” Subhash Ghai says of those days of waiting. “I hoped to be a hero, he wanted to sing playback in the movies. That was in the late 1960s. Mukesh, Rafi were all at the top, even Kishore Kumar who had been singing for years had yet to find himself on par with them. There was little room for a newcomer. I asked him, ‘Why playback?’ He retorted, ‘Why hero!’ I think we both laughed, though our hearts were heavy with no sight of a breakthrough.

“We would meet in front of Gaylords. So many of us hopefuls. We would walk the stretch of the pavement, stop for tea at Asiatic, which was a restaurant at the time. Then we would walk to the promenade and stroll by the sea.

“Sometimes we would spot a celebrity at Gaylords. It   was a popular haunt for people from the industry. Jaikishen would often come there; Jaidev too. The place attracted all kinds of genteel people, who would sit in the semi-covered area sipping ice-cream floats and cold coffee from tall, slender glasses and eating chicken patties. They had the power to make dreams come true, but we seldom got a second look.”

Sometimes, the group would stop at Berry’s on the same stretch of the road. Jagjit Singh acknowledges the kindness he received in those difficult days. “Our patron and guide was Mr Berry, the owner of the restaurant. He used to allow me to eat there for free and was very helpful.”

Subhash Ghai would be among those watching his friend very carefully, tracing his graph as he moved towards finding his own space.

“Jagjit finally found a foothold in the city. He started performing at some music club functions, and at the annual gatherings of some clubs. He could be very funny, and his repertoire included bawdy Punjabi songs that he sang with gusto. Yet he had a gentle side that could seduce the listener. When in college, he would belt out the entire repertoire, including Saigal songs. I would join him in singing those, as I loved them too. Later, when he started singing ghazals, I was shocked! His style and quality were on par with Mehdi Hassan, at a level beyond imagination.”

Also in their group was another young man from Punjab. A fellow Sikh who hoped to spin music for the movies one day. Kuldeep Singh, who would later win acclaim for the music of Saath Saath.

Kuldeep has vivid memories of the time. “I knew him as a fellow struggler. We were a few months apart in age. I was doing my MA at KC College at Churchgate, and we had our adda outside Gaylords every evening. We were a group of lost souls, who would stand outside and trade our day’s experiences.

“I knew Jagjit Singh because at some point we had shared a stage at some function. We had got talking then, and a friendship developed. We had a common joke. I would tell him, ‘When I get my chance as a music director, will you sing for me?’ And he would say, ‘Just let me get my chance in a film, and I will get you on board to make the music for it.’

“I would stop for a paan sometimes, and if he happened to pass by, he would call out, ‘Where is my chance, when is it coming?’ It was all talk in the air... the hopefulness of the hopeless.”

Their camaraderie involved keeping one another’s morale high, and helping wherever they could.

Jagjit Singh was luckier than most. Jimmy Narula, who worked with HMV and often joined the group, arranged an audition for him.

Jagjit had been in the city for just six months when this break came.

Excerpted with permission from Baat Niklegi Toh Phir: The Life And Music of Jagjit Singh, Sathya Saran.