Apart from his many many achievements, Kishore Kumar should also be feted by posterity for having given the most sublime interview ever. His conversation with Pritish Nandy was published in the Illustrated Weekly of India in April 1985 and has a cult fan following of its own. It's a long read, so here are some of the juiciest excerpts:
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[Excerpt 1]
Kishore Kumar: Do you know any spooks?
Pritish Nandy: Not very friendly ones.
Kishore Kumar: But nice, frightening ones?
Pritish Nandy: Not really.
Kishore Kumar: But that’s precisely what we're all going to become one day. Like this chap out here (points to a skull, which he uses as part of his decor)... you don't even know whether it’s a man or a woman. Eh?
But it’s a nice sort. Friendly too. Look, doesn’t it look nice with my specs on its non-existent nose?
Pritish Nandy: Very nice indeed.
Kishore Kumar: You are a good man. You understand the real things of life. You are going to look like this one day.
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[Excerpt 2]
Pritish Nandy: What are those files?
Kishore Kumar: My income tax records.
Pritish Nandy: Rat-eaten?
Kishore Kumar: We use them as pesticides. They are very effective. The rats die quite easily after biting into them.
Pritish Nandy: What do you show the tax people when they ask for the papers?
Kishore Kumar: The dead rats.
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| Kishore as his own late mother in Half Ticket |
[Excerpt 3]
Kishore Kumar: Then, there was this interior decorator-a suited, booted fellow who came to see me in a three-piece woollen, Saville Row suit in the thick of summer — and began to lecture me about aesthetics, design... After listening to him for about half an hour, I told him that I wanted something very simple for my living room.
Just water — several feet deep — and little boats floating around, instead of large sofas. I told him that the centrepiece should be anchored down so that the tea service could be placed on it and all of us could row up to it in our boats and take sips from our cups...
He looked a bit alarmed but that alarm gave way to sheer horror when I began to describe the wall decor. I told him that I wanted live crows hanging from the walls instead of paintings-since I liked nature so much....
The last I saw of him was him running out of the front gate, at a pace that would have put an electric train to shame. What's crazy about having a living room like that, you tell me? If he can wear a woollen, three-piece suit in the height of summer, why can't I hang live crows on my walls?
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[Excerpt 4]
Pritish Nandy: Why do you have this reputation for doing strange things?
Kishore Kumar: It all began with this girl who came to interview me. In those days I used to live alone. So she said: You must be very lonely. I said: No, let me introduce you to some of my friends.
So I took her to the garden and introduced her to some of the friendlier trees. Janardhan; Raghunandan; Gangadhar; Jagannath; Buddhuram; Jhatpatajhatpatpat. I said they were my closest friends in this cruel world. She went and wrote this bizarre piece, saying that I spent long evenings with my arms entwined around them. What’s wrong with that, you tell me? What's wrong making friends with trees?
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