As Kishore Kumar woke up on the morning of May 4, 1976, he had a quirky feeling that this must be the wrong side of the bed. He was oblivious to the fact that the secretary in the I&B Ministry, Syed Burney, had already initiated a note to ban all his songs. Till last night, his songs were at ear’s length from every listener. Not anymore. By the time, he started brushing his teeth, he was banned. For Kishore, it was a well-earned sabbatical. From Khandwa to Kanyakumari, with Amit by his side, he decided to relive his childhood with a tête-à-tête with nature encompassed by his raw voice. Did he miss anything? Was he to rue anything? Going by the long history of his tryst with missed opportunities, the answer seemed to be an emphatic no, as we try to explore here. Had these windows opened in full, Kishore Kumar would have been seen in an even broader light.

It was the success of Andolan (1951) that triggered close friend Vrajendra Gaur to come up with yet another film Sarhad the same year. All the three brothers Ashok, Anup and Kishore were cast together for the first time, playing rival brothers vying with each other to win the love of Nalini Jayant. Cousin Arun Kumar was to wield the musical baton. The film failed to progress beyond the initial shoots. Sarhad was his first big miss.

With elder brother Anoop, Kishore embarked on quite a few ventures starting with Choti Bahen (1954) and Pioneer Films Dua, announced the very next year. Dua was meant to be Kishore’s first bilingual (Bengali) and was directed by the reputed Vasant Joglekar of Samaj fame. Alongside these was Evergreen Productions Dulhan with Beena which started as Saaya with Meena Kumari. Dulhan was an almost completed venture with a January 1955 release finalised and reportedly Hemant Kumar had composed some fascinating music in this Narendra Suri directed film. By then Kishore had become one of the leading stars hopping and jumping from one studio to another and in his own words confusing one shoots with the others. In other words, he had no track of which movies got complete, and which wasn’t.

Two missed opportunities stood out that year. Guru Dutt’s Professor with Waheeda, later made with Shammi Kapoor, and Bimal Roy’s Amanat, directed by Arvind Sen, based on Premanda Mitra’s novel Samadhan. Post Naukri, this would have been another Salil Kishore combo in a matter of twelve months.

Those days, hits for Kishore were a regular affair. Films like Adhikar, Pehli Jhalak, New Delhi and Ilzaam, were Silver Jubilees while Bhai Bhai and Aasha were Golden Jubilees. Consequent to the success of Aasha, M.V. Raman launched his most ambitious film, Jwala. The film, with a touch of ancient history, was launched with Kishore and Madhubala. It was released in 1971 and in between, Kishore got replaced by Sunil Dutt and Jwala was thus the only instance where the hero was replaced owing to Madhubala’s health condition. That was the first of many unexplored possibilities with Madhubala.

By 1956-57, he was second only to Dilip Kumar in terms of films on the floor. One collateral damage of these enviable statistics would relate to incomplete films. Thus, as on 1958, when he was shining high and bright, he perhaps never thought that K Amarnath’s Bade Log, Naya Sangram, SD........

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