A thunderous applause rises from the audience as the camera zooms on the Zen-faced Jagjit Singh, who tunes the keys of the harmonium and begins, ‘Yeh daulat bhi le lo, yeh shohrat bhi le lo’ at a live concert. As his bass vocals reverberate through the auditorium with the lyrics of his soul-stirring ghazal, Kaagaz Ki Kashti (1987), the shot cuts to Gulzar, who observes, ‘Woh ek samaa bana liya karta tha. Yeh badi khasiyat thi uss shaks ki... aur uski wajah uski shaksiyat hai... Shaksiyat ke mutabik uske alfaaz ka chunna, ghazal ka chunna... aur badi sehel tarah se baat pohonch jaye...’ The legendary writer, along with 20 personalities like Zakir Hussain, Ghulam Ali, Roop Kumar Rathod, Pankaj Udhas, Mahesh Bhatt and Subhash Ghai, his long-time associates and singer and wife, Chitra Singh, offer an intimate portrait of the late ghazal maestro in a 126-minute biopic, Kaagaz Ki Kashti. Directed by Brahmanand Siingh and produced under his banner, Mobius Biopics, the film premiered at New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) to a packed house this May. Tomorrow, it will be screened for the public, as one of the events planned for Singh’s 75th birth year (1941-2011), at Suresh Wadkar’s Ajivasan Music Academy.

Jagjit Singh with his beloved horse, Sound Affair, named after an album