The dreamy quality of Subir Sen’s mellifluous voice will long outlive the singer who died in Kolkata on December 29. The Hemant Kumar singalike was condemned to be the senior and more talented Hemanta Mukherjee’s clone, unfortunately, for the comparison never allowed Sen to
emerge as a popular singer in his own right.
At the height of Hemant Kumar’s popularity in the late 1950s, Shankar-Jaikishan, then Mumbai’s dominant composer duo was forced to scout for a voice that
resembled Mukherjee’s and opted for Sen.
J Om Prakash’s first production Aas ka Panchhi, a hit film starring jubilee star Rajendra Kumar, marked the peak of Sen’s popularity. Its title song, Dil mera ek aas ka panchhi, udta hai oonche gagan par (filmed on bicycles by NCC cadets led
by the hero), was a Vividh Bharati favourite till even a decade ago.
Similarly Chhoti Bahen had several duets by Sen and lata Mangeshkar which dominated the charts of the time. Main rangeela pyar ka rahi, door meri manzil, a breezy number filmed on a tonga
(a horse-pulled cart), was the most popular among the film’s numbers.
The Kathputli song Manzil wohi hai pyar ke, raahi badal gaye, sounds so uncannily like Hemant Kumar’s rendition that it’s almost impossible to make the distinction between the two singers.
That was an era when Hemant Kumar dominated male voices in the Hindi film world resulting in clones like Dwijen Mukherjee of Rula kar chal diye ek din fame from the film Badshah, and Subir Sen reached peaks of popularity.
But as it often happens with clones, once the original voice declines in popularity, clones too lose their charm for no fault of theirs. Once Mohammed Rafi came into his own in the 1960s, and composers like OP Nayyar made full use of his versatility, less muscular voices like those of Sen and Talat Mahmood gradually declined.
Subir Sen, however, remained a rage in Bengali, rendering several hundred Bengali modern and Rabindra Sangeet numbers over three decades. His catchy Tagore number, Aadhek ghume, nayan chume, for instance, retains its lilting charm to date.