Singh at a concert in July

Mumbai, Oct. 10: Jagjit Singh had taken a break between songs and requests were pouring in. The audience wanted him to sing his best-known ghazals.

The requests ranged from Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho, from the 1982 film Arth, to the more recent Hoshwalon ko khabar kya, from the 1999 movie Sarfarosh.

But one request from a man stunned the packed auditorium in Navi Mumbai into silence that June day. The man requested him to sing the recent Katrina Kaif item number Sheela ki jawani.

Singh, who hadn’t been interacting much with the audience, wanted to know who the man was. When the person didn’t come forward, he began with one of his classics. “Yeh daulat bhi le lo, yeh shohrat bhi le lo,” he sang before tweaking the lyrics to “Bhale chheen lo mujhse Sheela ki jawaani” against the original mujhse meri jawaani.

The audience burst out laughing at the repartee from the man known as “The Ghazal king”, who passed away at 8.10 on Monday morning at Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital where he had been admitted since September 23 after a brain haemorrhage. A statement from the hospital said he died of brain haemorrhage and cardiorespiratory failure.

He was 70.

Friends of the singer said his wife Chitra was by his side when he passed away. The couple’s only son Vivek died in a road accident in 1990.

“Jagjitji had a great sense of humour… and had this presence of mind to give such a response,” said ghazal singer Pankaj Udhas. “We essentially come from a music base which is classical and cannot be identified with a (song like) Sheela ki jawani. Yet, he revived and revolutionised ghazal singing, which was considered to be only for a niche audience.”

Others who came to the hospital included Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, actor Sanjay Khan, singers Roop Kumar Rathod, Richa Sharma and santoor exponent Pandit Shivkumar Sharma. “His death would mean the end of an era of ghazal singing for the nation,” Sharma said.

“Just a day before being admitted to hospital, he had called me to say we should perform together, where I would recite shayaris and he would sing ghazals,” recalled Akhtar. “That was not to be.”

Jagjit Singh with wife Chitra

Tributes poured in from the world of politics, too. “Making ghazals accessible to everyone, he gave joy and pleasure to millions of music lovers in India and abroad... he was blessed with a golden voice,” said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Thousands in Pakistan mourned the singer who was to have performed with Pakistani ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali the same day he suffered the haemorrhage. “Jagjit Singh was instrumental in bringing ghazals to my generation,” Pakistani ghazal singer Tina Sani told PTI from Karachi.

The funeral will be held tomorrow after relatives of the singer, including his four sisters and two brothers, arrive from Jaipur and Delhi.