Kishore Kumar - He was the only one and will remain only one

Some experts from Kishore's interview with Pritish Nandy published in 1985 in Illustrated Weekly. Interview on http://www.yoodleeyoo.com/newspapers/interview-with-kk.html

PN: People would have thought you crazy. In fact they already do.

KK: Who said I’m crazy. The world is crazy; not me.

PN: Why do you have this reputation for doing strange things?

KK: 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?

PN: Nothing.

KK: 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, visual sense and all that. After listening to him for about half an hour and trying to figure out what he was saying through his peculiar American accent, 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 centre-piece 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. But the boats should be properly balanced, I said, otherwise we might whizz past each other and conversation would be difficult. 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. And, instead of fans, we could have monkeys farting from the ceiling. That’s when he slowly backed out from the room with a strange look in his eyes. 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?

PN: But you, as the director should have known?

KK: Directors know nothing. I never had the privilege of working with any good director. Except Satyen Bose and Bimal Roy, no one even knew the ABC of film making. How can you expect me to give good performances under such directors? Directors like S.D. Narang didn’t even know where to place the camera. He would take long, pensive drags from his cigarette, mumble ‘Quiet, quiet, quiet’ to everyone, walk a couple of furlongs absentmindedly, mutter to himself and then tell the camera man to place the camera wherever he wanted. His standard line to me was:Do something. What something? Come on, some thing! So I would go off on my antics. Is this the way to act? Is this the way to direct a movie? And yet Narangsaab made so many hits!

PN: What are those files?

KK: My income tax records.

PN: Rat-eaten?

KK: We use them as pesticides. They are very effective. The rats die quite easily after biting into them.

PN: What do you show the tax people when they ask for the papers?

KK: The dead rats.

PN: I see.

KK: You like dead rats?

PN: Not particularly.

KK: Lots of people eat them in other parts of the world.

PN: I guess so.

KK: Haute cuisine. Expensive too. Costs a lot of money.

PN: Yes?

KK: Good business, rats. One can make money from them if one is enterprising.