Bappi Lahiri on working with Kishore Kumar on his last song

Mumbai, June 25 

Veteran composer-singer Bappi Lahiri has a happy last memory of Kishore Kumar. He recalls how the legendary playback singer-actor made everyone laugh while recording their last song together.

“Kishore Kumar Ji’s sang the last song of his life for me in Mehboob Studio. (The film was) ‘Waqt Ki Awaz’, starring Mithun Chakraborty and Sridevi. The song had a naughty vibe to it,” Lahiri recalled.

“That day, mama (as Lahiri used to address Kishore Kumar) made everyone laugh so much that we were tired of laughing. Then while leaving he said to me ‘Bappi aaj maine hasaya, main jab nahi rahunga toh yaad karoge Kishore mama ko’. I left Mehboob studio at 6 o’clock and at 2 o’clock I got the news at home that he is no more. I have tears in my eyes for mama. I was very close to him. Amit Kumar and Sumit Kumar are his children but I was very close to him, more than anyone else,” added an emotional Bappi Lahiri while remembering Kishore Kumar on MX Player’s “Times of Music”.

In an episode of the music show, he has reimagined Vishal and Shekhar’s song “ghoomeya”, while the composer duo recreated Bappi Lahiri’s hit track “Yaad aa raha hai” from the superhit film, “Disco Dancer”.

He opened up about how the song came into being. “This song is actually a blessing that was given to me by Kishore Kumar ji. The song ‘Yaad aa hai’, was actually going to be sung by Kishore Kumar ji. His flight was late so he had come to HMV studio and I had already dubbed and kept the song ready. He heard it and said, ‘Bappi, you’ve sung it whole-heartedly, I can’t sing it better than this’. I told Mama that, ‘Mama, I’ve created this song for you’. He said, ‘Give me any other song, I’ll sing it. This song, you only sing. Your voice suits this song’,” he said.