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It was 1992 when a relatively new playback singer sliced through the air waves with his peppermint-fresh voice singing Vaada raha sanam... on my stereo in the audio cassette era. The duet was from Khiladi and the splendid male voice had the dependable Alka Yagnik for company. I quickly scanned the playback credits on the cassette’s flap to know who the singer was and got introduced to Abhijeet Bhattacharya.
There was something enchanting about Abhijeet’s voice that made him sound different. I found that his more popular contemporary, Kumar Sanu, hit an awkward nasal tone when he went high-pitch and the equally prolific Udit Narayan had a rustic twang to his voice. But Abhijeet’s vocals were crisp, breezy and captivating.
And like his voice, the singer soared - delivering hits, becoming the voice of Shah Rukh Khan having sung several chartbusters for him including:
Abhijeet later fell out with King Khan over the manner in which credits were given to singers in Main Hoon Na. SRK was last seen miming to Abhijeet’s voice in Billu Barber (2009) for the song Khudaya Khair and it’s been a downward spiral ever since for the singer and not just professionally. “I’ll Never Sing For Shah Rukh Khan” declared Abhijeet to a leading daily, he also claimed that singing was never his bread and butter in the same interview.
The singer apparently dabbles in real estate, in running a coffee-retail outlet AND off-late is busy making some really disgusting posts on Twitter.
Vaada raha sanam... now just brings promises of a barrage of abominable tweets and it’s not just against Pakistan. Remember this gem of a tweet while the trial of Salman Khan’s hit-and-run case was on last year?
He later had to delete his tweets and apologise for them.
From Salman’s defense, Abhijeet went on to call Ghulam Ali and other Pakistani singers ‘dengu artists’ (sic).
The singer also had his two bits to add during the whole Aamir Khan and intolerance outrage that took place on social media. Abhijeet’s Facebook carried an open letter to Aamir which had the standard references to the star being a hypocrite and also added:
However, what’s more shocking is the way he responded to a journalist who criticised the move to remove Aamir Khan as the brand ambassador of Incredible India.
Most recently, acting in a totally reprehensible manner, the tragic murder of Chennai girl Swathi was dubbed as a result of ‘Love Jihad’ by the singer on Twitter.
The communally sensitive tweet remains, even after Swathi’s alleged killer, P Ramkumar, has been remanded to judicial custody.
Abhijeet then hit out at a female journalist who countered his false assumptions and called him out for being jealous of Pakistani singers.
And voila! The singer is now the poster boy of vile jingoism, being cheered on Twitter by dolts for teaching ‘libtards’ and ‘presstitutes’ a lesson.
Someone once said:
RIP to the singer in Abhijeet Bhattacharya. The death of an artist and birth of a bigot can’t be a mere coincidence.
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