Shahenshah-E-Ghazal Forever: Remembering Mehdi Hassan on His 98th Birth Anniversary
A voice that gave Urdu poetry wings, and gave heartbreak a home
A Voice that Time Cannot Silence
Eighteen July marks the 98th birth anniversary of Shahenshah-e-Ghazal Mehdi Hassan — the legendary voice that transcended borders, generations, and genres. More than a decade after his passing, Mehdi Hassan’s voice continues to echo through the corridors of time, etched into the collective memory of the Indian subcontinent and beyond. His was not just a voice — it was a silken breeze in summer, a balm on wounded hearts, and for many, the sound of love itself.
In a world that often forgets, Mehdi Hassan is remembered — not simply for his unmatched gayaki, but for his power to make the most complex verses feel deeply personal, his command over classical music clothed in the fabric of popular accessibility. Even today, ghazals like “Ranjish Hi Sahi,” “Gulon Mein Rang Bhare,” and “Zindagi Mein To Sabhi Pyaar Kiya Karte Hain” evoke shivers, tears, and wonder.
From Luna to Lahore: The Journey of a Maestro
Born on 18 July 1927 in Luna, a small village in Rajasthan, Mehdi Hassan belonged to a family of kalawants — hereditary musicians steeped in the Dhrupad and Khayal traditions of Hindustani classical music. His early years were shaped by royal courts, where the young prodigy sang before the kings of Jaipur and Baroda.
But the Partition of India in 1947 severed more than land. Like many artists, Hassan’s family moved to the newly formed Pakistan. The princely patrons of music disappeared, and Mehdi found himself working at a bicycle repair shop, later as a tractor mechanic — anything to survive. And yet, each night he returned to his music. Ghazals and raga practice became his silent rebellion against poverty and erasure.
His break came in 1957 through Radio Pakistan, but it was Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s “Gulon Mein Rang Bhare” for the film Farangi (1964) that transformed Mehdi Hassan into a household name. With it, he emerged not just as a singer, but as the voice of Urdu’s most beautiful sorrows.
The Architecture of Emotion
Unlike most playback singers of his time, Mehdi Hassan did not merely “sing” a ghazal — he interpreted it. His rendering was a conversation between melody and meter, between sur and sher. Each word was caressed, each note etched in perfection. As ghazal singer Talat Aziz once said, “His sur was so perfect it felt divine. One could count the swaras in each taan or gamak — and they would be perfect.”
What made Hassan unique was the way he blurred boundaries — between folk, classical, and popular music — and offered a new language of love. His classical training gave gravitas to the ghazal; his velvet baritone gave it warmth. Love, loss, longing — no emotion was too complex for him to unravel.
Perhaps this was why even legends bowed before him. Lata Mangeshkar once said, “Unn ke gale mein bhagwan bolte hain” — God himself speaks through Mehdi Hassan’s voice. When they finally collaborated for “Tera Milna Bahut Acha Lagta Hai,” it wasn’t just a duet — it was a quiet reunion of India and Pakistan through the shared language of melody.
The Ghazal Beyond Borders
In 1978, Mehdi Hassan visited India at the invitation of then External Affairs Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. “I waited thirty years for this moment,” he said in an interview — a poignant reminder of how music often outpaces politics.
From Jagjit Singh and Hariharan to Dilip Kumar and Gulzar, Hassan had a galaxy of admirers in India. Hariharan, who began learning from him in 1985, called him his ruhaani guru — “When you listen to him,” he once said, “it feels like he’s only singing for you.”
This intimacy is the hallmark of Hassan’s music. Whether it was “Mujhe Tum Nazar Se,” “Woh Zara Si Baat,” or “Ab Ke Hum Bichhde”, his ghazals were not merely sung — they were felt. His voice gave form to Ahmed Faraz’s fragile couplet:
“Ab ke hum bichde toh shayad kabhi khaabon mein miley,
Jis tarah sookhe hue phool kitaabon mein miley.”
(If we are parted now, perhaps we’ll meet only in dreams — like dried flowers tucked into old books.)
A Life Wreathed in Melodies and Suffering
Mehdi Hassan’s later years were marked by silence. Ailing and bed-ridden, he suffered a series of strokes in India that robbed him of speech, though not of dignity. He died on 13 June 2012 in Karachi at the age of 85, after battling multiple organ failure and chronic illness.
“Asif Noorani wrote in Dawn, “Mehdi Hassan is dead, but I am not sad” — not out of indifference, but relief. For the ustad who gave so much to the world, death was a release from long and painful suffering.
At his passing, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Mehdi Hassan had brought Sufi sensibilities to life. And indeed, Hassan’s music was nothing if not spiritual. It reminded listeners of the fragility of desire, the sanctity of longing, and the mystery of loss.
The Emperor’s Legacy
Over a career spanning more than five decades, Mehdi Hassan is estimated to have sung over 50,000 ghazals, many of which remain immortal in the subcontinent’s musical memory. Though not a conventional playback singer, his contributions to Pakistani films remain unmatched — he brought poetry to the cinema and cinema to the drawing rooms.
But numbers cannot measure what Mehdi Hassan gave us. He made ghazals a mass form without diluting their essence. He brought the nuance of classical ragas to everyday emotion. Above all, he made music a bridge — between countries, cultures, and broken hearts.
As long as people fall in love and lose it, as long as someone sits under the night sky and plays “Ranjish Hi Sahi” on a rainy evening, Mehdi Hassan will remain alive. The Shahenshah-e-Ghazal may have left this world, but his voice lives in every sigh that turns into a song.
To remember Mehdi Hassan is not nostalgia — it is resistance against forgetting what it means to truly feel.
“Aa phir se mujhe chhod ke jaane ke liye aa…”
(Come, even if only to leave me again.)
And so, we return, again and again, to Mehdi Hassan — to be left undone, just a little more beautifully each time.
Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St.Xavier’s College, Mumbai
