Double troubled

As I admired CMM’s special effects watching two Kajol’s prancing together in the title track of Kuch Khatti Kuch Meethi, my thoughts went to the song I was hearing as composed by Anu Malik and sung by Alka Yagnik. Alka was made to sing it at one straight go, though the lines were to be divided among the twins. How? The question came to mind since we do not have twin sisters around as playback singers. Would it have been more natural or odd if Anu had used two voices which were not so different? Or should Rahul Rawail, Anu and the choreographer have decided in advance which lines would be sung by which twin, and got Alka to vocalise one Kajol’s lines with a small but marked difference?

As the voice-star nexus has been destroyed and was not always adhered to in the past either, my thoughts flew to past dual roles. I remembered two Dharmendras - one a normal toughie and the other the ghost of his dead, mentally-retarded twin - singing the duet Aage se dekho peeche se dekho in N.N. Sippy’s Ghazab (1982). Laxmikant-Pyarelal here cashed in on the presence of both father and son - Kishore Kumar and Amit Kumar - to enact the duet for the two brothers. Of course there were very rare times when twins sang ‘together’ on screen. L-P again did get Lata and Asha both to sing for Moushumi in Dil Aur Deewaar (1978), but that undistinguished song had Lata singing for the heroine and Asha for her alter-ego or conscience.

On the other hand, two artistes did come together in different frames of the same song, notably Shashi Kapoor in Dilbar dilbar kehte kehte (Haseena Maan Jayegi/1969) and two Jeetendra’s singing respectively with Mumtaz and Komal (now Mrs. Poonam Sinha) in Jigri Dost (1969 again). In both cases, it was Rafi singing for both the avtaars.

But we also found the hilarious example of L-P using Kishore Kumar, Mukesh and Mehmood himself for the three Mehmoods in that laugh-riot Yeh kaisa aaya zamana (Humjoli/1970). In Farz Aur Kaanoon, there was a song in which Suresh Wadkar and Shabbir Kumar both sang for the two Jeetendras.

Kalyanji-Anandji chose Mahendra Kapoor (a junior singer) for the father and Rafi for both the sons played by Dilip Kumar in Bairaag (1976). Sometimes the voices would be sharply delineated for dual roles, like Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle for the mother and Kavita Krishnamurthi for the daughter Jaya Prada in Sanjog (1985), or Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan for one Hrithik Roshan and L ucky Ali and Babul Supriyo for the other in Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai. But in the latter case, director Rakesh Roshan went and ‘spoilt’ everything by letting Hrithik II sing a line of Hrithik I’s Chand sitaren in one frame!
But in most cases, composers sought to ignore this ‘double’ trouble and preferred to focus on the singer best suited to the song or/and artiste.

Obviously a hit song was more important than worrying about ‘small’ things like these. So it was really not of consequence that two Govinda’s, one a spoilt rich urban brat and the other a rustic bumpkin, both sang in the very same voice of Kumar Sanu in Aankhen!

Rajiv Vijayakar

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