As the world marks the 101st birthday of Mohammed Rafi on December 24, one man at Tirur celebrates it as a deeply personal festival. Saifullah Cholakkal does not merely listen to Rafi. He lives with him.
Over the past five decades, he has painstakingly collected nearly 5,000 songs sung by the legendary playback singer, spanning vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, and DVDs. “All the known songs, and most of the unknown ones, are with me,” he says with quiet pride.
Mr. Cholakkal’s love affair with Rafi’s voice began long before the age of the Internet, and even before cassette tapes became common.
Born in 1962, he was barely five years old when he watched Shammi Kapoor’s Teesri Manzil in Malaysia and heard Tumne Mujhe Dekha. He did not understand Hindi then, but the voice stayed with him.
Guided by radio programmes on Radio Malaysia, Radio Singapore and Akashvani, and also by stories shared by his father Kutty Hassan, Mr. Cholakkal grew up believing there was something divine in that voice.
“It was God’s own voice,” he says. “That is how my love for Rafi Saab began. And every time I listen to him, that love only deepens,” Mr. Cholakkal adds as he gently puts away some of his prized first-press records after playing Baharon Phool Barsao on his vintage 33-RPM Philips record player.
Among his hundreds of records are a few dozen first press editions. Some of them are enormously valuable, he says. There may be only a handful of Rafi fans in Kerala who possess nearly the entire Mohammed Rafi repertoire, missing barely 160-odd songs.
“Though I began listening to cassettes while living in Malaysia in the 1970s, my passion shifted to vinyl records after I returned to India. My longing to meet Rafi Saab was shattered when he passed away in 1980, the very year I landed in Kerala,” Mr. Cholakkal recalls.
It was his deep devotion to Rafi that endeared Mr. Cholakkal to the late Dharmendra, with whom he shared a warm friendship. “Rafi Saab’s voice modulation for any actor, especially for actors like Dharmendra and Shammi Kapoor, was inimitable,” he says.
“Dharamjee once told me, ‘Bete, when you listen to the song Jaane kya dhoondhti rahti hai ye aankhen mujh mein, you will feel as if I am singing it myself’,” he recalls.
Mr. Cholakkal has visited Rafi’s family many times and stood in sheer awe of the memorabilia housed in Rafi Mansion in Bandra. “Whenever I met Rafi Saab’s son Shahid Rafi and son-in-law Parvez Bhai, they were exceptionally kind, a reflection of the beautiful human being that Rafi Saab was,” he says.
Mr. Cholakkal finds Rafi Saab’s diction and vocal clarity inimitable and hopes that singers of the new generation will imbibe the legend’s humility. “And even after decades of listening to Rafi Saab,” he concludes, “my personal favourite song still remains Tumne Mujhe Dekha...”