The native village of Mohammed Rafi near Amritsar is doing its bit to keep the memories of the legendary playback singer alive by developing a park to be named after him. As the 28th death anniversay of Rafi falls on Thursday, his village Kotla Sultan Singh remembers its greatest hero, whose name will always be among one of India's greatest singers.

"The village panchayat has given an acre of land near the main road for a park which is named after Mohd Rafi. We will also be putting up Rafi Sahab's statue over there," village sarpanch, Santokh Singh said.

He said a village school gate and a road had earlier been named after Rafi, who died on this day in 1980. A Club named after the singer also exists in the village, which has a population of about 1300.

He, however, lamented that promises made by a few politicians in the past to build a suitable memorial in the name of the singer was yet to be fulfilled.

Nevertheless, he hoped that the village panchayat may soon get funds to expedite different works in Rafi's memory with local MLA and Punjab's Information Minister Bikramjit Singh Majithia taking keen interest in the matter.

Rajbir Kaur, vice principal of a school at Kotla village, however, says more needs to be done to educate and create interest among the present generation about the great singers of the past like Rafi.

"In Rafi's own village, we don't have adequate facilities to teach music to our children. Rafi Sahab remained so attached to the land where he was born, but not many children here can recall or sing his greatest numbers, which is sad," she said.

Rafi, whose nickname was Pheeko, started singing by imitating chants of a fakir who used to frequent his village, said the village head recalling his childhood.

In 1935-36, Rafi's father shifted to Lahore, and the rest of the family followed later. It is in Lahore that he got a chance to perform for the first time in public at the age of 13 and many years later in 1944 moved to Bombay, now Mumbai,
he said.    

Rafi, who sang in many languages including Punjabi and Bengali, shot to fame in 1952 with his number 'O duniya ke rakhwale' from Baiju Bawra and went on to establish himself as one of the finest playback singers in the Indian film industry.

Besides singing for Naushad in the 1950s and 60s, Rafi also became a favourite with great composers like O P Nayyar, Shankar Jaikishan and S D Burman.

In 1960, Rafi got the first Filmfare best male playback award for the song "Chaudhvin Ka Chand Ho" picturised on Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman.

More than a decade and several other awards later the legendary singer got his second Filmfare award for best playback just before his death in 1977 for the song 'Kya hua tera vaada' in the film 'Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin'.

As reported by IndiaInfo: http://movies.indiainfo.com/2008/08/01/0808010621_rafi.html 

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Last update : 31-08-2008 18:16

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