Mera geet amar kar do..He had horse sense too - By Shailendra Awasthi | TNN
Posted on - 11 Oct 2011
Mera geet amar kar do...
He had horse sense too
Shailendra Awasthi | TNN
It’s a fact that's not too well know, but Jagjit Singh's second passion after singing was horse racing. In fact, a visit to the stables in the evening would rejuvenate him whenever the problems of showbiz got him down. “He would hold the face of his horses and caress them. It gave him immense pleasure,” recalls Magan Singh Jodha, the singer's close friend and a trainer at Mumbai for 30 years.
It was Jodha who initiated Singh into racing with a trip to the Mahalaxmi race course in 1970. “I was a photographer with an ad filmmaking firm then and he worked with me as a musician,” says Jodha. “We did a film for Aseel Oil together.” After becoming a regular at the race course, Jagjit brought his first ever horse in 1985 just to help Jodha's father, Purtu Singh. “My father was a jockey and wanted to become a trainer. Those days one needed at least 11 horses as trainees to secure a license. So Singh bought five horses to help my father,” recalls Jodha. Singh still has five or six horses with Jodha's son, Adhiraj Singh, who is also a trainer. “He would name his horses after his music albums, and his first horse was called Sound Affair,” says Jodha.
Singh gradually learned the art of racing. “He knew about bloodline and could make out the condition of a horse and predict his performance,” says Jodha. Singh was almost maternal about his horses-once, when one of his mares died after giving birth to a healthy baby in 1986, he went to Jai Govind Stud Farm in Jaipur. “He would bottle-feed the baby every day till he was in the city. And later he always showed concern about its progress,” says Jodha.
Jockey-turned-trainer Malesh Narredu, who brought a horse called Astromia jointly with Singh, says that the singer was looking forward to watching its debut run. Sadly, this happened on Sunday in Pune when Singh was in a coma in hospital.
Vivek Jain, the Chairman of the Royal Western India Turf Club, was also in negotiation with the ghazal maestro to host a ghazal symphony during the upcoming Mumbai season. “He was very enthusiastic about our plans and was looking forward to it,” says Jain. “Sadly destiny willed otherwise.”
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