Tributes

Madan Mohan's untimely death on 14th July 1975 came as a shock to his colleagues. Some excerpts of their reactions as reported in newspapers are reproduced below.

"Madan Mohan's music will prevail, for it embodied melody, the basis of Indian Music. It was my privilege to have sung for him"
Lata Mangeshkar

"He appeared to be a bit hot tempered, but he was really very soft hearted. Whenever I called him "Madan Bhaiya", he always used to respond with "Kya hai beti".
Asha Bhosle

"In all my concert tours, I was flooded with requests for Madan Mohan tuned songs"
Mohammed Rafi

"Madan Mohan never made any compromise in his life and in every tune that he produced, there was newness".
Talat Mahmood

"The king of Ghazals has gone and has left no peer"
Naushad

"A gifted composer is gone. Few have harnessed our precious thumris and ghazals as he did"
Vasant Desai

"Although he looked tough outwardly, in his heart he was a soft man, he used to cry like a child on hearing personal tragedies of friends"
Jaidev

"It is a big tragedy. Very few could equal Madan Mohan in the field of music"
Laxmikant

"Madan Mohan had a gharana of his own in Hindi film music. It is a lesson to youngsters like me that he had used Indian classical music as the base for his tunes and made them popular"
R.D.Burman

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels but Madan's was superior"
Manoj Kumar

Great soul, thrice beautiful and sensitive. Rare soul of silence, bursting into song!
You are no more...
WE WANTED YOU TO LIVE,
Death is a lunatic, we can't forgive.
By wrenching you from us, he has done wrong!
He has committed suicide.
The last breath, my Madan Mohan breathed, was Death's own death.
MADAN! Your place can never more be taken,
By anybody... your embodiment
Of melody through which you could awaken.
In listener's hearts, sorrow and magic blent, I knew you when your father was my friend.
You were a little fellow - in your eyes
I did behold, I did, a quiet blend of dream and song, I thought would never end.
But artistes born on earth belong to the skies.
With paradise inhabiting their eyes.
MADAN! for countless thousands in the world, you are alive... no one like you departs.
The banner of your music is unfurled forever and forever in our hearts.

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya
A friend, well known actor, poet and theatre personality