From Dev Anand to Dharmendra, Hemant Kumar was the voice of his time

Interested in music from his early years, a young Bengali completed his primary education with great difficulty and dropped out of college after Calcutta AIR took him on board as a singer. He spent most of his salary on getting a harmonium and on honing his musical abilities, especially Rabindra Sangeet.

Bengali cinema and then the Hindi films industry beckoned, but the path was not easy for Hemant Kumar Mukhopadhyay, or Hemant Kumar, as he is better known to the legions of his fans, was born on June 16 in Benares in 1920.

The rare combination of a gifted musical composer, who wove in classical music strains, and a playback singer with a soothing mellifluous voice, he recorded his first

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