(Late) Shri Hem Chandra Jain
A Generous Agra Niwasi and a Music Lover
On the 16th of September Mr. Jain's son, Professor Apurva
Jain emailed the sad news that my friend and fellow collector of
ancient Hindi songs had passed away on 14th evening. He had sent his
last email to me on the 13th 9:05 pm enclosing the latest list of 22
songs that he needed from me. I am still recovering from the shock. I
am always listening to songs from the 30s and 40s on my iPod and
remembering him.
Brief Biography
He was born in Shikohabad (a city in
Uttar Pradesh about 35 miles west of the world famous city of Agra) c.
1932 in a traditional Jain business family. After finishing
Teacher Training, he was employed at N. N. Jain College in Shikohabad
and, later, at M. D. Jain College Agra. While teaching, he continued
his education and obtained a degree in Philosophy. In 1951, he got
married to Mrs. Sarla Jain who remained his life-long companion and
shared his ideology. In 1957, he moved to Bhopal to work for the Life
Insurance Corporation. He was transferred to Agra in 1961 where he
remained for the rest of his life until his untimely passing away on
the 14th of September 2007. He is survived by his wife, a son and two
daughters.
His
Multi-dimensional Personality
From a young age, he was influenced
by the leftist world view and throughout his life, remained active in
the Trade Union movement and in the Agra Communist Party. He was
also very active in the various cultural activities in Agra. He was a
founder member of the Agra Film Society, one of the earliest such
societies in India. He was also very supportive of Triveni Kala Sangam,
Jan Natya Sangh and, ISCUS, the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society. He was a
chess lover and always encouraged others to learn and play the game. He
was foremost in establishing the Agra Chess Association. For a
long time, he wrote film reviews for the famous Agra daily Sainik. He
was a connoisseur of classical music, film music and of Rabindra
Sangeet. He had a huge collection of discs and tapes. In his last
years, he was in correspondence with music lovers all over the world
via Internet.
He was known for his clear thinking, his unbroken faith and his love of
a good debate. He was always surrounded by friends and disciples with
whom he shared his deep knowledge and study. His family and friends (I
and Dr. Manohar Lal Kapur are lucky to count ourselves among them) will
always remember him.
The preceding is based on a note that his son, Professor Apurva Jain,
wrote for a local newspaper. It is in Hindi and can be read here:
Professor Apurva Jain's note
He also supplied the photo
above and more that can be seen here:
Some more photos
My interactions with Jain Sahib
Our friendship started from the
first day he emailed me on December 8,
2006 asking about a song of Khurshid Anwar on my website. As I found
out later, he was full of information about songs, lyricists and music
directors and he always had thirst for more knowledge. I replied him
that the info came from Khurshid Anwar's son, a good friend of mine.
From the next few email exchanges it became clear that our interests in
Hindi Film Music are identical! Our cut-off year was 1956. Turned out,
we had both collected thousands of songs from 1931-1960 or so.
He gave me his phone number, I called him up one night and we had a
long conversation. He obviously liked all the MDs from the 30s and 40
but Anil Biswas was his favorite. He wanted to have all the songs of
all his favorite MDs. He did not express much interest in movies,
except one. He wanted to know if I had Aurat (1940). Thanks to my
friend Dr. Kapur, I had and I sent it to him by Global Express mail! He
was very happy to watch this movie again after so many years.
We decided that we must exchange our songs. I was extremely happy to
note that he was absolutely generous about sharing. He mentioned that
he was not like others (he named two collectors, one from Calcutta and
another from Delhi) who are after money or like another famous one who
wrote a column for Screen, who is 'afraid' to share. I had digitized
about 40% of my collection and I immediately mailed it to him as mp3
files on 6 DVDs. He had not yet digitized his collection, although he
was planning to. He immediately proceeded to do so year wise and
started
sending me songs by gmail. There were quite a lot of rare songs that I
had no hopes of getting from anywhere else. There were songs from rare
singers, rare MDs, rare lyricists. One special collection he sent me
was all the songs from the first 20 movies of Naushad that he had
obtained from the personal collection of Naushad himself!
In the meantime, he complained politely that the songs I had sent to
him DVDs were not labeled and so he would have to listen to all of them
to decipher which ones they were. I immediately dropped everything and
my top priority became renaming the thousands of mp3 files. I sent
about 3,000 renamed files from 1931 to about 1945 to him. After that we
worked in parallel; I renaming the files and he digitizing his songs
and sending them to me. Unfortunately he passed away when he reached
1947, letter D. I have been sharing many of these songs with the
music lovers all over the world via my website. I plan to put up all of
them, time permitting.
In his conversations and emails he mentioned that he was a
founding member and secretary of the 5th film club in India, the Agra
Film Society, the first one being the famous one founded by Ray and
Dasgupta in Calcutta. He also collected film magazines and books and
perused them
religiously. His prize collection is a whole set of the Filmfare
magazine from the beginning, which, knowledgeable people have told me,
even Times of India does not have!
The very first song he sent me was the 1935 song, Tere Poojan Ko
Bhagawan by Ratan Bai (Mother of Saroj Shilotri, more popularly known
as
Shobhana Smarth). I had heard this song only from my grandmother. I was
thrilled to hear it in the voice of the original singer.
He always wrote very detailed emails commenting on songs, MDs and
giving other useful info and opinions. His lengthiest email came after
I posted a few songs from Meera (1947). I liked the email so much that
I
reproduced it in its entirety on my website:
His detailed
comments on Meera 1947 and MSS
Of course, he also shared the correct songs from this film with the
whole world!
He had been sporadic contributor to the Usenet Indian music group
RMIM
In fact, he participated in RJGK (Rim Jhim Geeton Ki) 45 in 1998.
Interestingly, it turns out that Radha and Apurva Jain had also
participated in and aced RJGK 52 in 1999!
I had planned to include a page on him on my website. I requested him
to tell him about his life and his view of the word. He wrote,"Nothing
is private in my life" and he promised to write about
himself. I understand that he started writing it, but,
unfortunately, passed away before completing it. With heavy
heart, I conclude this brief tribute to him. May his soul
rest in peace!
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to Professor Apurva
Jain for sharing photos and information about his dad so generously.
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