The two musically inclined boys, Laxmikant Kudalkar and Pyarelal Sharma, began collaborating on tunes when they were 12 and 9- year-old respectively in Bombay.

Mumbai: The two musically inclined boys, Laxmikant Kudalkar and Pyarelal Sharma, began collaborating on tunes when they were 12 and 9- year-old respectively in Bombay. By the time the boys hit their teens, they were already working on film scores. “Special chairs with long legs were made for them to sit for sound recordings,” says Laxmikant’s wife Jaya Kudalkar in her letter to home minister Amit Shah. The letter, dated February 5, which has also been marked to the I&B minister and the Maharashtra chief minister, is an anguished plea for posthumous recognition for her husband to match the Padma Bhushan conferred on January 17 on his collaborator Pyarelal.

Both boys, sons of musicians, dominated Hindi film music from the late 1960s until Laxmikant’s death in 1998, and composed music for about 500 films creating some of Hindi cinema’s biggest chartbusters. But as with the alchemy created from any close creative collaboration, the million- dollar question is: could there be a Pyarelal without a Laxmikant? By honouring one with a Padma Bhushan but leaving out the other, the government appears think so.

“They were inseparable professionally and personally. Hindi cinema has always celebrated L-P together as musical twins, as a monolithic entity over the decades despite the demise of Shri Laxmikant in 1998, says the letter to the government. “Inadvertently, this ‘partnership’ of L-P has been broken by the announcement of the Padma Bhushan this year,” write Jaya Kudalkar urging the government to “restore” the partnership by announcing the Padma Bhushan for her husband posthumously. “We are genuinely happy for Pyare uncle, but our family is sad that my father’s name was missed out,’’ said the composer’s actor-son, Rishikesh Kudalkar.

Producer and film trade analyst, Girish Johar, says, “Laxmiji and Pyareji are one as far as all of us are concerned. If one was the left eye, the other was the right. So how can even think in terms of separating the two?’’ The music directors are best known for their works in films like Parasmani, Karz, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Bobby, Ek Duje Ke Liye and Khalnayak among several others. Some of the best works in their career was arguably done for Raj Kapoor who was looking for a music director after the demise of another memorable duo Shankar-Jaikishan both of whom were awarded the Padma Shri in 1968.
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