KOCHI: In the mid-1980s, one morning, ghazal singer Umbayee walked past the Fatima Girls High School at Fort Kochi. The next day, his daughter Shailaja said, “Bapa, did you go in front of the school yesterday?”
Umbayee shook his head. “My friends said that you were drunk and were swaying from side to side,” said Shailaja. That sentence pierced Umbayee’s heart.
“He decided to stop drinking,” recalled his wife Habeesa, who got married to the ghazal singer on May 8, 1977. “Umbayee feared for the future of his children — Shailaja, Sabitha and Sameer — if he died suddenly.” And he held on to his resolve and became clean. But he had to go through withdrawal symptoms, like cold turkey, and even a bout of jaundice. “But ever since that time, he had never touched a drop.”
Umbayee began to concentrate on his ghazal singing. And he would sing regularly at a restaurant on MG Road in Kochi. One night he sang Ghulam Ali’s ghazal, Chupke Chupke. One North Indian patron was so amazed that a Malayali could sing this song so well that he came forward and showered Rs 5,000 in Rs 50 bundles on Umbayee.
The singer was stunned. This was the first time somebody had done something like this. He immediately gave Rs 1,000 to the tabla player. “When he came home, he told me that we were going for an outing the next day,” said Habeesa. “And that was how, for the first time in our lives, we went to the Athirappilly waterfalls in a tourist taxi and had a good time.”
Despite living with a noted singer, Habeesa has only seen one performance of Umbayee. This happened years ago, at Koyilandy. “When I see him on stage, I get very anxious,” she said. “I want the programme to go through nicely, with the audience appreciating him. So I cannot enjoy the music, because I am praying all the time. So my husband told me that it is better I stay away.”
He was a trailblazer: CM
T’Puram: Umbayee had played a big role in popularising the genre of ghazal music, said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in his condolence message. “Umbayee, who had set up Malayalam’s first ghazal troupe in Kochi, was gutsy enough to experiment with the ghazal form. He also became a trailblazer by making ghazals out of the lines of great poets such as O N V Kurup and Sachithanandan,” he reminisced. Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said Malayalees will never forget Umbayee who rained ghazals on their minds. “Umbayee introduced Malayalees to the beauty of ghazal and his demise has created a big void,” he said. Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan said the demise of Umbayee has left a void in the world of ghazals. The Speaker, who had released the celebrated ghazal singer’s autobiography, said it was one of the blessed acts of his life.