Mumbai: In the 1990s, singer Kumar Sanu had a huge fan following due to his melodious voice. His songs were very popular and people of all ages used to hum those. Today Kumar Sanu turns a year old.
The singer whose real name is Kedarnath Bhattacharya grew up in north Kolkata. Sanu was recently on the Kapil Sharma show. He went down memory lane while talking about his career.
“My debut performance was on a railway track where I was asked to sing some Hindi songs in front of a mafia gang and around 20,000 more people were present,” said Sanu.
“I danced too but I was very nervous. Luckily, they liked it. But when my father, who comes from an orthodox background, got to know about it, he slapped me very hard. He told me not to take part in such shows anymore,” he added.
There was a period when Sanu gave one hit song after the other. Sanu made his debut with the film Aashiqui, the music for which was composed by Nadeem-Shravan. After that there was no looking back for Sanu.
He won the first of his five consecutive ‘Filmfare Awards’ as ‘Best Male Playback Singer’ in 1990 for Aashiqui. His next Filmfare Awards came for songs in the movies Saajan (1991), Deewana (1992), Baazigar (1993) and 1942: A Love Story (1994).
Sanu joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2004 in a ceremony headed by then party president Venkaiah Naidu, but he later resigned to concentrate on singing. He rejoined the BJP again in December 2014 after being persuaded to do so by current Union Home Minister by Amit Shah.