Lekin. It was a simple Hindi word that came up in Jasdev Singh’s hockey commentary often. But the word ‘but’ — lekin’s equivalent in English — just couldn’t carry the same sense of breathless dismay, drama and denouement that Jasdev’s ‘lekin’ did when talking of a missed goal. It made the Indians collectively sighed, like they collectively cheered when the Voice of Hockey built up a crescendo of the 1975 World Cup: “Ashok Kumar wahi taiyyar khade hai… ab gend ko roka Ajitpal ne… Aslam ne phir hit karni chahi…bounce hoke gayi phirse Ashok ke paas…Philip ja rahe hai goal ke paas… aur pass karke… Ashok ki gend goal mein.”
It wasn’t exactly the frenzy of the South American football commentator, but it could span the delirium and the disappointment of the goals and misses perfectly. Nothing though could match the ‘Lekin’, about the legendary broadcaster who passed away after prolonged illness on Tuesday. He was 87 and is survived by his son and daughter.
“We all tried to copy that ‘lekin’,” recalls DD sports commentator Milind Wagle, “but nobody could say that word like Jasdev Singh.” A career in voicing history as it unfolded on a sporting field, that started in 1968, finished with an illustrious haul of 9 Olympics, 6 Asian Games and 8 Hockey worlds – ranging from radio to colour television. Jasdev also brought into living rooms the mild lump in throat moments of the Republic Day parade without getting overtly jingoistic, though he was at hand to convey the sentiment of a united nation in the aftermath of the 1962 China war at the subsequent parade.
“People had chuckled that calling matches in Hindi in games like hockey and cricket would be weird and Jasdev was told this many times,” recalls another known voice Sushil Doshi. “Skeptics wondered how he would convey dribble kiya and pass kiya and 22 yards. But he understood very well that hockey played by men coming from villages and sons of farmers needed to reach their families. Kisaan aur gharelu mahilaayein – un tak khel pahunchaya Jasdev ne,” Doshi reiterates. The fellow Hindi commentator says all from his ilk are indebted to the joyous voice from Jaipur to give them the confidence to talk sport in Hindi.
Inspired by Melwyl D’Mello’s narration of Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral which he heard alongside his mother, Jasdev had made up his mind to become a broadcaster. “He used simple words – nothing roundabout, but was authentic, and spoke from the heart and to the heart,” Doshi says, adding that he laid special emphasis on perfect Hindi, quoting philosophers who stressed that the loss of grammar was the first step towards destruction of a nation.