R.I.P. Jagjit Singh

So the voice of Ghazal in India is dead. The Facebook walls are flooded with messages about how saddened one is due to this great loss. You feel classy when you mention that you love Ghazals. Newspapers are publishing "Top 10 Ghazals by Jagjit Singh" and similar posts are on the Facebook. What I noticed instantly was almost all lists involve "तुमको देखा तो ये खयाल आया". while that is a nice song and I personally like that a lot, it is not a Ghazal at all. Other "नज्म" like "वो कागज कि कश्ती" or "बात निकलेगी तो फिर" are also listed there.

Ghazal has some very hard rules. Terms like "Beher", "Radif", "Kaafiyaa" and rules like a "Matla" should have "Radif" in both the lines. etc. must be considered. So the above mentioned songs are not Ghazals and the so called Ghazal lovers are not knowing this fact at all.

On the other side does these technicalities really matter to enjoy the soothing voice of Jagjit? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Ghazal or not Jagjit's songs remain most popular non-filmy music. So why do I get this urge to nitpicking? Am I stroking my ego about my own classiness?

A kid pointing at a rhino and calling it a hippo is OK. The kid will be equally amused about the magnificence of the animal. But it doesnt go well with me when a so called wildlife conservationist with a "Go Green" T-shirt does the same mistake.