Google honours Jagjit Singh on his 72nd birthday with a doodle

Google’s doodle for today commemorates the 72nd birth anniversary of Indian singer Jagjit Singh. The doodle is a fairly plain one, with the text matching the rest of the elements, and the singer is pictured playing the harmonium. Born to this day in 1941 as Jagmohan Singh, he has earned reputation as a singer, songwriter and a musician. Singh found an able partner to his musical ambitions in his wife, Chitra Singh, another popular Indian ghazal singer. 

Born in Sri Ganganagar in Rajasthan, India, Singh learned music in Sikh temples and from classical musicians Pandit Chaganlal Sharma and Ustad Jamaal Khan. In 1965, he came to Mumbai without the knowledge of his family to seek opportunities in music, and a chance in the the Hindi film industry in the city. He began by singing for advertisement jingles and went on to become a playback singer. He then got record company HMV to help him release an EP. 

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Google doodles for Jagjit Singh

In 1969, Singh married Chitra Dutta, also a jingle singer, and together they have released many noted, popular albums. The Unforgettables, which was their first LP, earned them much recognition and praise. Singh lent his voice to several Bollywood films too, besides the TV serial Mirza Ghalib. The couple quit singing together in 1990, when their son Vivek passed away following an accident. Singh, despite being deeply affected by his son’s death, continued to work (sans Chitra, who had then withdrawn from the scene completely). 

After many a success, Singh died in October 2011of a fatal bout of cerebral hemorrhage at Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital. 

Jagjit Singh was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2003. 

Besides its entertaining and animated doodles, Google puts out endearing ones too, and these are equally brilliant. In December last year, Google put out one such endearing doodle to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of Srinivasa Ramanujan, the mathematical genius. The doodle best described what Ramanujan lived for—his love for mathematics. The doodle showed a young lad, presumably young Ramanujan, on his fours, writing the mathematical constant Pi, which is approximately equal to 3.14159. The word ‘Google’ was thoughtfully etched out of the different formulas and other mathematical depictions.