Bhopal: Twelfth National Kishore Kumar Award would be conferred upon late Gulshan Bawra by the Government of Madhya Pradesh at Khandwa on October 13. Wife of late Gulshan Bawara, Ms Anju Mehta would receive the award from the Minister for Culture and Public Relations, Laxmikant Sharma. Indian Idol Fame, Abhijeet Sawant would perform on the occasion. The programme to be organised at Raichand Nagda School of Excellence, Khandwa would be free from entry fee.
This is for the first time when the award is being conferred posthumously. On the initiatives of former Minister Vijay Shah, the award function is being organised at Khandwa, the birthplace of late Kishore Kumar, since 2004-05. Prior to this, function used to be organised at capital city Bhopal. Late Gulshan Kumar Mehta, popularly known as Gulshan Bawra was born 30 km from Lahore in a place called Sheikhupura. His father had a construction business. His family was a victim to the partition riots where young Gulshan saw his parents being killed in front of his eyes. His elder sister at Jaipur, brought him and his elder brother up. After his brother got a job, they shifted to Delhi where he graduated from Delhi University. During college, he began to write poetry.
He wanted to come into films and applied for a job with the Railways. He was posted to Kota which was then in Madhya Pradesh but when he arrived there, the vacancy was filled. His next call was luckily that for the post of a clerk at Mumbai and he arrived in the city in 1955. Gulshan struggled to get a film break, initially keeping his job on. Kalyanji (-Anandji), then on his own as Kalyanji Virji Shah, gave him his first opening in Chandrasena (1959) in the song ‘Main kya jaanu kahan laage yeh saawan matwala re’ sung by Lata Mangeshkar.