Zindagi kaisi hai paheli (Cover Version ) in Voice of Sudhijit Sinha

I am fortunate that this particular song has special place in my heart , mind and soul, for many reasons. One of the BIG reasons is also that the great legend composer SALIL CHOWDHURY had listened this song from me in 1994 at Doordarshan CPC Studio .

Salil Chowdhury was an Indian music composer, lyricist, writer and singer, who mainly composed for Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam film and other films. He was also a poet and a playwright. He is affectionately called Salilda by his admirers.

He was an accomplished composer and arranger who was proficient in several musical instruments, including flute, the piano, and the esraj. He was also widely acclaimed and admired for his inspirational and original poetry in Bengali.

Salil's music was a blending of Eastern and the Western music traditions. He had once said: "I want to create a style which shall transcend borders – a genre which is emphatic and polished, but never predictable". He dabbled in a lot of things and it was his ambition to achieve greatness in everything he did. But at times, his confusion was fairly evident: "I do not know what to opt for: poetry, story writing, orchestration or composing for films. I just try to be creative with what fits the moment and my temperament", he once told a journalist.
Salil's love for Western classical music started when he was a young boy growing up in an Assam tea garden where his father worked as a doctor. His father inherited a large number of western classical records and a gramophone from a departing Irish doctor. While Salil listened to Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and others everyday, his daily life was surrounded by the sound of the forest, chirping of the birds, sound of the flute and the local folk-music of Assam. This left a lasting impression in young Salil. He became a self-taught flute player and his favourite composer was Mozart. His compositions often used folk melodies or melodies based on Indian classical ragas but the orchestration was very much western in its construction. According to his daughter Antara, (Ref.: Ek Fankar @ Vividbharati Radio Programme at 10.00 pm on 19 November 2013), Salil himself once joked that he was Mozart, reborn.
Salil being a composing exponent, he even sensed the talent of a guitarist who played in his orchestra and uttered that, "I think he’s going to be the best composer in India". The guitarist eventually turned out to be Maestro Ilaiyaraaja. A. R Rahman's father, R. K Shekhar used to conduct Salil Chowdhury's arrangements in South Indian film music. Rahman once said that his musical understanding was greatly influenced by the musical sessions conducted by Salil Chowdhury.
"The Salil Chowdhury Memorial Concert and Honors" was created in 2002 by Antara Chowdhury, singer and daughter of the late composer, to carry forward the legacy, ideas and concepts of "Salil Chowdhury Foundation of Music".