Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma (born 3 September 1940) was the son of a renowned trumpeter Pandit Ramprasad Sharma (popularly known as Babaji), who taught him the basics of music. He started learning violin at the age of 8 and practised it 8 to 12 hours daily. He learnt to play violin from a Goan musician named Anthony Gonsalves. The song “My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves” from the movie Amar Akbar Anthony is regarded as a tribute to Mr. Gonsalves.

The duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal have made enormous number of music compositions for the Indian film industry. They were then introduced to .eminant composers. The duo worked under the guidance of many music directors and later started making music independently. They composed music for about 653 Hindi movies from 1963 to 1998, working for almost all notable filmmakers including Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, B.R. Chopra, Shakti Samanta, Manmohan Desai, Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai and Manoj Kumar. They both have also worked with some legendary singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mohd. Rafi, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Suresh Wadkar, Alka Yagnik, Kavitha Krishnamurthy and many more.

Together with lyricist Anand Bakshi, Laxmikant–Pyarelal churned out the most successful hits of their career. They were also Hindi cinema’s best. So much so that he happened to have penned songs for every film that the duo won a Filmfare for, barring their very first win in 1963. Until they won their first Filmfare ‘Best Music Director Award’ for Dosti in 1964, music lovers and fans thought that Laxmikant Pyarelal was a single person.

And to celebrate Pyarelal’s birth anniversary, here’s our list of their favourites sprinkled with stories about the composer duo that music lovers of my generation probably haven’t heard before.

#1. Jane Walo Jara Mudake Dekho from Dosti.