Music composer Anil Biswas was born on this day. He was one of the pioneering music directors who contributed to shaping Hindi film music from the early days of playback singing.
He was born in Barisal, now in Bangladesh. He came to Kolkata in his early youth and began to work as a musician and composer. He left for Bombay, now Mumbai, in the mid-1930s to work in the Hindi film industry, where he would be remembered as one of its most illustrious composers. Among the best-known films for which he was music director are Kismet, Anokha Pyar, Tarana, Pardesi, Paheli Nazar. He was the first Indian composer to use the 12-piece orchestra. He worked with both western and Indian elements, and classical and folk, and introduced some of the most outstanding singers, such as Mukesh and Talat Mahmood, to playback music.