It is a well known fact that Shamshad Begum has been perhaps the most reclusive film artist alive. To keep the promise given by her to her conservative father, She refused to be photographed for almost three decades. She was known to have often worn the burqa to the studios. Even though She had a million fans, only a few industry insiders knew how She looked like! She was extremely media shy and almost never interacted with the press. She spoke to her fans only through her lovely voice. Due to this reason, there has always been paucity of information on the legend. Post-retirement, She became even more inaccessible. One can imagine, how difficult it must be to get information  on Shamshad Begum in such a situation. ज़ाहिर है कोई दीवाना ही इस कमी को दूर करने की सोच सकता है!

Shri Chandrakant Mohanlal is the fanatic who took it upon himself to fill this void in film history and the result of his efforts is now before us in the form of a compendium of Shamshad ji's songs, aptly called, "Khanakti Aawaaz... Shamshad Begum".

Normal men on retirement, usually choose to spend time with family slowly withdrawing from everything. But, then, Chandrakant ji is no ordinary person. He is a retired mathematic professor from  Indore who had grown up with a daily diet of Shamshad Begum's songs and that mellifluous voice never left him. It however pained him that information on an artist  of her calibre was slowly  becoming extremely difficult to come by. Even though remixes of her songs were immensely popular it was virtually impossible to find information on her songs. An ordinary man would have left it at that, but Chandrakant ji took it upon himself to make that change.