The Empress of Melodies
A tribute to Lata Mangeshkar, who completes 91 years of age on September 28, 2020
Way back in1964, Mehboob Khan, producer-director of “Mother India”, was seriously ill at a hospital in Los Angeles. His wife called Lata Mangeshkar from the hospital. Mehboob snatched the phone from her and said, “Lata, I am very ill. Can you please sing Rasik balma for me?”Lata was moist-eyed as she sang this song of magical allure from the 1956 RajKapoor-Nargis starrer “Chori Chori” on the phone. A week later, he called again with the same request.
Lata’s phone calls didn’t save the dying movie mogul, but she had the satisfaction of providing him with some solace and some musical pleasure in his last days.
Lata’svoice can soothe, titillate, electrify, seduce. If you listen to the songs of “Barsaat” or “Anarkali”, “Mother India” or “Mughal-e-Azam”, “Guide” or“Abhimaan”, you can hear Lata’s voice glide with elan from joy to anguish, longing to philosophical angst, from a celebration of life to a call of despair.
It used to be said during the 1970s that only two voices were heard over All-IndiaRadio – Indira Gandhi and Lata Mangeshkar. Today you hear more voices – butLata’s own voice pours out from cell phones, computers, radios and TV sets thousands of times every day.
The woman who didn’t go to school, who missed most of her childhood, who never married, is the eternal empress of playback melody. She has sung several thousand songs in 36 languages. She has been compared to Taj Mahal as an Indian brand, she has won more honours than any other person in the history of Indian cinema.
Major honours include the Bharat Ratna (2001); the Dadasaheb Phalke award (1989); three national awards for best playback singer; six Filmfare awards; and the French Knight of the Legion award (the highest civilian honour in France). The Madhya Pradesh government instituted a Lata Mangeshkar award in1984, the Maharashtra Government followed suit with a similar award in1992. A french perfume is named after her.
Shah Rukh Khan says he’s sorry that since he is a male, Lata will never sing for him. S D Burman said Lata is “the best antidote to regional chauvinism” –because everyone from Kashmir to Kanyakumari loves her songs. Says JavedAkthar “If you collect all the fragrance, all the moonlight, all the honey in the universe, their collective magic can’t create a voice like Lata.” Dilip Kumar remarks “Lata resides in every one of us.”
Lata’s best songs
Lata’s songs bring back memories of some of the greatest moments of Indian cinema. Take the RajKapoor-Nargis movies of the 1950s; Meena Kumari in “Baiju Bawra”, “Azad” or “Kohinoor”; Madhubala in“Amar”, “Tarana” or “Mughal-e-Azam”; Nutan in “Seema”; Vyjayanthimala in “Sangam” or “Gunga Jumna”; Sadhana in “Mere Mehboob”, “Parakh” or “MeraSaaya”; Hema Malini in “Johnny Mera Naam”; Rekha in “Silisila”; Sridevi in“Nagina” or “Mr India”; Dimple Kapadia in “Bobby”; Madhuri Dixit in “Hum Aapke Hain Koun?”; Aishwarya Rai in “Dil Se”.
Which are Lata’sbest songs? How does one pick a few from the thousands of radiant gems she has given the world? Here’s a selection, entirely personal and subjective, of five favourite songs each from different moods or genres – duets, romantic, joyous and sad songs. In each category, many other songs would be equally strong candidates.
Duets
Pyar hua ikrar hua – Lata & Manna Dey in “Shri 420” (composer:Shankar-Jaikishen)
Jaag dard ishq jaag – Lata & Hemant in “Anarkali”
(C Ramachandra)
Nain so nain – Lata &Hemant in “Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje”(Vasant Desai)
Aja sanam – Lata & Rafi, “Chori Chori” (Shankar-Jaikishen)
Hum tum ek kamre me band ho – Lata & Shailendra Singh in “Bobby”. (Laxmikant-Pyarelal)
Many of Lata’s duets are emotional scorchers and among the richest treasures of Hindi film music. All of her duet partners – be they Rafi, Kishore, Mukesh, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar – enjoyed singing with Lata, exchanging notes and tips and banter, and witnessing her professionalism and talent.
Romantic songs
Mujhe kisise pyar ho gaya from “Barsaat”
(composer: Shankar-Jaikishen)
Pyar kiya to darna kya from “Mughal-e-Azam” (Naushad);
Nainon me badra chaye – “Mera Saaya” (Madan Mohan);
Do hansonka joda – “GungaJumna” (Naushad)
Bindiya chamkegi – “Do Raaste” (Laxmikant-Pyarelal)
Lata’s romantic songs are pure gold. Those of the 1950s and 1960s are ageless, enchanting, everlasting odes to love. The more modern ones crackle with electric intensity.
Joyous songs–
O chand kila – “Anari” (Shankar-Jaikishen)
Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai – “Guide” ( SD Burman)
Jiya jale jaan jale - “Dil Se” (AR Rahman)
Didi tera devar deewana – “Hum Aapke Hain Kaun” (Ram Lakshman)
O Sajna – “Parakh” (Salil Choudhury)
Lata’s joyous songs have a compelling beat, they radiate positivism, they sparkle with banter or mischief. Sometimes they offer lyrical and visual delight that enhance the audio appeal, as in “Jiya jale”
Sad songs
Aaja re ab mera dil pukara – “Aah” (Shankar-Jaikishen)
Mera dil e pukare aaja – “Nagin” (Hemant Kumar)
Dua kar gham-e-dil – “Anarkali”(C Ramachandra)
Nagari nigari dware dware – “Mother India” (Naushad)
Megha chaye aadi raat – “Sharmilee” (S D Burman)
Lata’s sad songs are like beautiful paintings brushed with the colours of anguish. They haunt you forever. Suffused with sorrow, they are fragrant with sweetness. Your heart bleeds for Nargis, Vyjayanthimala, Bina Rai, Raakhee and other heroines as they pour out their angst. Nargis said, “When Lata sings a sad song for me, I don’t need glycerine to shed tears.”
Surprisingly, Lata considers the lyric (rather than the tune) to be the most important element of a song,
The Lata phenomenon
What accounts for the Lata phenomenon?
Reason No. 1: Her voice. There is nothing it can’t do. And it has never lost its pristine quality. SaidBade Ghulam Ali Khan, “Kambakth, kabhi besur nahi hoti” (she never sings out of tune). Composer Ehsaan Noorani pointed out that Lata was a soprano who could sing in three octaves, while other singers at best managed two. She could give a song with depth like no one else could. No wonder every actress clamoured for Lata, and she acquired a vice-like grip on the music industry.
Reason No. 2: Her musical knowledge, her memory and her grasp of the subtleties of melody and tune were awesome. Manna Dey recalls that once he and Lata were to sing a classical duet for Anil Biswas. Dey needed seven days of rehearsals. But Lata took all of one day to rehearse the song and could sing better than him. In1977, she returned from a long foreign tour to record a song for Raj Kapoor'sSatyam Shivam Sundaram. Composers Laxmikant-Pyarelal hummed out the outlines of the theme song for about 10 minutes. That’s all she needed for the recording. The resulting song was a chart-buster.
Reason no. 3: She was an incredibly hard worker and learner. She absorbed anything new like a sponge. She learned breath control fromAnil Biswas and voice modulation from both Ghulam Haider and Naushad. She engaged a maulvi to teach her Urdudiction. This was because Dilip Kumar once remarked in Lata’s presence that the Urdu diction of Maharashtrians exuded the flavour of dal chaval. Lata was hurt and ensured that her Urdu was impeccable.
A perfectionist, she took pains to study the song situation, the screen character and the actress for each song. When Lata sang for Madhubala or Meena Kumari, she sounded like them. At the age of 45, she sang for 15-year-old Dimple Kapadia in Bobby and her voice sounded virginal. At 66, she sang for Kajol in “Dilwale Dulhaniyan le Jaayenge” and projected the ebullience of a 20-year-old.
A poignant childhood
Lata was born on September 28, 1929, to Master Dinanath Mangeshkar, a much-respected classical singer and stage artist. He ran an itinerant theater company that staged mythologicals in towns like Pune, Kolhapur, Satara,Sangli and Miraj. Lata was the eldest of five children, the others were sisters Meena, Asha and Usha and brother Hridaynath.
Lata heard devotional or classical music from the time she was born. On one occasion, she found her father’s pupil singing out of tune and corrected him. Master Dinanath arrived just then from a chore, heard Lata and was amazed. “We have a singer at home,” he exclaimed to his wife. He started teaching Lata then. She was five years old.
Film songs were banned at home – K L Saigal was the only exception. Lata used to hum Saigalsongs all the time. As a kid, she announced that she would marry Saigal. “By the time you grow up, he will be too old,” her father remarked. “Never mind, I’ll still marry him,” she said. But Lata never met her idol. When she switched on her newly acquired radio for the first time, the first news she heard was of Saigal’s death. Devastated and distraught, she returned the radio to the shop where she had bought it.
Master DinanathMangeshkar’s company fell on bad days during the late 1930s, and he sought refuge in alcohol. He died at the age of 41 on Friday, April 24, 1942. Incredibly enough, a week before his death, he had said, “Next Friday, at 1120, I will die.” (He knew astrology.) Lata laughed, she thought he was joking, but he died precisely on the date and at the time he had predicted. Lata was then 13, she became the breadwinner for a family of eight – mother, she and siblings, one of whom(brother Hridaynath), was suffering from TB, two relatives.
Thanks to MasterVinayak Rao, father of actress Nanda, Lata got a role in his Marathi film. She put on greasepaint to act and sing in “Pahili Manglagaw”. Lata played the heroine's sister and had three songs. She hated make-up and the arc lights and disliked crying or laughing on order. She only wanted to sing. But there was no option. “The day I went to work in Master Vinayak's film, there was nothing to eat in the house."
The next few years were a period of nightmarish struggle and drudgery. Lata sang and acted in four Hindi and four Marathi films. Master Vinayak passed away, but composer Ghulam Haider took Lata under her wing. He introduced Lata to composer Naushad, who gave her the song Uthaye ja unke sitam in “Andaz”(1949), filmed on Nargis. The pathos-drenched song was irresistibly endearing and made the music world sit up and take notice.
1949 was a landmark year for Lata. “Barsaat” with eight solos by Lata was released that year. She created a sensation. The wizardry of Shankar-Jaikishen and the Raj Kapoor-Nargis chemistry also worked magic.“Mahal”, released in 1949 was a trail-blazer for both Lata and the film industry. “Mahal” was immortalized by the ghost song Ayega anewala,and Lata sounded ethereal. In fact, she describes herself as a “bhootwali”singer. She has given cinema more ghost hits than anyone else.
The 1950s and 1960s were Lata’s decades of triumph. The Lata juggernaut swept all before it. Shamshad Begum, the powerful voice of the1940s, was sidelined, so were Amirbai Karnataki and Geeta Dutt. Asha Bhosle survived, thanks to O P Nayyar, her yen for peppy numbers, and Lata’s rifts with some composers. Lata was active in the three decades from the 1970s too, thanks to the new crop of composers such as Laxmikant-Pyarelaland Kalyanji-Anandji. Money flowed in from royalties and from shows abroad. Lata sang in 2004 for “Veer Zaara”, a tribute to Madan Mohan produced by his son. She has completed more than 60 years as a playback singer, a world record for longevity.
A scary experience in 1962 -- Lata suffered from “slow food poisoning”. She had a severe stomachache and body pain, she vomited green fluid, she could not move. The doctor diagnosed her problem as slow food poison. Lata’s cook suddenly vanished, without even collecting her salary. The obvious inference was that the cook was someone’s plant.
Lata did not sing for a few months. The first time she sang after her illness was for the song Kahin deep jale kahin dilfor “Bees Saal Baad”. She was nervous and apprehensive, but composer Hemant Kumar was most understanding. The song turned out to be a super hit and won Lata her second Filmfare award for best playback singer.
Lata andfellow-singers
Lata had a beautiful relationship with Noor Jahan, the playback legend of the 1940s who migrated to Pakistan in 1947. Lata often met her in London. The two singers would engage in long phone chats on the Bombay-Karachi line. Noor Jahan would ask Lata to sing some of her hit songs ( Dheere se aaja re, theimmortal lullaby from “Albela”, was a favourite of Noor Jehan). Phone operators in the two cities started eavesdropping to hear the two celebrities chat and sing!
When Lata first met Kishore Kumar, she thought he was stalking her! They were actually going to the same studio, taking a train and then a tonga. During briefing sessions before song recording, Kishore would throw Lata into hopeless fits of laughter with his jokes and clowning. He would even dance at the recording studio. She would plead with him to stop so that she could sing right!
Mukesh is the singer Lata was closest to. Mukesh persuaded Lata to accompany him on a concert tour of the US in 1976. But while in Detroit, he suffered a massive heart attack and died. A tearful Lata escorted his body back to Bombay.
Among composers, Lata was closest to Madan Mohan. Her songs under his banner “had a special sweetness” as composer Khayyam put it. Take Baiyan na daro (Dastak), Hum pyar me jalne walon ko(“Jailor”), Woh bhuli dastan (Sanjog), Yun hasraton ke daag(Adalat), Aap ki nazron ne samjha (Anpadh), to mention just a few. Lata is all praise for Shankar-Jaikishen, saying they changed the attitude to playback singing with “Barsaat”. S D Burman regarded Lata as a daughter, RD Burman always treated her with great respect. She learned a lot from Naushad. And she adored Hemant Kumar, saying he sang like an angel because he was one!
Controversies
Lata Mangeshkar is perhaps more admired than loved in the film industry. She has had a prima donna reputation. The late Raj Singh Dungarpur, who knew Lata well, said “If you rub her on the wrong side, she becomes a tigress.”
Lata could be a tigress even as a child. Her school life lasted just one day. On the second day, she had brought baby sister Ashato class and was singing with gusto while other girls cheered. The teacher pulled up Lata. She stormed out of the school, saying “How dare anyone scold the daughter of Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar!”
Lata denies that she has tried to undercut Asha. “Sheis my sister”, she points out. The two had fights after Asha eloped with and married a neighbour. He wanted Asha to sever all her links with her family, and particularly with Lata! But it was an abusive marriage, it broke up and Asha was back with Prabhu Kunj and her didi. Lata says Asha is more versatile than she is. “I can’t sing the songs she did, like Piya tu ab to aaja or Chura liya, but she can sing both peppy numbers and classical ragas”. Lata also denies that any “Mangeshkar monopoly” exists in the film industry, remarking that young and new talent has always flourished.
She has had spats with singers, composers, directors and producers but she has had her way most of the time. A few examples of Lata the tigress? She fought aggressively for the rights of playback singers, especially credit or public acknowledgement of their names; and their royalties for songs. She broke with Mohammad Rafi after he referred to her as a “Maharani” while arguing about royalties. She refused to sing for Raj Kapoor on the same issue. But Lata won both battles. Composer S D Burman brought Lata and Rafitogether again at a concert, while composers Laxmikant-Pyarelal insisted thatLata should sing in the 1973 “Bobby”. Raj was thus forced to yield on the royalties issue. “Bobby” was a resounding hit. It is said that Lata was the talisman who brought success back to the RK camp, after “Mera Naam Joker”, a horrendous flop that almost made Rajbankrupt.
Burman himself was annoyed with Lata over a misunderstanding concerning the dates of a recording. Burman said he would not engage Lata again, and the two were not seen together for a few years. ButBurman out of the blue called Lata one day and asked her to sing for his son RD Burman. And when they met, Burmandada asked Lata “Why have you stopped singing for me?” Lata just smiled.
Shanker-Jaikishen played a big part in Lata’s success story: the titanic popularity of their songs for the Raj-Nargis movies of the 1950s merits a separate chapter in the history of Hindi film music. Lata’s pet tease was that SJ stood for “silver jubilee”.But in 1956, SJ won the Filmfare award for best music for the film “Chori Chori”. Jaikishen asked Lata to sing the song Rasik balma from this filmat the Filmfare awards function. Lata refused point-blank. She told Jaikishen, “Filmfare has given you a best composer award, I don’t have a best singer award”. She refused to relent though Jaikishen was a good friend. Result: Filmfare introduced an award for playback singers in 1958, and separate awards for male and female singers some years later.
About Lata’s personal life. In her younger years, she travelled often to London and the US. A cricket buff, she says Sachin Tendulkar is like her own son. She watched the 1983 World Cup final live in London. On return to India, she did a big charity show for the cricketers. India’s cricket fraternity will do anything for Lata Mangeshkar.
Some of Lata’s interests and hobbies: She is fond of western classical music, she listens to Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Chopin. She likes the voice of Barbra Streisand and thinks the Beatles and Nat King Cole were very good. She is a remarkably good photographer, some of her photographs are almost professional in quality. She enjoys cooking and loves good food, particularly Kolhapuri mutton. She says she doesn’t keep away from pickles though they aren’t supposed to be great for a singer’s voice.
Lata loves diamonds and white sarees. She is fond of fragrances and even has one named after her. She is very religious, she prays every day and sometimes goes to the Mahalaxmi temple near her home in PeddarRoad. She always appears barefoot on the stage or in the recording room. She is fabulously wealthy, but apart from her diamonds, lives unpretentiously. She spends as much time as she can on a hospital she set up in Poona in the memory of her father.
Lata Mangeshkar never married. She says that when she was young, she had to shoulder many responsibilities. And later, it just did not happen, that’s all. Her name was sometimes linked with Raj Singh Dungarpur(who belonged to the royalty in Rajasthan and was a cricket boss). But he said he was just a close friend of Lata, a classmate of her brother Hridaynath, Does she miss having children? “My siblings’ children are my own”, she remarks.
Lata says she was destined to sing. God has been good to her, and she has had more fame and success than she deserves, she remarks. But what she treasures most is the love showered on her by millions in India and abroad.
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Anupamaa
O Humnava Tum Dena Saath Mera
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