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Lata Mangeshkar: A Pakistani writer and fan pays tribute

My childhood was dominated by songs by Lata and many other singing greats.

I belong to Pakistan and just like in any Indian household, movies and songs have had a great impact on my life. My parents after dinner time, would always listen to their standard playlist that included Lata Mangeshkar, R.D. Burman and Kishore Kumar and some of Mohammed Rafi’s songs as well.

So, my childhood was dominated by soundtracks from films like Aandhi, Rocky, Silsila and Ghar. These songs and particularly Lata’s voice began to impact me immensely.

While the tape recorder played in the background, my father would always pick up intricacies like how Rafi sang the words yeh jaha mil gaya in the song Tum jo mil gaye ho or how difficult Madhuban mein radhika nache re was to sing along to and so on.

I picked up on that habit of his and started noticing such special moments from Lata’s songs. I always noticed how she sang the word mulaayam in the song Yeh kaha aa gaye hum from Silsila. Another such intricacy is when she says the word ikhtiyar in Aate Jaate, the title track of Maine Pyar Kiya. And the way she said dur se kitni aai hu from the song Aa jane jaan. In her own words she said, “I wanted dur to sound like someone is coming from a distance.”

I started reading about how Lata perfected her Urdu. I got to learn that this determination was on display right from the Andaaz days when Dilip Kumar questioned her dialect and called it daal-chaawal (mixture). Hiring a tutor, Lata perfected the language. Her perennial search for perfection was evident at the Amar recording, when she repeatedly tried to get a particular murki of the song Tere sadke balam right. After 18 takes, she fainted in the recording room. Even after regaining consciousness, the first thing Lata wanted to do was to make another attempt at the song.

Never a wrong note

Perhaps it is this dedication due to which Bade Ghulam Ali Khan once said about Lata: Kambakht kabhi besuri nahi hotee. It is so hard to imagine that in her seventy plus years of singing, Lata had never sung a wrong note. Whether it is an intricate classical number like Chalte chalte, a peppermint pronouncement like Didi tera devar deewana, or a romantic anthem like Tere liye hum hein jiye, Lata has always rendered her songs with commendable felicity. When she sang, it was hard to separate her voice from the actress the song was pictured on.

Women empowerment sounds like a phenomenon of new millennium, but Lata was the flagbearer when it came to ensuring that her voice was heard. Her unbroken record of hit songs made her the most powerful woman in the film industry. If you watch her interviews, it is hard to imagine someone like her would wage battle with such important people as Raj Kapoor and Shankar Jaikishen over the vulgarity in the Main kya karoon Ram number from Sangam.

When Rasik Balma (Chori-Chori) won the Filmfare Award for best song, she refused to sing it live in protest of no Female Playback category. She stopped singing with Mohammed Rafi for several years in the mid-60s over the contentious issue of royalty payment to playback singers.

She also broke her ties with composer S.D. Burman for three or four years after he allegedly took credit for building her career. All this made no appreciable difference to her career. She continued to put her foot down whenever she felt that she was wronged. She even protested when a flyover was being constructed in her hometown, as it disturbed her ‘riyaz’.

Equation with sister

Another aspect of her life that intrigued me a lot was her equation with her sister Asha. I was fascinated with the film Saaz because back in the day, nobody dared to talk about the alleged rivalry but now there was a film that was made on the two singing sisters, played by Aruna Irani and Shabana Azmi. However Lata sidelined all the controversies and tagged it as sibling differences. But through the film I got to know that Lata always sang barefoot and loved diamonds and ate red chilies.

Living in Dubai, I have been fortunate enough to interview almost everyone from the Indian and Pakistani film industry including Asha Bhosle and meeting Lata Mangeshkar was my only wish. When I visited Mumbai few years ago to cover an event, I pulled all the strings I could and tried to speak to a few people who were close to her. All I wanted to just touch her feet. I even waited outside Prabhu Kunj to catch a glimpse of her but I did not get to see her.

This morning, I woke up to the news of her demise. No one comes in the world to live forever but artists like Lata have contributed so much to the industry that she will be remembered beyond many lifetimes. Though my wish to see her in person remained unfulfilled, but, as a consolation, she has left behind timeless classics, which will remain my and the next generation’s companions forever.

As I cap my pen, my family is listening to Naam gum jayega on YouTube. The medium has been upgraded but the enchanting voice remains.

Sadiq Saleem is a UAE based entertainment writer and can be contacted on his insta handle @sadiqidas