Lata Mangeshkar: Truly, Bharat Ratna
Nonika Singh
Lag jaa gale ki phir yeh haseen raat ho na ho, shaayad phir is janam mein mulaqaat ho na ho”
If I am gifted, it is by the grace of God. — Lata quoted in a book
Alas, there can be no more “mulaqaat” with the Nightingale of India, who gave us this timeless love song in her timeless voice. Bharat Ratna awardee, a gem in the galaxy of Indian music, Lata Mangeshkar truly was a gift that India will always cherish. She breathed her last at age 92, but she lives as much in her songs as in the hearts of her fans.
Editorial: National icon
Also read: Nation grew up listening to Lata Mangeshkar’s timeless melodies
Few singers have evoked the kind of admiration bordering on reverence that she did. Yet whenever she spoke about her talent or her journey, it was with rare humility. For her admirers, no epithet “Sakshat Saraswati”, Nightingale of India… seemed an exaggeration. The only possible regret in a life of achievements and honours, she wished to see a Covid-free world.
Singer of thousands of songs in over 30 languages, it seems hard, nay impossible, to imagine that back in time someone may have found her voice “too thin”. But as countless stories about her did the rounds, so did the one concerning producer Sashadhar Mukherjee who found her voice not up to the mark.
In fact, anecdotes concerning her life have become as legendary as the singer herself. It is said Pt Jawaharlal Nehru’s eyes turned moist when she rendered “Ae mere watan ke logo”, and that her mentor Ghulam Haider’s words “in coming years producers and directors would fall at Lata’s feet and beg her to sing in their movies”, proved prophetic. The stories — everyone present at the recording studio wept when she sang Madan Mohan’s “Heer” for “Heer Ranjha” or Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s adulatory comment, “Kambakht kabhi besura nahi gaati” — are as endless as her repertoire of songs.
If the talent in her was discovered by her father Pt Deenanath Mangeshkar, she was further trained in Hindustani classical music by Ustad Aman Ali Khan of Bhindibazaar Gharana. Hers was, however, a natural god-gifted voice that showed no strain or sign of effort.
Smooth to the point of perfection, it delighted us for decades starting from 1940s to 2019 when she released “Saugandh Mujhe is Mitti Ki” as a tribute to the nation. Her career as Bollywood’s numero uno playback singer rose to great heights of success. Her songs became an emblem of love, longing and even chutzpah as she sang “Didi tera devar diwana” with a verve and effortless ease. Lending playback to actors half her age, it was as if her voice would never age. To bhajans she lent a rare spiritual quality.
If she got a break with a song in a Marathi movie, one of her first big hits was in the movie “Mahal” in 1949. Shankar Jaikishan, Naushad Ali, Sardul Singh Kwatra, Amarnath, Husanlal, Madan Mohan, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and her personal favourite Khayyam, she worked with generations of music composers right up to AR Rahman and Vishal Bhardwaj. If with SD Burman she gave us immortal songs like “Aaj phir jeene ki tammana hai” from Guide, with his son RD Burman she rendered incredibly evergreen numbers such as “Tere bina jiya jaaye na”, “Bahon mein chale aao” and “Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa toh nahi”.
Even though it is often considered that RD made his wife Asha Bhonsle sing his best compositions, Lata sang some of Pancham’s most melodious numbers, including his swansong in “1942: A Love Story”. While rumours of her rivalry with equally talented sister Asha Bhosle were often rife, the sisters sang many duets such as “Mann kyun behka ri behka aadhi raat ko” in film “Utsav”.
“Meri awaz hi pehchaan hai…”, an identity that can never get lost in the corridors of time or eclipsed by ever-changing trends of Bollywood music. In one of her interviews, she may have expressed doubts about her legacy surviving among attention-deficit future generations, but her songs clearly possess a life beyond mortal parameters.
