Her Nation’s Voice

LATA MANGESHKAR (1929—) Over seven decades, India grew up on her songs

Lata Mangeshkar is to the Hindi film song what Ghalib is to Urdu poetry, what M.F. Husain is to painting. She is the very best of the many titans that worked in her field, which included names like Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Manna Dey and her own sister, Asha Bhosle. And she outlived them all, producing hit song after song, giving Indians something to remember her with over seven decades.

She was the ghazal in Madan Mohan’s compositions, the pride of Naushad’s melodies. When we close our eyes and recall the beautiful, doe-eyed Sharmila Tagore in ‘Kuchh dil ne kaha’, it is Lata, with the ever so delicate quiver in her voice, who best exemplifies the actor’s coy, reticent character in the film (Anupama). And yet the same Lata could be bold, defiant and ultimately magnificent when she rendered ‘Pyaar kiya toh darna kya’ (Mughal-e-Azam). When she sang ‘Aye mere watan ke logon’, not only did she leave Pandit Nehru misty-eyed, she healed a nation’s wounds.

But there is more to the Lata story. She joined films as a 13-year-old in the early 1940s, working simply to provide for her struggling family following her father’s death. She worked her way up in an industry which was frowned upon, was absolutely patriarchal back then and ushered in change by displacing the singing star-actor with trained playback singers such as herself. When her fame skyrocketed with songs like ‘Uthaaye ja unke sitam’ (Andaaz) and ‘Aayega, aayega, aaney waala’ (Mahal), Lata didn’t just serve notice with the magic of her voice, she brought in change. She battled for royalties for playback singers and insisted on a separate Filmfare award for them. When her Urdu diction was called into question, she got herself a tutor. She rehearsed her songs till she got it right. Practice made her perfect. Perfect is what is Lata Mangeshkar.