Another Lata will not be born again
There’s no one the singer admired more than Mahatma Gandhi for the love he bore for everyone
It was a Meisterstuck – German for “masterpiece”. I had never before handled a pen that was so handsome, so flawless in make, gleaming black, with a nib that seemed to have gold in it and platinum. A Montblanc, it came in a box that had a flannelled groove inside to encase the pen, snug but not tight, roomy enough for the finger to lift it but not so as to let the work of art in it rattle. And, it came with a brief letter from the sender, written in Hindi. But more, written in the ink of a culture that belongs to the past, to an age when grace was natural, friendships had no agenda, generosity was free of design. The letter started with a headword which, like the other frequently used one, Aum ,is virtually untranslatable: Shri . It meant one or some or all of these: “Auspiciousness”, “prosperity”, “success”, “happiness”, and could be read as both a blessing to the recipient and a statement of the writer’s wish for the world. The letter said, after a sentence or two, “I am leaving tomorrow. God willing, we will meet soon.” It ended with “Your sister, Lata”. And it gave, in a clear hand, the date: 6.11.1993.
Five weeks earlier, at about four in the morning when most people in that densely populated area were asleep, Latur and Osmanabad in Maharashtra had been jolted by an earthquake the likes of which they had not known earlier. An estimated 10,000 died within seconds, and some 30,000 were injured. I was working at the time at London’s Nehru Centre, a bridge between the people of Britain and India. For an Indian cultural centre abroad, the situation required a calibrated response. India had been mauled. But India was not going to feel or look helpless. What was one to do ? A meeting was thought to be in order.
Lata Mangeshkar was visiting London at the time. It occurred to us that we request this daughter of India in Maharashtra to speak at the Centre. She immediately agreed. Coming to the venue a little ahead of the event, she asked me if we could, in a few minutes, go over the programme and discuss its scope, its rasa and bhava. Now, Lata Mangeshkar was Lata Mangeshkar. Who was I to say to her what she may say, what she may not say…? As soon as I responded with “Yes, of course”, she sat down and looked directly at me as a musician might a music director. I went speechless. But telling myself Lata Mangeshkar was not interested in my speechlessness, I said something like the importance of the trauma being described but not from a position of helplessness. She caught the point even before I had fully articulated it. The Queen triumphed, turning the occasion into a collective reflection on the strengths of the people of India under stress, of what Iqbal has described as kuchh baat hai ki hasti mit-ti nahin hamari… At the question and answer that followed, a member of the audience asked her: “Madam, if you were to be reborn, what would you like to be reborn as…?” She answered — in Hindi — the very next moment. Mein dubara janma lena hi nahin chaahti… (I just do not wish to be reborn…) stressing the hi, as she might have a certain single note in a song.
There was a burst of applause in the hall which, until that point, had heard her in what is called pin drop silence. Everyone seemed to know that another Lata cannot be reborn.
We met up on half a dozen occasions in the few days thereafter that she spent in London, a city she knew well and loved. Gandhi figured in the conversation. There is no one she said she admires more, in Indian history, no one for the love he bore for human beings regardless of their mazhab (faith), jati (caste).
A day before she was to return, a messenger brought the letter that I mentioned with its accompanying gift. The Montblanc travelled with me everywhere thereafter and was used carefully and reverentially. A decade later, when I was working in Kolkata, my study was being repainted and all the things on my desk and other brica-brac were moved by a battery of men hired for the repairs to another space for that little “upheaval”. When the items were brought back, the pen was missing. I asked about it, not concealing my agitation. No one had any clue. I told Shakeel Ahmed, aide-decamp to the governor, to please spread the word that the money value of the pen may be great but its owner prizes it as a gift in blessing and love. Can it please be returned? It did not come back. Wherever it is, may it bless its keeper, user, for the Shri that headed its covering note was meant not just for me but for just about everyone.
As news came in yesterday of Lata Mangeshkar’s crossing over, I could hear her say: “kal mein ja rahin hun… ”,“Mein dubara janma lena hi nahin chaahti…” And I could hear her voice sing the words that Gandhi has gifted to us, with a new energy and a new emphasis: Allah tero naam, Ishvar tero naam, sabko sanmati de Bhagavan (Allah and Ishwar are both your names, may God give wisdom unto everyone).