Remembering Lata Mangeshkar: An Unfathomable Talent Gifted With A Divine Voice

To simply write that she bestrode playback singing in Indian cinema like a colossus would be an understatement. Lata Mangeshkar (1929-2022), it goes without saying, was obviously more and more than that.   

An unfathomable talent gifted with a divine voice that held not only the millions of her fans but also generations of the greatest of the maestros from both the classical and popular music in absolute thral over the decades, she was a veritable personification of melody in its unadulterated form. There was nobody quite like her, and there will not be anybody like her. Period.

“I have always been praying to God that, if possible, He should not give me a rebirth,” Lata Mangeshkar once told an interviewer. But if she had to choose between moksha (salvation) and sangeet (music), she added, she would definitely choose music. That was the answer almost everyone knew.

Music was Lata Mangeshkar’s God all her life, though she herself was invariably called Goddess Saraswati by the legions of filmmakers, composers and music lovers of all hues from across the globe.

From the late 1940s when India was savouring its dew-fresh Independence to the Tenties of the techno-millennials, she remained synonymous with Indian music like no other singer from Hindi cinema or outside. Just remove her repertoire from the history of Hindi film music to realise how poorer it would be!

When ‘Mallika-e-Tarannum’ Noor Jahan left for Pakistan after 1947, there seemed to be a vacuum in Hindi cinema that nobody thought would be so easily filled in the near future. But a young and shy Lata arrived quietly, and India soon had its own nightingale whose Hawa mein udta jaaye in Barsaat and Aayega aanewala in Mahal, both in 1949, left the entire nation swaying to her incredibly mellifluous voice.

Whether it was the era of rusty 78 RPM discs or the trendy vinyls of the digital times, she collaborated with the best of composers, from Khemchand Prakash to Nikhil Kamat, and also the greatest of wordsmiths and singers churning out thousands of timeless melodies. By the time she moved the entire country, not merely Jawaharlal Nehru, to tears with her Ae mere watan ke logon tribute to the martyrs after the Chinese aggression, she had well and truly emerged as the voice of the nation. A voice India loved to lip-sync both in times of joy and sorrow, separation and reunion, or love and heartbreak!

It was not as though Hindi cinema had any dearth of extraordinary singing talents. From K.L. Saigal, Mukesh, Mohd Rafi, Talat Mahmood and Kishore Kumar to Suraiya, Shamshad Begum, Gita Roy Dutt, Asha Bhosle, et al, the list of the songsters extraordinaire was too long, but there was only one Lata Mangeshkar.

In the mid-1970s, composer R.D. Burman wanted Kishore Kumar to sing the classic Mere naina sawan bhadon from Mehbooba (1976), which was to be recorded as a tandem in Lata Mangeshkar’s voice as well. But Kishore asked Pancham to record the Lata version first and hand its audio to him. He listened to Lata’s version repeatedly and rehearsed for a week apparently to get the right notes and nuances.
Kishore, her contemporary, was himself a supremely gifted singer in his own right, who was at the peak of his singing career but he also knew that Lata would be simply infallible while rendering such a difficult raga-based number.   

There are numerous examples like that. Lata sang thousands of classics in her illustrious career, which have stood the test of time. Her Lag jaa gale from Woh Kaun Thi? (1964), for one, remains a perennial favourite of the millennials to this day. There are several other songs like it from her astounding oeuvre, which will continue to entral the music lovers for all times to come.

For decades, such was Lata’s dominance in the industry that a few detractors at times accused her of having perpetuated the “Mangeshkar monopoly” in Hindi cinema, implying that she did not allow new talents from outside her family to flourish. They cited the example of Gita Roy Dutt, Jagjit Kaur, Suman Kalyanpur, Vani Jairam, Sulakshana Pandit, Hemlata and many others to insinuate that their career did not flourish because of her so-called hegemony. 

They also alleged even her younger sister Asha Bhosle had to struggle hard to come out of the shadow of her elder Didi. O. P. Nayyar – incidentally a rare composer who did not consider Lata a ‘goddess’ and promoted Asha instead to the hilt -- had once famously said that R.D. Burman had always given his best of tunes to Lata. If at all it had happened, it was not without a reason. It should not be seen as a reflection on any other singer’s (including Asha’s) talent.    

In fact, most filmmakers and composers did not want any other singer to step into Lata's shoes when they thought nobody else would do justice to it. Raj Kapoor, for example, refused to rope in any other songstress and waited for her for months until she agreed to render the title song of Satyam Shivam Sundaram. She had fallen out with Raj Kapoor for a brief while and it took the greatest showman of the film industry to seek the help of the songwriter Pandit Narendra Sharma to persuade her.  

It is, therefore, unfair to say that she monopolised the film music industry in her heyday. As a matter of fact, she often fought for the rights of fellow singers. Way back in the early 1960s, she took up the cudgels fight on their behalf to ensure for them a slice of the royalty that the music companies were paying to the producers.

When Mohd Rafi did not back her demand, saying the singers had no right to seek royalty once they had received their remuneration, she stopped singing with him for several years in the 1960s, though Rafi was the numero uno male singer at the time. After 1969, she also decided not to accept Filmfare awards as a playback singer in a bid to promote new singers. She was, doubtless, a nonpareil singer and anybody else, howsoever talented, was no patch on her. 

If there was something called the Mangeshkar monopoly ever in playback singing, Hindi cinema was only too blessed to have it.

Adieu, Lata Di!

(The writer is a National Award winner for Best Critic on Cinema)