Lata Mangeshkar’s singing described love’s joy and pain, famously as the defiant courtesan Anarkali in the film “Mughal e Azam”
THE SCENE is the garden of a palace in Allahabad where a young woman, ghostly in the twilight, is singing on a swing. Inside, in the grand ballroom, the owner of the palace sees a chandelier swaying in time to the song. The haunting beauty of this voice draws him out into the garden, but as he approaches the young woman disappears. All that is left is the empty swing and the song, “Aayega Aanewala”, “He will come, he who is to come”:As if someone is passing through my soul.
Her name, mentioned only as the song drew wide acclaim, was Lata Mangeshkar. She came from Indore in central India, the daughter of a touring theatre producer. From “Mahal” on, over seven decades of playback singing, her fame grew exponentially. She performed for every Indian prime minister, sang for actresses from Madhubala to Kajol, did duets with all the famous actors and built a catalogue of more than 5,000 songs, half of them solos.
Not that it was always easy. Her voice at first struck many as too high and thin, when the vogue was for a gutsier sound. With practice she made it fuller, improved the vital coloratura and developed her own honeyed way of singing, which others quickly copied. Languages other than Hindi or her native Marathi , were tricky, but she worked hard to perfect them. Practise, practise, was her mantra; and then get tough.
Nor did she stay behind the scenes for long. By the 1970s she was touring the world, bringing Bollywood’s music to the West and to proper concert halls. In 1974 she sang at the Royal Albert Hall, the first Indian to do so. Her early training had been classical, including playing sitar and composing, but she was confident that Bollywood’s music could stand beside the older kind. Her father would never have agreed, but now both she and her sister Asha Bhosle were playback superstars.
She also featured in most concerts the song she had sung in 1963 in front of Jawaharlal Nehru, then prime minister. India had just lost a border war with China, and her song, “Aye Mere Watan ke Logon” was for the martyrs.They fought until their last breath and fell to the ground...But each man who died there was an Indian....Her ardent, simple patriotism made some think that she belonged in politics, and in 1999 she was appointed to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament.
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