February 13, 2022 11:27:18 am
Lata Mangeshkar and Hema Malini at the muhurat of the film Meera in 1978. (Photo: Express Archive) Lata Mangeshkar had a protean voice that drew her listeners into a world of emotional and meditative depth. As we celebrate the genius of the musician whom we lost a week ago, leading ladies she sang for, classical musicians who admired her, and composers who worked with her, pay tribute
‘She was a soulful artiste who loved me a lot’: Actor Hema Malini on singer Lata Mangeshkar
The first time I met her was before my first Hindi film, Sapno ka Saudagar (1968). Although I was a newcomer, she met me very warmly. From then till the Lohri song in (filmmaker) Yash (Chopra) ji’s Veer-Zaara (2004), I had a long innings with Lata Mangeshkar.
If in Sholay (1975), where the world remembers Basanti as a young, feisty village woman, she portrayed my character beautifully in the two songs Holi ke din and Jab tak hai jaan, in Sapno ka Saudagar, Raja Jani (1972) and Sharafat (1970), where I played a gypsy girl, a street dancer and a courtesan respectively, it took a Lata Mangeshkar to imbibe those characters with her voice to make it easy for the artiste to perform the songs on screen. For every actress, she would mould her voice to fit not only the character and environment, but also the actress’ own voice.
‘There was joy, serenity and absolute security in the music of Lata Mangeshkar’: Sharmila Tagore
The First Lady of Music: Lata Mangeshkar. (Photo: Express Archive) “Rahen na rahen hum, meheka karenge,
Ban ke kali, ban ke saba, baag-e-wafa mein
Rahen na rahen hum…”
These lyrics from Asit Sen’s film, Mamta (1966), starring Ashok Kumar, Suchitra Sen and Dharmendra, is so apt for Lataji’s life, who remains immortal despite her passing on February 6 in Mumbai.
‘There can be no second Lata Mangeshkar, the singer’: Shubha Mudgal
Lata ji’s total attention and concentration to the aural element of her work is a remarkable aspect of her art. (Photo: Express Archive) Death comes with a terrifying finality. It sends a reminder that everything and everyone is finite. It usually silences forever the voices of the lives it snuffs out. But, some exceptional voices firmly refuse to be silenced even by death. This most certainly holds true for the voice of Lata Mangeshkar. Not only will we continue to hear the thousands of exquisite songs that immortalised her voice, but even the silences and pauses she inserted with such mastery in some of her renditions, will continue to speak to us eloquently and hold us in thrall. (Remember that wistful “Hai” and the pause thereafter before she begins “kaise din beete kaise beeteen ratiyaan” in Anuradha (1960) composed by Pandit Ravi Shankar? Imagine the song without either and the eloquence of both will become amply evident.). Off the studio mike, she chose to remain silent and near reclusive, rarely appearing in public or offering an opinion, but for the occasional tweet. Even that silence about her life conveys to those who wish to listen, stories of an exceptional journey, fraught with the inevitable struggles and challenges of an artiste’s life, that she was able to grapple with and ultimately conquer. Like many iconic artistes, her life story too has been shrouded in anecdote, myth, and possibly fictitious accounts making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. With her demise, more such accounts may pop up in abundance, from which students of music will have to attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is from this perspective that I attempt this tribute to an artiste whose work I loved, respected and even adored.
When Lata Mangeshkar agreed to sing if Uttam Singh ferried her
Lata Mangeshkar with composer Uttam Singh at the song recording of Hum Tum Pe Marte Hain (1999). (Courtesy: Uttam Singh) When Rajshri Productions was making a comeback from the verge of extinction, after a string of flop films, with Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), starring newcomer leads Bhagyashree and Salman Khan, music director Raam Laxman (Vijay Patil) tasked me to persuade Lata didi to sing for the film. Since I began as a solo violinist in the Bombay film industry, in 1962, and later grew popular as an arranger, I’d built a rapport with Didi. When I went to her home, she said to me, “Main gaati nahin hoon (I don’t sing anymore).” We all knew; but I requested her to do it for me because I’d be arranging the music. After two minutes of silence, she agreed on one condition: “tum mujhe lene aaoge (you will come to pick me up)”. From there began our new chapter.
How Lata Mangeshkar made a difference to singers in Israel, USA, France, Bangladesh, and Pakistan
Berkley Indian Ensemble’s rendering of Lata Mangeshkar’s Jiya Jale Liora Itzhak has an old diary on her nightstand, a collection of handwritten Lata Mangeshkar songs, which is like a Bible to her. She never parts with it, takes it along everywhere she goes. Simply because it has answers to life’s every complexity and holds her up through its ebb and flow. “It will be there till my last breath and I will bequeath it to my children,” says the Israeli singer-performer, who sings Lata songs with such abandon that it doesn’t matter if she’s on stage or not. So long as her soul resonates with a rhythm divine.
ALSO IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION
How wetlands are the nurseries of life
Sultanpur on a winter dawn. (Photo: Ranjit Lal) Every February 2 we commemorate World Wetland Day, and then for the rest of the year, developers, politicians, city planners and the like cast their beady and greedy eyes over them and draw out schemes to drain them and ‘develop’ them (into mass housing for example). The Ramsar Convention’s definition of wetlands (with a bit of tweaking) sounds almost like an incantation of Macbeth’s three witches: ‘…areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, natural or artificial, perennial or temporary, static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt…no more than 6 meters deep at low tide…’ These largely static water bodies may not (according to public perception) have the charisma of the mountains or a rainforest – or even a desert – but they are places of beauty, wonder – and myriad life forms.
How San Francisco can write a new love story
San Francisco is a beautiful city, inhabited by incredible people who really do believe in doing good things (Source: Suvir Saran) Every year, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and The Culinary Institute of America hold an annual conference in beautiful Napa Valley called Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives. Conference attendees are immersed in a world of cutting-edge nutrition science in addition to practical and chef-driven techniques. They learn and teach others to enjoy a broad selection of foods that can reduce disease risk and, ideally, replace unhealthy habits of a lifetime. The goal of the conference is to transform attendees into advocates and role models for healthy foods and lifestyle choices. It is to this inspiring annual retreat, where I have been presenting for 18 years, that I go most happily, despite the pandemic, and keep my connection to the San Francisco Bay Area and Napa Valley alive.
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher is novelist Lee Child’s hero to a T
ith just a toothbrush, a slender roll of cash, and a card, Jack Reacher is a modern-day cowboy For the record, I’m not a vagrant, I’m a hobo.
Truth be told, first name Jack, last name Reacher, neither a middle name. He is a hero. He is ex-US military. He loves Greyhound buses. He travels light, a toothbrush, a slender roll of cash, a card. But more than anything else, he is a modern-day cowboy, ranging far and wide on American back roads, getting off in the middle of nowhere, on a whim. What does he hate most? Injustice. And what does he love most? Large cups of black hot coffee.
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