United Colours of Lata

Apart from melody and octave range, Lata Mangeshkar’s songs were lit by a rare emotional intelligence

- Sunil Sethi

OBITUARY: LATA MANGESHKAR (1929-2022)

Getting into the car with her longstanding companion, the cricketer Raj Singh Dungarpur, at Heathrow airport, Lata Mangeshkar wagged a finger at me. “Don’t forget to call. Come for lunch. I’ll cook for you.” All I had done was help the couple locate their mislaid luggage, so the invitation was both unexpected and impossible to resist. I only had a passing acquaintance with the formidable diva—universally known as ‘Didi’— during the course of reporting, but in the hurly-burly of Mumbai’s studios, these encounters are ephemeral.

But here was Lata at home, relaxed, bustling about, heaping food on our plates in the traditional way. The two made a study in contrast: she, the diminutive host in her trademark bindi and plaits; he, every inch the aristocrat. When I asked how she found the desiccated coconut in London for one of the dishes, she giggled shyly; and in that enchanting girlish voice said, “Intezaam ki baat hai (It’s just a matter of arranging for things).”

Other than her prodigious musical talent, tireless industry and phenomenal memory, “intezaam” was a key note of Lata Mangeshkar’s life. How else would a 13-year-old, left bereft and penniless by her father (a provincial actor-singer who died at 42) have supported her mother and four siblings on a wage of Rs 60 a month? When she first switched from small acting parts (which she loathed) to playback singing, her voice was considered thin and her Urdu pronunciation, she confessed, was awful. If punishing train journeys, rehearsals and recordings—for as many as six songs a day without food, water or sleep—weren’t enough hardship, a further humiliation was that playback singers went uncredited at the time.