Lata Mangeshkar |
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Lata
Mangeshkar was born on September 28, 1929, in Indore. Her father, Dinanath Mangeshkar, was a trained classical singer who owned a traveling drama group. His children were part of this nomadic life, which involved camping all over Maharashtra. Dinanath tried to compensate for the lack of regular schooling of the children with music lessons. Things were fine till around 1935 when the drama company's plays starting flopping in succession and Dinanath was forced to switch to |
| singing at the Pune Radio Station. The sheer frustuation of failure was too much for Dinanath and he died when Lata was only barely in her teens. | |
| Poverty forced Lata to take up acting as a career at the age of 13! She acted and sung in Pahili Manglagaur, a Marathi film by Master Vinayak Rao. Lata played the heroine's sister and had three songs. About her acting experience Lata says "I hated putting make-up, I hated standing in the glare of lights. But I was the breadwinner of the family, and there was hardly any choice left. The day I went to work in Master Vinayak's film, there was nothing to eat in the house". |
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| Did you know? | |
| Lata was once told she had a squeaky voice! Subhodh Mukherjee, the owner of Filmistan rejected Lata saying that the "poor little thing" had a "squeaky" voice. | Lata continued learning Classical music under many gurus like Aman Ali Khan Bhindibazarwala and Amanat Ali. It was a close friend of Amanant Ali who introduced Lata to music directors at Filmistan, Bombay's biggest Studio. |
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Later, (the
same day) she went to Bombay talkies where she was selected to sing for
the hindi film Majboor. The recording for Majboor was not
easy. It took 32 takes to record one song. Today, Lata often sings
without a proper rehearsal and straight into the film's sound track
without any re-take and with the accompaniment of a 70-man orchestra.
Films like Andaaz, Badi Bahen and Barsaat (where Lata sang the famous 'jiya bekrar hai' song) made Lata a known singer but life was still tough for her. Lata's day began at nine in the morning when she would board the train at Grant Road station, heading to go to the big studios. Eating at the canteens was a luxury. She worked all day and was so tired at the end of the day that she would often go off to sleep in the train and was overcarried to the Churchgate Station where sweeper women would nudge her to get off! |
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| Fundu Fact | |
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Once Dilip Kumar, while travelling in a local train with Lata, made fun of her Marathified Hindi and teased her till "my ears tingled in shame". Lata decided to work hard on her pronunciation and even took training in Urdu speech. Three decades later, Dilip Kumar recalled the incident and said that now his ears tingle in shame whenever he hears Lata pronounce Hindi words with a rare excellance! |
| The success of the film Mahal, with the haunting song 'Ayega, ayega, ayega ... ayega aane wala, ayega, | Have you heard these old Lata numbers? |
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ayega...',
made Lata a famous singer. There was no looking back.
Since the 1940's to the millennium - Lata has sung for most leading actresses of Bollywood. From Nargis, Madhubala and Nutan to Sadhna, Asha Parekh and Sharmila Tagore to Zeenat Aman, Jaya Bahaduri to Sridevi, Madhuri and Karishma there has hardly been a Bollywood leading lady for whom Lata has not sung. |
'Ai mere watan ke logo','Mohe bhool gaye sanwariya', 'Aaja re pardesi', 'Kahin deep jale kahin dil', 'Jo vada kiya wo nibhana padega', 'Rasik balma', 'Ye zindqgi usi ki hai', 'Mujhe Kuchh kehna hai', 'Hum bane tum bane ek duje he liye'. |
| Not everyone loves Lata. There has been a lot of criticism of Lata's so called refusal to allow other female voices to emerge, not even that of her own sister, Asha Bhonsle. There were also rumours that when Shankar Jaikshen gave a break to Suman Kalyanpur, Lata refused to sing for them! |
Lata has
sung her way to the record books! According to the Guinness Book of
World Records, Lata has the world record of having sung in almost 20
languages for over 1,825 films and worked with 165 composers. Though the exact record is not available it is believed that she has been the most prolific singer in the world exceeding 8,000 recordings. |
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Recipient of the Padma Bhushan in 1969 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1989, Lata is the voice that haunts Indians as they carry on with their lives - in buses, trains, cinema houses, in their houses and even in their heart as they hum one of her unforgettable numbers. |