Cover Story

LATA MANGESHKAR

The lncred e Singing Machine

T is the voice that no Indian can miss. panic. A single disapproving shake of her Record Numbers: She might not have
Delightfully high. the notes rendered head makes the top brass of internationally recorded all the 26,000 songs that Guinness
clearly to the last bar. the words prono- connected record companies grow cold feet. had earlier said. But industry sources aver
unced with a rare panache the voice As Shanker of the famed Shanker-Jaikishen that she had sung 300 songs on an average
has haunted Indiansfor overthree decades. music director duo vut it: "Lataii catches in each of the first five years of her career,
I t has chased them where lring the next 23 years.
at tilm shows, resta- Since 1974, though
urants. hairdressers'. foreign tours have
carnivals. beach been interfering with
parties. Durga Puja her singing in India,
pandals. It has greeted she has still managed
them on the radio and 150 songs in a !ear.
television, record- That adds up to 14,050
player and tape- songs, not to speak of
recorder. at least 500 songs in
Thevoice. like the her private records.
blithe spirit of music, This fact, in
has wafted far and itself, should imply
wide. It is the voice that she has outsung
to which the roadside her closest rival, the
vendor in Delhi has late Mohammed Rafi.
transacted his busi- In the process, she
ness. the long-distance has reportedly earned
trucker has sped along fabulous riches, only
the highway. the Army a rough estimate of
jawan in Ladakh has which is possible.
kept guard at his fron- The tinsel world
tier bunker. or the of show business ad-
glittering elite of vertises everything but
Bombay have dined is tight-lipped about
in luxury hotels. The the actual amounts
voice, like Mahatma that change hands.
Gandhi's loin cloth Lata does not discuss
and Rabindranath Ta- her finances, not with
pore's beard. has be- newsmen at least. But
come a part of India's the industry has its
collective unconscious. own system of keeping
If Marshall McLuhan. tabs on individual
the communication earnings. Such uncon-
wizard. were still alive firmed guesstimates
and called upon to suggest that she
cast an eye --acrosshis charged Rs 300 for a
"global village" t o song on an average
India's music scene. he during her first five
might have paid ho- years of fi lm-singing :
mage to the voice with Rs 2,000 for the next
the new phrase: 10 years; Rs 5,000 for
"music is the the next 13 years; and
massage" anythlng around Rs
The "masseur" 15,000 as of now. The
of this all-pervadinr same pundits aver that
music. and the queen- Lata Mangcshhar: the voice that can't be missed no singer today gets as
empress of India's much as Rs 15,000 for
immensely popular light music indust~y.is a No woman in the world has cut as many a song and many of them frequently settle
portly. dark. camera shy, plain-asJane discs as Lata. at 51, has. It is doubtful if for much less than their professed rates. Lata
Marathi woman. Latabai Mangeshkar, who. any man has matched her output, though the never does that, they say.
as a playback singer. enjoys today a clout publishers of Cuint~c~ssBook of R~acorrls, However, Lata's earning from tilms does
which even the movie moguls of thecountry's caught in a maelstrom of controversy a few not include the huge royalty which is roughly
Rs 100-crore film industrycannot dream of. years ago, have dropped from their latest one rupee on each of her LPs sold. Her
One imperious frown from her sends the issue the earlier claim that she indeed held annual royalty is estimated at Rs 1.5 lakhs,
country's highest paid music directors in a the world record. from the Calcutta-based Gramophone
I N D I A TODAY. FEBRUARY 1-1 5. 1981
 Company of India (GCI) and about Rs topped the charts for nearly two years. at live concerts. This is entirely to her advan-
50,000 from Polydor. ,4dd to that the many She sang in Hindi films as early as 1946. tage since the 10 per cent or so royalty on
times higher earning from gate sales of Last fortnight, she had contracts to sing for these songs goes straight to her, bypassing
tickets for her performances in lndia and at least 50 films in Bombay. She sang for such intermediaries as producers of films
abroad, and there is a staggering inflow of the glamour queens of the past, like Madhu- where the songs featured. She is also getting
cash. spread over many years. Says a tilm bala and Nargis. She sings with equal ease more and more exposure abroad. It started
financier : "Lntaji's earning power must now for girls born yesterday. There is a joke with her performance at London's prestigi-
amount to about Rs 350-400 per hour." in the filmland which says: "Pay up double ous Royal Albert Hall in 1974 in aid of the
Lata herself refuses to comment but denies her price to Lata, and she'll sing both for Nehru Memorial Fund. She cut a disc from
the validit!. of the calculations such as the heroine and the hero." it set in two LPs which sold more than
these. Critics: Like all successful artistes, she 133,000 copies.
Said an industry source: "What she too has her bitter critics who would argue Presently she performs all over the
does with the money she earns is the greatest that she had lost her golden voice. "The USA, Canada and Europe. where she draws
mystery yet.'' Nobody seems to know and the unbelievably large ethnic audiences. Last
people in her immediate circle are very tight- November. all the 8.500 seats at Felt Forum
lipped. Idowever. she owns a film studio in auditorium in Madison Square Garden,
Kolhapur called .lai Prabha studio. She New York, were fill1 with cheering. clapping
seems to have an emotional attachment Indo-Pakistanis even though tickets sold for
with Kolhapur. because she has kept the $30 (Rs 240) apiece. Amitabh Bachchan,
studio even though it hardly breaks even. flown in specially for the occasion, regaled
And he adds as an afterthought : "She's got the audience with a brief appearance. A 20-
chewing gum on her hands. no money ever man orchestra accompanied her on the tour.
leaves once she's got it. at her cost. The expenses were met from the
Unlike the other money-earning machi- 5 180,000 (Rs 14.4 lakh) she grossed in her
nes in Bombay's lilm industry. Lata has dozen performances in America.
remained at the top for over three-and-a-half High Fee: A measure of her saleability
decades. In the process. it is she who has set abroad may be found from the fees charged
the exchange rate between music and money by her and Ravi Shankar for a single per-
in this country Znd. like 21 living juke box. formance in the USA and Canada. While
she has sung on u.itlio~ltratigue. for a price she demands, and gets. $15.000 (Rs l .2 lakh).
of course. Shankar charges a paltry $1.000 (Rs 8,000).
"1ndisputablcl"Queen: In artistic terms. . Lata Mangeshkar of today is a pale ghost of But, unlike Shankar. she hardly commands
she has done much more. She has elevat- what she was in the past," said C. Ramchan- an international audience. Says Veena Ahuja.
ed playback singing from its surrogate dra, the music director who created the fabled 30, a Lata fan in New York: "She's a rage
status to that of a highly valued com- score of Anarkali and was once an intimate among the Indians in America and a passing
ponent of the country's burgeoning enter- friend. But chances are, as a young music curiosity among the Americans."
tainment industry. As far back as 1959, director snapped back, men like Ramchandra The music industry is all set to exploit
Time described her as the "indisputable are themselves "a pale ghost" of their past. her popularity overseas by selling the "voice"
and indispensable queen of India's play- As though to prove him right. the disc of her to the petro-dollar market. The plan is to set
back singers". live performance at London's Palladium her most popular tilm tunes to Arabic
The reservoir of accomplishment that Theatre, cut in December last, sold out its translation of the words. and to get Lata to
Lata is today is the consummate end-product ti rst 25.000 impressions in a matter of five sing them out. "It shouldn't be difficult,"
of years of sweating and grinding in a very weeks despite its high price tag of Rs 100. says iinil Sud. who heads the GCI. "given
limited sphere of voc:iI music. The playback There is no sign of decline in her recent Lata's talents as a perfectionist." He is
singer is only required to identify himself best-selling songs oof Sargam, for which the probably right on that point. because in all
w ~ t hthe perqon on the the 14 lndlan languages
screen *lthln ,I bdre (other than Hlndt) ~n
span of three-and-'I-half hhlch she has sung, her
mlnutes I t md!, be ~t pronunc~at~ons have
restricted art. but. l ~ k e been surprls~nglyclose
a c a n l n g of ~ v o ptwo to the natural. Her
~ncheshlgh. lt calls for 1979 album of Bengall
a hlghlq elTect~\econ- songs cut dur~ng the
densat~on Durga Puja, sold out
Lata Mangeshknr 13.000 coples ~n three
does ~t a ~ t ha breath- months
taking ease. 111 1170st Vani Jairam, Runa Laila, Sulakshana Pandit and Preeti Sagar: nipped in the bud? If there is any
cases. she sings without musical range in which
a proper rehearsal and sings straight into the record company issued a gold disc. The disc she has faltered it is in ghazclls and
tilm's sound track. \vithout any re-take and she has cut for the recent film, Aaska, is as devotional singing. In ghazals, the Jagjit-
with the accompaniment of a 70-man meticulously honed toperfection as some of Chitra team has put everyone else in
orchestra. In 1977. she Ilew straiyht back from her earlier top-sellers. As late as 1979. EMI. the shade, Begum Akhtar and even
a long foreign tour to record for Raj K a p o o i s the US-based principals of the GCI. chose Pakistan's Mehdi Hasan, not to speak of
listened for. 10 her as the first Asian artiste to receive their Lata. The first Jagjit-Chitra LP. cut by the
Sarjsani S / I ~ ~ , LSIII~(/~II.(I~~I.
III~
minutes to the music directors Laxmikant- platinum disc. GCI. in 1976 and named Tllr Lti/oi::rr~rtrhlrs
~yarelalhumming out tlie tentative outlines She is now cutting back on her film has sold nearly 52.000 discs till now and is
of the theme song. and walked into the singing. but has hit upon an ingenious devcce still selling 500 discs a month. Their Come
recording studio. The result was a song that to re-cycle her old film hits: re-recording them Alive a two-LP album. cut in 1978. has sold
INDIA TODAY. FEBRUARY 1-15. 1981 113
 Cover Story
60,000 copies. mances abroad as basic records. Apart from children-four daughters and a son-were
Compared to Jaejit-Chitra, Mehdi the record sale of the Royal Albert Hall roped into a nomadic life by their father's
Hasan, the kmous Pakistani ghazal singer, discs. the indications available in the indus- profession. Unable to arrange a proper
was only a moderate success in India, his try make it abundantly clear that her 1980 schooling for his children, Dinanath however
lone LP selling some 18.000 copies. And live recording of the Palladium Theatre sought to compensate by injecting stiff doses
Lata's sole glioml venture, Lata Mangeshkor performance will sweep into the six-figure of music lessons early in life. "The foundation
sir2,ys GGhaIil, cut as far back as 1969. has sold of my musical propensities was laid as early
only 12.892 copies. as that," Lata said.
Again. it' Lata had never quite been Early Life: It was a carefree life where
able to make it to the top in gliazals, she music held the key. The children hopped in
lost her lead in devotional songs recently to and out of stage whenever the story needed
Hari Om Sharan, a musical phenomenon of child artistes, and they sang whenever they
the late '70s whose hhajans, sung in a mellow were home. The stuff that they practised on
velvety voice, leapt to the top of the charts. was rather heavy. To make up for it, they
His f rst LP P~lslipa~~jali, cut in 1975, has sat by the wings as curtains rose on those
sold 65.360 copies, and is still a hot seller. endlessly long mythological plays which
the next LP released in 1978, has
P~c~r+rtrirjcfli were music, music all the way.
sold 25.371 copies and is likely to level up Dinanath's drama company, Balwant
with P~lslil~(rrzjuli in a couple of years. Sangeet Natak Mandal, though not a hot
Performances Abroad: Lata's own re- money spinner, allowed the family a modestly
pertory or devotional songs is extensive. comfortable life. The only childhood calamity
Rut the sales do not come anywhere near forLata, the eldest of the children, was an
Sharan's. Her 1971 LP of Meera bhajcns, for attack of smallpox at the age of two. She
example. sold 28.959 copies while her 1976 still carries its marks.
album of Al1qjai7s. Cliala W d i i Des, sold The real disaster for the family came in

L
18,967. Ahharig T~tkyacki, her album of ATA MANGESHKAR's early life is a 1934-35 after Ardeshir Irani, an interpid
Marathi devotional songs, marketed largely Dickensian saga of nightmarish pov- Parsee. pushed the Indian cinema out of the
in western India, sold only 14,525. In 1970, erty, drudgery and hard luck. She was silent era with the first "talkie", Alam Ara.
the ingenious marketing cell of GSI evolved born in Indore, away from the Maratha heart- The multitude of roving drama companies of
its own packaging of devotion and music land of Maharashtra. Her father, Dinanath Maharashtra, the only other state to have
when it got Lata to recite the Bl~ag~ladgita in Mangeshkar, who came from Mangeshi in them except Bengal, reeled under the impact
Sanskrit. The result was a steady-selling Goa, was a classical singer trained in the of this "sound invasion". Most of them,
album. colourful Punjabi school of Baba Mushelkar. including Dinmath's Balwant Mandal,
However, Lata still won a pyrrhic Dinanath owned an itinerant dramatic troupe closed down. The family moved to Sangli, a
victory over Sharan, Jagjit-Chitra and the which made him pitch his tent in nearly every small trading town, where, as Lata says.
rest of the non-film singers by showing the town that dots the state-among them Pune, "We settleddown for the first time."
highly popular albums of her live perfor- Kolhapur, Satara, Sangli, and Miraj. The At Sangli, Dinanath, who had all the

Lata with the late Prithviraj Kapoor: spanning generations And with Beatles guitarist George
 fiery determination that marks the Mangesh-
kar clan, pawned his wife's ornaments to
start a film company. The switchover was
not easy. Audience sensibility in the '30s
was rapidly changing, so his canned theatre
could not find many buyers. Dinanath's
four mythological plays in Marathi and his
lone Hindi Nm, Andheri Duniya, were flops
in a row. As creditors closed in on him, the
only escape route available was in alcohol.
In 1938, the film company wound up and the
family moved out again, this time to Pune.
The Breadwinner: For the remaining
four years of Dinanath's life, the family
survived on his meagre income from singing
at the Pune station of All India Radio. In
1942, when Dinanath died of pleurisy, heart
disease and frustration, Hridaynath, the
youngest child, who is a music director now,
was lying in bed next to his father with tuber-
culosis of the bones. On the eighth day of
Dinanath's death, Lata, only 13 at that time,
put on full war paint to act and sing in Pahili
Manglagaur, a Marathi film by Master
Vinayak Rao, father of Nanda, the well-
known actress.
In Pahili. Lata played the heroine's
sister and had three songs. "I hated putting
on 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."
Her struggle had in fact begun a month
earlier when Sadasivrao Nevrekar, a friend
of the family, had offered her the maiden
chance for playback singing in a film called
on: "they sing very tunefully"
Kitti Hasal. "My first playback song was
chopped off at the editor's table," she
reminisces with a smile.
Vinayak was happy with her perfor-
mance in Pahili, and signed her as a staff
artiste on a monthly salary of Rs 60. It
became Rs 350 by the time Vinayak died
in 1947 and his Prafull Pictures closed down.
But, in 1945, the company had already
shifted its headquarters to Bombay, and
Lata had moved out into the big city of her
dreams.
She took a house at Nana Chowk, not
very far from her present apartment house-
valued at Rs 20 lakh--on fashionable Peddar
Road. The two-room flat at Nana Chowk
cost her Rs 25 a month, which was still not
easy to fork out with eight mouths to feed,
including cousins. Asha Bhonsle, the youn-
The first Asian to receive the platinum disc from the EM1
ger sister who is a celebrity singer now, was
too young to earn by singing. "Didi was
burning the candle at both ends to keep the
family going," Hridaynath remembers with
obvious gratitude.
T
HE first big event for Lata in Bombay
was herintroductionto Aman Ali Khan
Bhindibazanvala, aclassical singer who
accepted her as a disciple. It was a ceremonial
acceptance complete wirhthe ritual tying of a
cord around her arm. But Aman Ali left for
Pakistan in the wake oftpartition, and Lata
had to find a new guru in Amanat Ali, an
accomplished singer who taught in the same
school as Amir Khan, the celebrated classical
singer.
Amanat Ali's death in 1951 abruptly
ended Lata's apprenticeship in classical
music. "Maybe I'd have become a classical
singer if Amanat Ali were alive." she says
wistfully. But there was only an outside
chance of that, because by 1947 Lata was
already established as a playback singer.
The same year, she sang for a film called
Majboor. It was a thumri, and her debut as a
singer for the heroine. iMqjboor was a big hit.
Her break in Majbooicame in a dramatic
manner. Soon after Vinayak's death, and the
closure of Prafull Pictures, the Mangeshkar
family was again down and out as Lata had
no fixed income. She approached a supplier
of film extras who took her to Master Ghulam
Haidar, a close friend of Amanat Ali and a
leading music director of the times.
Haidar, who was struck by the range and
sweetness of the young girl's voice, took her

toSubodhMukherjeewhose Filmistan Studio
was the Mecca of Bombay's show business.
Mukherjee rejected her out of hand, saying
that the "poor little thing" had a "squeaky"
voice which would not match with that of the
heroine, Kamini Kaushal, the screen siren
of the '40s. Haidar calmly told him: "Muker-
jee, let me foretell today that this kid will
very soon put to shade everyone else, in-
cluding Noojehan." Noorjehan, who subse-
quently migrated to Pakistan and is still at
the top there. was the biggest name in light
music those days.
The Beginning: The same day, Lata
accompanied Haidar to the studios of Bom-
bay Talkies at Malad. It was raining torrenti-
ally. At the platform of Goregaon station.
Haidar asked Lata to sing the same song that
she had just sung for Mukherjee-bulbulo
mat roa tha. She sang, and Haidar kept time
by tapping a tin of 555 cigarettes. The trains
whistled in and out. The combined noise of
commuters and vendors filled the platform.
The rain pattered on the tin shed. But Haidar
was immersed in the song. He did not say a
word after the song ended.
An hour later, Lata was singing the
same song at Bombay Talkies where she was
selected to sing for Majboor. "I never looked
back since then." she says, flushing with
pride. The recording for Majboor was not
easy; it was recorded at the 32nd take. A
whole battery of music directors was present
at the rehearsal room of Bombay Talkies to
listen to Haidar's "discovery". Prominent
among them were Husseinlal Bhagatram,
Anil Biswas, Naushad and Khemchand
Prakash. The first to come forward with
another offer was Naushad, the suave Luck-
now-born music director whose melodies
were largely responsible for the success of the
musical films in the '50s. He signed Lata for
Andaaz, a smashing box-office success. Bha-
gatram got her to sing for Badi Bahen, yet
another success. Then came Barsaat where
she sang jiya bekaraar hai-a song whose
popularity is undiminished even today. Says
Shanker who, with the late Jaikishen, created
the music: "The barsaar (rain) that had
started in 1948 keeps pouring even today."
Fame came quite suddenly to Lata.
but big money still eluded her. She was paid
just Rs 200 for jiya bekaraar hai and never got
more than Rs 400 for a song for many years.
For each song she had to sit at the rehearsals
for at least a fortnight not to speak of the
agony of going through at least half-a-dozen
retakes.
"It was a hard life," she says, "going
from studio to studio." Her day began at
nine in the morning when she would board the
train at Grant Road station, heading towards
Dadar, Goregaon, Andheri or Malad, where
the big studios were located. She would hop
around the studios to catch up with the
shifts. Eating at the canteens was a luxury.
So was a taxi ride.
Encounters: She would often go off to
INDIA TODAY, FEBRUARY 1-1 5, 1981
- Cover Story
sleep while returning home late at night. She
was frequently overcarried to Churchgate,
the terminus, and, way past midnight, the
sweeper women nudge her, asking her to get
off. "I walked back home from Churchgate
even at that hour. Bombay was a civilised
place those days." she says.
One day, Naushad introduced her to
Dilip Kumar, the actor, in a third-class
compartment of the local train ("we were
all commuters thosedays"). Dilip Kumar was
amused by her Marathified Hindi, and teased
her till "my ears tingled in shame". Over
three decades later, Dilip Kumar himself
recalls the incident and says his own ears
tingle in shame when he hears Lata prono-
uncing each Hindi and Urdu word with a
rare eclat. Even in her conversation, she
pronounces the words in Hindi with an
uncanny precision, which is the result of
years of practice.
"The story of Lata Mangeshkar," says
film director Basu Bhattacharya, "reads
like a powerful feminist script." It has indeed
all the ingredients of a feminist d o t . the
'unbelievable speed, and she packed off to
- the Padma Bhushan award from
Receiving
the President.
single woman's search for identity in a male-
dominated society, her eventual triumph and
the dramatic turn of fortune. A very im-
portant music director of the past, who is
now a resident of Delhi, analysed the scenario
objectively. He said: "Some of us treated
Lata like our exclusive vro~ertv.We sought
to dominate her, overshadow her, browbiat
her. Maybe we were upset as she began paying
us back in our own coin."
Some of them were obviously more than
just "upset". Ramchandra, who was Lata's
"close friend" for a decade, calls her "a
despotic, ruthless and vain woman; a
jealous woman who cannot tolerate a single
other singer; a business woman rather than
an artiste."
Her Rivals: Most of her critics are too
awestruck by her personality to stick their
necks out the way Ramchandra does. They
shoot their darts from the safe fortress of
anonymity. But the main charge against her
is that she is wary of competition and pulls
no punches to see that her rivals are squeezed
out of the industry. 'Wo one can stop a
coming force," she once said in an interview
with Bombay TV. But her detractors see her
invisible hand in at least half-a-dozen failure
stories of recent years-Vani Jairam, Runa
Laila. Sulakshana Pandit, Priti Sagar and
Hemlata.
Except Jairam, who went back to her
native Tamil Nadu where she is the topmost
singer in Tamil films now, none of Lata's
"victims" is brave enough to accuse her in
public. But "off-record" conversations point
to a modus operandi. One of them said:
"She is deceitful and has the low cunning of
a bania. Often she gives boost to a shger by
recommending her to music directors, and
makes it known immediately so that nobody
can accuse her of being intolerant later on.
Thereafter, she begins to pull the strings.
At first, the 'offending1 music directors 6 d
their dates with Lata cancelled. Then her
'close sources' pass on the message that
peace with her could be bought only at a
price, that they'd have to 'eject' the new
singer."
Such deals are hard to prove. But,
some years ago. Jairam, who had attained
Instant musical fame with the song help rr
papil~ora in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Gun'o'i,
suddenly found the ground slipping from
under her feet. In fact. she had compounded
her 's~n' by singing in Gulzar's ~Meeru
(music: Ravi Shankar) even after Lata had
at first reportedly tried to push Hridaynath
as its music director and, failing which,
walked out on the contract to sing for it.
The demand for Jairam tapered off with
Madras. literally unsung. Later on, Jairam
charged Lata with having "blackmailed"
the music directors into elbowing her out.
Jairam is not the only one to have gone
through such an ordeal. A few years ago.
~ u n a - ~ a i l the
a , stunningly beautiful singer
118 INDIA TODAY. FEBRUARY 1-1 5. 1ytr I
 treated her as though she was untouchable.
Before long, a rumour swept Bombay that
she was a spy, and signing her for a song
came to be regarded as almost unpatriotic.
She too had to beat a hasty retreat. To
Kenya, in her case.
Tremendous Clout: Lata brushes aside
the charge (see interview) that she was
indeed responsible for the high infant mortal-
ity rate among women's singing talents.
"I was present at Runa's first public per-
formance in Bombay; I was present even at
her first recording," she says. "That's exactly

you hear in films

~t music? And ar

glve ~t any name. But my involve

different. The audience was

return ?

are already there. The bang-bang craze

cannot last long.
Q . What distinguishes your generation of A. B~ngCrosby, Pat Boone. . . .
sin,per~sfi.omthe present?
A. I don't want to create a controversy.

talent. Now that Mukesh IS dead. there arc

woman singer has to s ~ n g"ltke" Lata

Q . Wasn'r t k r e a tirric when you .rlmr.

INDIATODAY. FEBRUARY 1-1 5. 1981 IT9


"If she's not in a mood, her chauffeur would
ring u p the studio to say that 'madam' won't
come. Not even a 'sorry'." Other leading
film-makers talk in hushed tones of how
her ego "needs constant massage."
The other music directors, while referr-
ing to her, compete with each other in to-
adyism. Says Laxmikant of the famous
Laxmikant-Pyarelal duo: "We've worked
with Lataji for 25 years. It's impossible to
describe the pleasure of working with her.
In my view, there is no singer in the world
who is as talented.. . . etc." Says Kalyanji,
the betel-leaf chewing, balding harmonium
player who teams up with Anandji to create
such superhit scores as those of Qurhani and
Muqada'ar Ka Sikatzdar : "Lataji accounts
for 90 paise of India's film music, we make
10 paise."
H E praise, like most things in the
Bombay film industry. is purely utili-
tarian. Ramchandrn fulminates
in counterpoint: "Music directors know
only the third note of the octave--gri and
the sixth --dl~a.And that defines them - which lneaeures pitch. Says a sound recordist panies. "It was a major victory for the
gad110 (ass). 'They're grateful to Lata be-
cause she can lead them by their nose."
The truth of Ramchandra's bitter obser-
vation becomes apparent as one watches
Lata working at the studio. She is like a
clockwork, never taking more than one
shift to learn, rehearse and record a song.
Even a singer of Kishore Kumar's reputation
often takes 10 rehearsals and a number of
retakes for each recording. Rafi too could
not wrap up a song at short notice. And.
on a 70-man orchestra, saving a single shift
At the live show at Royal Albert Hall in 1974: going places
INDIA TODAY. FEBRUARY 1-15. 1.981
-Cover Story
means an economy of Rs 3.500, not to speak women singers to sing with a lot of vibrato.
of the studio rent Only a few of them, maybe Shamshad Begum
What makes this incredible singing alone. avoided it. But everyone else allowed
machine tick? Answer: flexibility of her the notes to vibrate. But the style changed.
style, the range and quality of her \toice and long notes became popular. Lata at
Sweetness of a voice may be indefinable, once switched over to a rnn,;clorilno style--
but its steadiness can be seen on a VU-meter, w~thoutvibrato, without frills.'' Asha also
has a breathtaking flexibility of voice. But
she lacks Lata's range. Her other problem
is an oozing sensuality of her voice, a compel-
ling come-hitherness, which makes her slotted
only for the cabaret and disco numbers.
Crusade: However, in the Bombay film
industry, music forms an integral part of a
packaging scheme. As late as 1975, the
film posters used to carry the music director's
name in types as bold as those of the director.
But the playback singers' bargaining power
was not quite decisive until Lata led a one-
woman crusade in the '60s. She bargained
with the producers to jack u p the remuner-
ation to a five-figure amount for every song.
Later on, she mounted collective pressure
on producers to gain for the singers a part
of the colossal royalty from record com-
at Film Centre recording studio: "When sinsers." admits Vijay Kishore Dubey, chief
Lata glides down to. say, the note A, the of the key Bombay unit of the GSI.
arm of the VU-meter stands rock-steady at However, the money she has earned and
440 cycles. I've never seen this happen the authority she has wielded pale into
with any other singer." Her voice also has a insignificance when compared to the tre-
mind-boggling range. It touches F sharp in mendous popularity she has commanded
the higher octave and descends as low as'A among Indians h e r e and abroad. Jawahar-
in the lower. la1 Nehru wept in public when he heard her
Rahul Dev Bunnan, the doyen of the singing 07 mere ~lutaiikc logo. Though the
pop-style in Hindi film music, maker of the nation conferred on her a mere Padma
score of S h o l a ~ and
, Asha's husband, says : Bhushan. thousands have flocked to listen
"In the past. it was a common practice with to her wherever she has sung.
121

She has recorded in 15 Indian languages.
She has been accepted in the "deep South"
where she was given the title of Asthana
Sangeetha Vidwansulu (Court Muslclan of
the Shrine) at Tirupati. She sang a song in
Nepali for which King Mahendra wrote the
words. Her songs in Assamese touched as
deep a chord as her Bhojpuri songs or the
songs in her native Marathi.
The burden of fame is a heavy cross.
though she has borne it with remarkable
ease. It has imperceptibly thrown a sort of
cordon ~nnirairearound her, like the cloud
of Madame Rochas perfume in which she
is always entombed. Sltting primly in it like
a dowager queen, she lives up to the public
image of a modern Meera-the single
woman in a white sari who visits the Maha-
laxmi Temple every week in a white
Ambassador car. a white vanity bag dangling
from her hand.
Different Image: Only on rare occasions
does she play down the image, such as
during her foreign tours. Nowadays, she
stays away from the country for at least
fair months in a year, without counting her
innumerable "week-end trips" to the USA
and Europe. There, she does let herself go
Says Shanta Anand, a Delhi housewife
married in Chicago: "I've seen her losing
heavily at casinos in Las Vegas; I've seen
her enjoying her food at Bombay restaurant
in New York; I've watched her driving
down 52nd Street in a gay, printed sari.
These are so unlike her, but I like the way
INDIA TODAY. FEBRUARY 1-1 5, 1981
Cover Story
she sheds her inhibitions in America."
Lata seldom talks about that. because
it does not tit into her Meera image. W ~ t h
all the power at her command, she keeps the
nosy-parker Bombay film press at bay.
She is so sensitive about her personal image
that she does not even allow photographs
to be taken of the yoga exercises she per-
forms everyday for breath control. Thanks to
her yoga lessons, she can carry on indefinitely
without pausing for breath.
But she will never admit it publicly. Nor
will she accept the fact that she receives
classical music lessons for one-and-a-half
hours everyday from a man called Tulsidas
Sharrna at her house. "The people may
misunderstand if you say that Lata Mangesh-
kar has to take lessons from anyone." argues
Lata at prayer: maintaining the 'Meera' image
a friend of Lata's.
She is essentially a secretive person,
a lone ranger in a gregarious world of
@amour. Her only enduring companion is
a handsome Rajasthan princeling and cricket
commentator, Raj Singh Dungarpur, 45,
who fixes dates for her, finalises her deals
with vroducers, and even accompanies her
on fo;eign tours. Both of them get uptight
>f their companionship gets discussed in the
press. And it is only a sign of Lata's unassail-
able stature that the relationship is never
exploited by Bombay's professional muck-
rakers. The "rumour" chases them only at
filmi cocktail parties and dies out as night
advances and voices slur.
However, there is nothing to d~sturbher
Meera Image. wh~chshe cher~shesNor does
the other accusation that she has been try-
lng to monopolise the market. But these
really do not matter to her as long as she
remains the "indisputable and indispens-
able" queen of Indian film music.
But themus~cItselfmayundergo a change
some dav. * . as ~tthreatened to do In '70s wlth
the advent of "action-packed" movies. The
average number of songs in Bombay tilms
has .already come down to four from a
dozenin the '60s. Melody is giving way to elec-
tronic noise; gcet is yielding place to beat.
Such are the grim forebodings for India's
one-woman music industry. But, till dooms-
day comes, Lata Mangeshkar will reign
supreme-towering above criticism, and
curiosity. -SUMIT MITRA
123