Manas Dasgupta
MUMBAI, Feb 6: India’s nightingale, the melody queen Lata Mangeshkar whose health conditions had turned critical on Saturday, passed away in the hospital in Mumbai on Sunday morning. She was 92.
She passed away at 8.12 a.m. after suffering a multiple-organ failure on Saturday night. Confirming her death, Breach Candy Hospital CEO N. Santhanam attributed the iconic singer’s death to post-COVID-19 complications.
The Central government has announced a two-day national mourning in memory of the legendary singer who enthralled music lovers in India and throughout the world for over six decades and inspired generations of budding singers.
Tributes gushed in from the cinematic world and the country’s political spectrum as the news of the singer’s death broke. Her last rites are to be performed at Shivaji Park in Dadar on Sunday evening.
Expressing grief over her demise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, “I am anguished beyond words. The kind and caring Lata Didi has left us. She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled. The coming generations will remember her as a stalwart of Indian culture, whose melodious voice had an unparalleled ability to mesmerise people.
She was admitted in the Breach Candy hospital in early January after she tested positive for COVID-19 and was also diagnosed with pneumonia. While she was admitted to the ICU with mild symptoms on January 28, the singer was taken off the ventilator, after she showed slight signs of improvement. However, her condition deteriorated again on Saturday and she was put back on ventilator support but could not revive.
Lata ji, as she was affectionately called, was the eldest of the Mangeshkar siblings who also included other famed artistes like Asha Bhosle, Meena Khadikar, Usha Mangeshkar and Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar.
Known as the ‘Queen of Melody’, Lata Mangeshkar had sung over 30,000 songs in more than 20 Indian languages in a record-breaking career of 73 years beginning at age 13 in the 1942 Marathi film Kiti Hasaal (1942).
Lata Mangeshkar, along with her sister Asha Bhosle, reigned supreme in Bollywood film music from the late 1940s well into the 21st century, having recorded with every great music composer of name — be it Salil Chowdhury, Naushad, S.D. Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, R.D. Burman and Kalyanji-Anandji — though she shared a special musical relationship with composer Madan Mohan.
But it was her heartfelt rendition of the patriotic Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo — commemorating the sacrifices of the Indian soldiers in the 1962 war with China — that was said to have moved Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to tears. The song was performed on Republic Day in 1963 at the National Stadium in New Delhi.
She sang Naushad’s formidable raga-based compositions in ‘Golden Age’ classics like Baiju Bawra, Mother India and Mughal-e-Azam; Shankar-Jaikishan’s hits in films like Barsaat and Shree 420. She won her first Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer in the Salil Chowdhury-scored Madhumati.
She was bestowed with the Padma Bhushan, third-highest civilian award in 1969, the Padma Vibhushan, second-highest civilian award in 1999 and the highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna in 2001.
Much-feted throughout her lengthy innings, Lata Mangeshkar was conferred with France’s highest civilian award ‘Officier de la Legion d’Honneur’ (Officer of the Legion of Honour) in 2009.
Paying tributes to the legendary singer, he music lovers said it would be ludicrous to say that Lata Mangeshkar was brilliant, amid other adjectives of commendation. Simply because she was Lata Mangeshkar. Just like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven, Lata Mangeshkar has been a moniker for excellence. And will continue to be so for decades to come. Technical prowess aside, her genius lay in her connection with the song, a connection that tied together her listeners too. Her version of the song was inevitably the best that it could be.
An artiste so surpassingly distinguished and impossibly prolific, Mangeshkar managed to do what many couldn’t. She accomplished a level of musical perfection that remains unmatched in Hindi film music. “Kambakhat galti se bhi besura nahi gaati,” Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan had famously said with exasperation, and happiness rolled together.
Lata Mangeshkar was born in Indore in a Sikh neighbourhood and raised in Kolhapur in a musical family. Her father Master Dinanath Mangeshkar was a musician from Gwalior gharana who ran a drama company and Lata’s first guru. She went to school only for a day. She was about five and took a young Asha (Bhosle) along with her. But the school wouldn’t allow such a young child to sit in the class with her. She decided to never go back.
At home, she would listen to her father teaching his students and imbibe the pieces. One day her father spotted her correcting one of his students and was astounded at how deftly the child taught. He decided to teach her the ropes of classical music. But his untimely death led Lata, the eldest child of the family to begin work at 13.
It was Master Vinayak, her family’s close friend and owner of Navyug Chitrapat movie company who took care of the family and helped Lata become an actor and singer. Her’s first song was Vasant Joglekar’s Marathi film Kiti Hasaal, but it did not make the final cut. She sang a couple of songs for some Marathi films before moving to Mumbai in 1945. It’s here that she began training under the aegis of Ut Aman Ali Khan of the Bhendibazaar gharana. Vinayak also introduced Mangeshkar to composer Vasant Desai. He, too, passed away in 1948 after which it was composer Ghulam Haider who took Mangeshkar under his wing and introduced her to filmmaker Sasadhar Mukherjee who had just set up Filmistan studio. But Mangeshkar was rejected by Mukherjee who thought her voice was too thin. Angry that his judgment had been doubted, Haider went on to proclaim a prophecy – “music composers would beg Lata to sing for them”. Haider gave Mangeshkar her first significant break with the song ‘Dil mera toda, mujhe kahin ka na chhoda’ – a piece that sounds like an imitation of Noorjehan’s slightly nasal style. In some years, Mangeshkar was singing differently, in that thin yet mature voice that was to fulfill Haider’s words in the coming years.
Soon the nation cocked its ears to the gramophone playing Aayega aanewala, the haunting Khemchad Prakash composition from Mahal (1949) that took the nation’s breath away and sealed her supremacy in the Indian film industry for decades to come with no rival in sight. The song broke all records at Radio Ceylon as people flooded their office with letters to ask for the singer’s name (The gramophone company only carried the character’s name — Kamini). Every composer took notice. Lata Mangeshkar had arrived. There was also the irreverent Mughal-e-Azam (1960) ditty Pyar kiya toh darna kya or the profound Sahir Ludhianvi piece Allah tero naam ishwar tero naam (Hum Dono) or the playful Piya tose naina laage (Guide, 1965), everytime Mangeshkar sang, she captured a feeling so pure, that it left one with a sense of gratitude towards her. Especially when she sang Kavi Pradeep’s Aye mere watan ke logo to C Ramachandra’s tune and a nation’s collective consciousness with the Indo-Sino war as the backdrop. The country wept, so did Pt Nehru.
Some of her most successful outings were with composers Naushad, Anil Biswas, SD Burman, Shankar Jaikishen, C Ramachandra, Sali Chowdhury, Hemant Kumar, Roshan, Madan Mohan, Khayyam, Jaidev and Ravi among others.
With her death India has lost one of its most prolific and significant artistes – the last of her kind. India would not be the same without her voice that could dwarf the entire catalogues of the nation’s most legendary musicians. She leaves India, not just with her vast oeuvre but a sense of pride amid gentle shades of patriotism, the kind we felt when we saw her draped in the tricolour for the group song Mile sur mera tumhara. toh sur bane hamara…