In a fitting tribute, a tearful nation paid its last respects to singing sensation, the Nightingale of Bollywood Lata Mangeshkar. Her demise at the advanced age of 92 was peaceful though complicated by the scourge of the times, the Covid pandemic. As the funeral pyre was lit at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park on Sunday evening, the immortal flame that’s Lata will live in the minds of music lovers for all times to come. Through seven decades of perusal of music, melody and its tunes — a mix of romance, devotion, pathos and patriotic spirit — she left behind a gift of immense value to be cherished for ever. Those like Pyar Kiya to Darna Darna Kya, Prabhu Tero Naam, Meri Ankho Ke Siva, and Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo that famously brought tears to the eyes of Jawahralal Nehru, would live in our collective memories. Some of these had shades of her own troubled past, she having lost both her parents at an early age.
Yet, by sheer dint of hard work and strenuous conditioning, she (and her sister Asha Bhosle) rose to the heights of music followed by boundless public adulation over the years. That’s the unique strength of entertainers par excellence. Lata was more lovable because she, unlike several other entertainers of our times, kept herself aloof from politics and controversies – and yet the powers that be went after her, rather, to bask under her glory. Even when she was nominated as a member of Rajya Sabha, representing gifted artists of the time, she kept off the Parliament and its aura for most part and avoided taking a salary, a free residence or other benefits. That was the strength of her character.
Having lived all her life in a promenade in South Mumbai, what’s often noted about her was the offer that came from a Pakistani prime minister, long past, that he would settle more for a sensation like Lata than for the sensitive Kashmir as a gift to Pakistan. The high and mighty bowed before her talent, which she inherited from her father; her skills having been honed over time by great singers of the past. Lata’s life and times would remain an inspiration to generations of musicians and others, mainly to novices as she had brilliantly overcome odds and rose to the top. And, all these for someone who was, at an early stage in her career, dismissed by some producers as “no good,” one with “too thin” a voice and of imperfect accent. That’s life
