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Lata Mangeshkar looks back at all the people, who influenced her the most in her life.
"I don’t think I’d have become a singer if my father had lived. He wouldn’t have allowed it,"
she tells Subhash K Jha.
IMAGE: Lata Mangeshkar with her sister Asha Bhosle. Photograph: Lata Mangeshkar/Twitter
My father had a huge hand in shaping me into the singer that I became. He taught me music.
But do you know for a very long time, my father didn’t know I could sing?
I would go into the kitchen and force my domestic helpers to listen to me sing.
My mother would scold me and shoo me away for wasting her time.
A student of my father (who later became the very well-known Marathi actor Chandrakant
Gokhale) was doing riyaaz while my father had stepped out. I was playing outside.
I went inside and told Gokhale he was singing it wrong, and I sang it the way I had heard my
father sing.
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Lata Mangeshkar: My father predicted my success https://www.rediff.com/movies/special/lata-mangeshkar-my-father-pred...
I’d learnt from hearing my father sing though I never had the courage to go and sing with him.
The next morning, he told me to come to his room. I was petrified of him. He was very
conservative and a disciplinarian.
All the ladies of the house, young or old, had to wear kum-kum on the forehead and bangles
on their hands. We were not allowed to use powder. Those were the days of the freedom
struggle.
Our home was filled with talk of anti-colonialism. (Freedom fighter) Veer Savarkar was my
father’s friend.
That day when he asked me to learn music from him, he told me to take out the tanpura and
showed me how to hold it.
He asked me to sing the same raga that I he had heard me sing the previous day. That’s how I
was initiated into formal singing.
My elder sister Meena and I learnt music from our father. The other siblings were too young
when he died.
My father didn’t see me become a singer but he predicted my success. He was a very good
astrologer. He had prophesied that I would become so successful that no one would be able to
reach my level.
He also predicted that he would not be alive when I became famous and that I’d look after the
entire household.
I don’t think I’d have become a singer if my father had lived. He wouldn’t have allowed it.
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Lata Mangeshkar: My father predicted my success https://www.rediff.com/movies/special/lata-mangeshkar-my-father-pred...
There are many stories of who discovered me and who was instrumental in giving me my first
big break.
My sister Meena and I stayed with Master Vinayak’s father while the rest of my family lived at
my maternal grandparents' home.
In 1946, I told Master Vinayak that I needed to live with my family. That’s when we all started
living in one home.
Ten days after his death, a photographer who worked in his company took me to music
director Harishchandra Vade.
He heard me sing and recorded two songs in my voice for a film called Love Is Blind. That film
got shelved.
I really respected him for his music in Khazanchi, Shahid and Khandaan. I went to meet him.
This was in 1947 and I was merely 18.
I remember he was recording. He kept me waiting till evening and finally called me in at 5 pm.
I was frightened.
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I wondered what a composer, who had worked with Noorjehan, would think of me. He asked
me to sing.
He asked me who my guru was. When I told him it was Amanat Ali Khan Saab, he said they
were friends.
Then Master Ghulam Haider played my voice to the very successful producer Sashadhar
Mukherjee who said, ‘Yeh awaaz nahin chalegi, yeh awaaz bahot patli hai, ’(this voice won’t
work, it’s too thin).
Sashadharji needed a playback voice for actress Kamini Kaushal, and he felt my voice didn't
match hers.
He ordered me to accompany him to the Bombay Talkies studio in Malad where Majboor was
being shot. He was the music composer.
Later when we recorded, he said, ‘People will forget everyone, including Noorjehan, when they
hear you.'
The first song he recorded with me was a duet with Mukesh, Angrezi chora chala gaya. This
was my first major break.
I recorded three-four songs for Majboor. Composer Khemchand Prakash heard them and
signed me for Ziddi.
Incidentally, Sashadhar Mukherjee later admitted to me he was wrong about my voice and
was crazy to have rejected me. I sang for many of his films, including Anarkali and Nagin.
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It’s a well-known fact that once he made kheer and invited only me.
When he married my sister (Asha Bhosle), he told me to write him a letter as a wedding gift,
which he stored away in his bank locker.
Pancham was very unhappy in the final years because of his career.
I had the privilege of singing in his last film as a composer 1942: A love Story.
'I was close not only to Madan Mohan but to his entire family'
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Madan Mohan
We sang a duet Pinjre mein bulbul bulbul bole together in Shahid for Master Ghulam Haider.
It was a song about a brother and a sister singing together but it never got released.
One day, suddenly, he came up to me and said, 'Won't you tie me a rakhi?'
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