The Lata seldom heard (Part II)

Lata’s voice echoed the soul of India that was exuberant and plaintive at the same time. From the first flush of youth to the twinge of separation, there is no mood, no shade of human psyche that Lata didn’t give voice to and along the way made a legion of followers believe that perfection is not unattainable in creative art.

But for the fate that reduced her to the sole breadwinner in the family of five siblings at a very young age, Lata would have shone on the firmament of classical music. It was something that she regretted all her life. It also meant that singing became her life. She would starve through the day so that she could save every single penny for the family. The early struggle ingrained in her a sense of discipline and a guarded approach towards the world.

In the recording studio, none could match the purity and clarity of her voice and the control over the pitch. Her mentor Ghulam Haider instilled in a young Lata the importance of feeling the joys and pain of the character. Anil Biswas taught her the value of breath control and Naushad and Salil Chowdhury tested how high she could go with notes. Her sweet voice quickly displaced the robust nasal voices like Shamshad Begum and Geeta Dutt.

Outside the studio, in white saris and side-parting braids, she carefully crafted an image where even the film media, which thrives on gossip, presented her as a sisterly figure who loved to tie rakhis on the industry’s big wigs.

However, beneath that benign half-smile and muted silks, the resilient Lata was all steel. The woman who sang in Lata’s voice was invariably a ‘good’ woman. In hindsight, some observers see it as Lata’s limitation but actually, it is a reflection of the kind of protagonists that populated popular cinema in the 1950s and 60s and the style that the composers asked her to adopt. She was invariably called to justify the most intricate compositions.

That brings us to the fact how even the words of best lyricists got that additional sparkle with Lata’s voice. From Zia Sarhadi to Naqshab to Kaif Irfani, Shakat Dehlvi, D N Madhok, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and others to the next generation poets like Shailendra, Rajinder Krishen, Shakeel Badayuni, Hasrat Jaipuri, Jaan Nisar Akhtar, Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Indeevar, Naqsh Lyallpuri down to Gulzar, Anand Bakhshi and Sameer – the number might exceed 250 if you include those from other languages – all have profited immensely from Lata’s rotund throat.

Take for instance the 1948 musical “Anokha Pyar”. It had as many as nine Lata songs, each with a different hue and flavour. If it was a pathos-ridden “Mere liye wo ghame intezaar chhod gaye,” there was also the boisterous.

“Meri phoolon me chhipi hai jawani.” It can be a subject matter of research on the films, especially in the forties and fifties, which had songs that revealed Lata in a wide band of spectrum.

Mind you, most of these films had males as protagonists and were anything but women-oriented. Yasmin (1955) was a predictably flop movie and it just about kept the producer-director afloat because of its music. The timeless classic “Mujh pe ilzaame bewafaai hai” filmed on Vyjayanthimala was one of its saving grace. These Lata songs were making waves when songs sung by her illustrious male counterparts from the same movie had the advantage of patriarchal supremacy of being picturised on the hero. It was not just about the hero or the heroine. It was also about those who propped them up from behind. Lata was the heroine behind all the heroines. One voice, many effects!

Striking starkly sharp, contradictory notes and feelings was Lata’s USP. The “thehraav” in “Tere bina soona”(Khidki-1948) would be quickly dispelled with an exuberant “O pardesi musafir kise karta hai ishaare” (Balam-1949) or the effervescence of “Chak chak chali hamare rail” (Naach-1949) and “Chalo ho gayi taiyar” (Shadi S Pehle-1947). For that matter, she also had this ability of singing three songs with similar moods from the same film Subhadra (1946), yet each one with a subtle difference. In Asha (1948), she straddled four distinctively different genres – classical, romantic, bhajan and sad with her characteristic aplomb.

There were films where Lata surpassed herself much to her own disadvantage. The 1948 classic Ziddi had five Lata songs but four of them – all sung as divinely – failed to touch chord as much as “Chanda re jaa re jaa re.” It had left composer Khemchand Prakash wondering what else he could have done to polish the other songs. C Ramchandra, the predominantly female composer – a label that stuck to him for his clear proclivities with Lata – also found that too much Lata in his repertoire resulted in a situation that some of his finest compositions got buried under the superincumbent weight of the more popular ones. But to his credit, he along with Salil Choudhary succeeded where other composers unfortunately did not. This was, however, no reflection on Lata but the unpredictability of the juke box office.

An honourable exception to this phenomenon was Madan Mohan who struck a consistent equation with Lata – both at the personal and professional levels. From the Baaghi days of early 50s to the Dastak days of mid-seventies, there was not a note lost between the two. The supreme irony here is Madan Mohan who created a huge garland of unforgettable melodies for Lata, never won a single popular award. All that he got was a critic’s award for the Dastak classic “Baiyaan naa dharo o balma” and that too after his death. There cannot be a greater travesty of truth that here was a music director who was so close to Lata’s heart. Little wonder Madan Mohan drowned his sorrows in O P Nayyar, the born rebel who prided on never having used Lata’s voice even once in his glittering three-and- half-decade career, was unabashed in her admiration. He had especially singled out her songs under Shankar-Jaikishen, who were his arch professional rivals then. At the height of his obsession for Asha (Bhosale), he had publicly stated that Lata with Anil Biswas, C Ramchandra and Madan Mohan would never be replicated again howsoever they (the fraternity) keeps trying. Prophetic words those!

It is a measure of Lata’s growth in stature that she stood up to many composers and lyricists and sang under her terms and conditions. When asked about one very popular song she had sung for Shankar Jaikishen, she wrinkled her nose and bluntly dismissed it saying that it was plagiarised. Most people would bask in her songs do not know the pleasant or unpleasant stories that accompany them but that is just as well. Who bothers? It is the song that matters. It would be a separate chapter to list the songs that Lata sang in the midst of the discordant notes she had with many composers, including the ones who exploited her tonal gold to give her the best place in history.

It is a different story with/of Lata in the post 60s. She was revered, worshipped, admired, disliked and depreciated for both right and wrong reasons. She was a Queen Bee, the prima donna whom none had the courage to take on. To be fair to her, her frailties lay well covered by her dignified demeanor and disposition.

It is known to very few that she was named Hema at the time of birth but later it was changed to Lata. It was inspired by Latika, a character from her father’s play- Bhav Bandhan. The name and the emotional connect in the name of the play is the quintessential Lata story.