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I must have probably been in the fifth standard when I first sang before an audience. I had learnt the song from my Bombay cousins who brought their tape recorder along every summer. I didn’t know Hindi or Urdu then. Neither did I understand music well enough. Yet I was drawn to the shrill voice and the song’s sorrow. My cousins improved my diction and helped me memorising the lyrics. With the tune stuck in my mind, I think I replayed it easily on stage – Yeh zindagi usi ki hai is a song that will never be erased from my memory.
Over the years, I listened to more and more of Lata Mangeshkar. As my music lessons progressed and, with my improving knowledge of Hindi and Urdu, her music would sound sweeter and more refined to my ears. Growing up in Bengaluru in the 80s, I hardly saw or knew of any of the films for which she sang. But I had by then, compulsively listened to every song of hers, knew their composers and lyricists. Chitrahaars and Rangolis were all incomplete for me without a Lata track in them. I collected innumerable cassettes of Lata from HMV while my friends were obsessed with Michael Jackson and Madonna. Every day, as her songs continued to play, I kept notebooks and diaries by my side filled with her songs.
I could only think of singing her songs in competitions and music festivals - I remember one of the judges even remarking that I must try Rafi and Mukesh too! Undeterred I listened on – could sing nothing else. Never cared for newer genres or trends - A celebration, a relationship, a heartbreak, a dilemma or just any emotion for me was Lata. Be it Pilu or Khammaj or any other raag, I found it difficult to accept a rendition better from any other voice. Her voice may have wakened with age but my connection with her music only got deeper. It was a precious, intimate bond I had with someone I never met. The closest I came to see her perform live was reaching a “sold out” window in Mumbai in the summer of 1992. Not having witnessed her live concert will be one of my greatest regrets.
Even as I tried to ignore the news of her illness trickling in, I silently prayed for her recovery every day. As television channels flashed images of her final journey, playing her songs over and over, the heartache deepened - as if convincing me that she had indeed lived in our midst and that her time had finally come. Lata has left behind a generous legacy of decades of eternal music for us and yet, it is the emptiness without her that impoverishes us. The loss seems utterly heavy and personal.