A biography of playback singer Lata Mangeshkar, reveals little-known facts and rare photographs of the legend that chronicle decades of music
A biography of playback singer Lata Mangeshkar, reveals little-known facts and rare photographs of the legend that chronicle decades of music
How's this for trivia? Lata Mangeshkar likes listening to Mozart as well as Nat King Cole. A poster of Beethoven once adorned her room. She used to play the slot machines in Las Vegas all night while holidaying in America. And, the song that made her famous, Aayega Aanewala from Mahal came close to being dropped from the film's soundtrack before release.
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The book is pretty much a transcription of interviews between Mangeshkar and Nasreen Munni Kabir, a filmmaker based in London. Much of it is based on a six-part television documentary titled Lata in Her Own Voice directed by Kabir in 1991. There are pros and cons to this approach, the latter outweighing the former. To begin with, the lack of structure means a reader is confronted with one long interview spanning 193 pages.
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Clockwise: In the Hindi film Yatra (1946); still from Master Vinayak's mythological film Subhadra (1946) starring Sharda Apte (left) and Lata Mangeshkar; a still from Gajabhau (1943) in which Lata sang her first Hindi song in this Marathi film; Pahili Mangalgaur (1942) was the first film in which Lata Mangeskhar appeared (aged 13) |
Secondly, Kabir's questions never really draw anything more than polite replies from the diva. 'One of the aims of this book,' she states in her introduction, 'is to try and separate truth and fact from rumour and fabulous myth.' Yet, the absence of anything remotely controversial is glaring. This is, after all, a life in the colourful film industry.
That said, the many photographs remind one, time and again, why Mangeshkar is so integral to Bollywood,u00a0 and so much bigger than it. With an alleged 27,000 songs featuring her voice, the list of people she has worked with spans the history of Indian cinema. What is surprising, is how so many of the images depict a startling humility.
Like one of her with Pandit Ravi Shankar, rehearsing a track from Anuradha at Dadar's Bombay Labs in 1960. She is the perfect student, poring over the humble lyric sheet; his eyes are closed in intense concentration. Clearly, these were folk who took their music seriously.
A portion of the book's latter half carries anecdotes about Mangeshkar by her family and friends, including Javed Akhtar, Naushad Ali, Yash Chopra and Manna Dey. What they say reiterates what Mangeshkar mentions: 'I am a self-made person. I have learned how to fight. I have never been scared of anyone.' You believe her, too.
Lata Mangeshkar: In Her Own Voice, Conversations with Nasreen Munni Kabir, Niyogi Books, 268 pages, Rs 1,500.
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