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Revisited: Dungarpur on special friend Lata

Updated on: 13 September,2009 07:06 AM IST  | 
Shradha Sukumaran |

About five years ago, when it was her 75th birthday, Raj Singh Dungarpur paid tribute to India's nightingale. Excerpts from the interview

Revisited: Dungarpur on special friend Lata

About five years ago, when it was her 75th birthday, Raj Singh Dungarpur paid tribute to India's nightingale. Excerpts from the interview

Meeting Lata for the first time
In 1959, could be August, I came to Bombay to do law. I told Dilip Sardesai's first cousin Sopan Sardesai that I can't exist without playing cricket. He told me that the only place that you get cricket was at a Walkeshwar house where Lata Mangeshkar's brother and his friends played tennis ball cricket. I said I'm not bothered by who plays, but I have to be there. They used to stay in a two-bedroom flat in a building behind the Walkeshwar house. She was in those days, I suppose, recording all day; nor was I hung up on seeing her. I just played and went back to my sister's house in Napeansea Road.

But her family must have discussed that I had come, so she said, "We must offer him a cup of tea." I was invited to come up I can't remember if it was raining. She was utterly charming; she came to see me off and gave me her car. They were celebrating nariyal poornima shortly and she invited my brother and me for dinner.

Everybody was quite crazy about cricket and I was just a Ranji Trophy player. Sopan Sardesai and the Mangeshkar family lived in Nana Chowk, in what would be perhaps little above a chawl. From there, she went to Walkeshwar and then to Peddar Road. That's how I started to know her. I went for a couple of her recordings and so on.


On Lata getting the Bharat Ratna
Lata Mangeshkar can be childlike. When she got the Bharat Ratna, we were in London. She opened the flat and it was 11:30 at night. The phone was ringing. She picked it up and said, "Wow!" I said, "Hell! What is wow left for Lata Mangeshkar?" She said, "Rachna (her favourite niece) is telling me that I've got the Bharat Ratna." The phones never stopped till late in the night. The next morning in London, you have to make a cup of tea yourself I made one for her. She had her two-three medicines and I asked her, "How does it feel to be a Bharat Ratna?" She said, "Now that you ask me...bahut achha lagta hai."


Their relationship
Everybody knows that I was extremely close to her I am still close to her. I just spoke to her 15 minutes ago (at the time of this interview, in 2004). This is a very personal matter. But we came from different backgrounds '60s was very different. Perhaps, both were very attached to their respective families. It was one of those things that just didn't happen. But that has neither enhanced the relationship, nor has it reduced. She is the treasure house of my admiration and affection and I continue to be in touch with her.

Mukesh once told me when we were having dinner in New York, "Raj Singhji to Aurangazeb hai." That means he hated music and understood nothing. My relationship was not built on music. People think I'm a connoisseur, but I find even half an hour very difficult to pass at a concert.


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