Apart from coping with rejections to immature but pure(!) love proposals, the other dreadful scenario for late teens in our generation was -- when, the day before an exam, we realized that we hadn’t studied the subsidiary subjects adequately, at least to pass them.
Facing one such “dread” in Bangalore, India, during the first year BSc English and Advanced English exams, when we were supposed to have had read The Guide by RK Narayan, among other Indian literary luminaries. My friends and I resorted to watching the movie instead; to get the gist.
While the gullible mind kept imagining a future Waheeda Rahman, the song by Lata “Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai,” captured our imagination; and, the movie prepared us for the impending exam the next day, albeit only just.
Songs of Lata (especially those with Kishore Kumar) have entertained generations long before ours and will continue to entertain more after us. What exactly makes these tunes so special?
Singers of post-independent India were fortunate to have great musicians and music directors who were creative, original, and produced scores after scores to entertain a flourishing movie industry. Then, of course, Lata and Kishore’s unforgettable voices make us listen to their songs over and over.
They had the uncanny knack to transmit emotions that were crucial for their success. As their songs were playbacks to be played in song sequences in movies -- they, without any exception, captured the mood and the precise moment when actors would sing these songs and modulate their voices accordingly. And, very few singers in Bollywood have been so successful in transmitting on-screen emotion (after all, a lot of the scores were/are about outpouring of actors’ emotion) audibly.
Melody is a big factor. Lata and Kishore were fortunate to enter the scene when Bollywood, particularly its music, was in the ascent. Musicians such as Sachin Dev Burman, Shankar–Jaikishan, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, or Rahul Dev Burman were in prominence, creating some phenomenal tunes. These musicians and their contemporaries sought inspiration in many local, classical, folk, or even foreign music for their composition, resulting in everlasting melodies that continue to reverberate today.
As with its movies, the Hindi/Urdu languages, or the urban Indian culture, songs in Bollywood have changed a lot. Though they remain an important ingredient for the success of the movies.
I cannot quite recall how exactly I was exposed to the Lata-Kishore repertoire. Though, I vividly remember some of their very popular Bangla duets being played over and over via the loud-speakers during Durga (and other) Pujas in my suburb. There are blurry reminiscences of uncles playing their songs, and TV channels endlessly repeating numbers of RD Burman. From there I guess it was like any other interests that one explores -- and, though this was early nineties, before Google and YouTube became ubiquitous, there were HMV stores in major Indian cities, where you could play and listen to tracks and get the albums in cassettes (and occasionally in vinyls).
Kishore Kumar passed away in 1986, before I had developed any taste for music. By the time RD Burman had died in 1994, I had barely heard his hit numbers, and I was still searching for songs that I might not have heard yet. Not only was it the pre-internet period, but there were no FM radio jockeys doing the research and digging out rare melodies for the eager listeners. So it was sheer pleasure when I found old tunes that were less popular.
As I moved onto other places, inevitably I experienced plenty more beautiful music in a diverse range of genres, from Western Classical music to the eclectic World Music, or Jazz.
Yet the exciting, new, and tasteful experiences never diminished my fondness for these two singers and their tunes. Every now and then, one of their many tunes gets stuck in my head and I play it online. Often, I end up playing a number of tracks, in succession, instead of only listening to the one I intended to listen to, initially.
An amusing part of listening to music is that certain songs bring back particular memories, often the precise moment when one had heard it for the first time. The songs of Lata have the same effect on me.
Lata outlived many of her peers. Her career had been a lengthy affair. Her performances were limited in the later years due to her advanced age. Yet her passing is quite disbelieving; has she really left us?
Emotions stirred in me, a situation no doubt I will face for quite some time, wherever I would hear her melodies, and tunes such as Ashar Shrabon Mane Nato Mon that I first heard playing during Durga Puja as a child.
I take solace thinking that while artists depart, their works remain to entertain and inspire generations to come. If remembrance of Kishore through his songs, to this day, is of any indication, songs of Lata Mangeshkar will reverberate for thousand years more.
Irfan Chowdhury is an opinion columnist.