LATA MANGESHKAR REMAINED HER OWN PERSON TILL THE END.

Lata was one of three daughters born to Dinanath Mangeshkar, a well-known Marathi theatre artist. Her father saw her potential early on and began training her when she was just five years old. Asha Bhosle, her younger and more brilliant sister, subsequently told Dogri poet Padma Sachdev about how their lives altered when their father died unexpectedly. Lata didi, the eldest, was only 13 years old. The family first moved to Thalner village in Dhule to dwell with their mother's family, then to a modest bungalow in Nana Chowk in Mumbai. Lata ji's early years in Mumbai's film industry in the early 1940s were difficult. Music directors were hesitant to offer the weak girl a chance for playback singing since they were used to the harsh, shrill, and nasal voices of singing stars from courtesan households. Her voice was deemed "too thin" by them.

In the age of modern recording technologies, a person less in need of money might have objected and told them that screen voices needed to be more natural and flowing. But Lata's primary concern was providing for her family, which consisted of three siblings and a widowed mother. For a while, she pretended to be Eliza Doolittle to their Professor Higgins. Young fatherless children are taught flexibility early in life. Lata did as well. But, like a good singer, she maintained her classically trained actual voice while adapting to the composers' demands, and she rapidly rose to become the patron saint of India's "new" female voice. She was no longer the awkward in-between singer after her first successful song, Mahal's Aayega aanewala. Even the great Bade Ghulam Ali Khan sahib is supposed to have stated of her that he forgot his own rendition of Raga Yaman after hearing her sing it, and that the girl never goes off-key (Jab se iss ladki ka Yaman kaan mein pada, main apna wala Yaman bhool gaya! (Kabhi besuri hi nahin hoti!). Naushad, another outstanding film composer, wrote about her: Keep an eye on her voice as it rises like a ball of fire.

Lata Mangeshkar was an uncontested star in the 1950s, singing for all of the great composers of the time, including Shankar-Jaikishan, Naushad, SD Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Hemant Kumar, and Madan Mohan. In Mughal-e-Azam, she performed some of Madhubala's best hits, including the classic Mohey panghat pe Nandlal.... Her illustrious career isn't a tragic narrative of continuing to bear the load of someone else's perception of how a woman should sing. She was a true multi-voiced vocalist who saw her ability to sing for Madhubala, Jaya Bachchan, and even Preity Zinta as a valuable asset. Hers was the voice of a modest but grand Marathi theatre tradition, as well as the realisation of parental ideals and goals she had absorbed as a child. Until the end, she was a rock for her family. Still, it would be a mistake to pigeonhole her as a great dowager queen of music, dressed in white sarees and isolated by ardent piety and meditational silences. True, Lata ji was passionately protective of her own life as an individual. She was, nevertheless, very much her own person. She didn't follow the traditional path of marriage, children, and the risk of a life-long feud with a man who thought his manhood was threatened by a powerful woman. Instead, she opted to sing whenever and however she pleased, as well as maintain her personal ties with the men and women she cared about. She was not a big fan of theatrics. Her passion for everything, from diamond jewellery to religious music, was genuine. Like so many of our great musicians, she was born with those aesthetics. But, even as she pursued her music, one admires her for correctly asking that artists be given royalties rather than being sent off with a one-time payment. So be it if this caused some friction between her and a few big-name male singers. Her inherent sense of self-worth remained nuanced and expansive till the very end.

Lata Mangeshkar's profound and sincere love for cricket was another lovable aspect of her life. She discovered the action-man dimension of a father she had lost early in her life in the cricket establishment. Over the years, legends abound about her passionate devotion to one such tale. But, for reasons we'll never know, she chose not to marry. It was up to them to figure out whether or not they were telling the truth. She never wanted to talk about it in public, and no one dared to ask her about it, including columnists and society reporters. She stated unequivocally that she did not want to be reborn. Ever. Meera Bai, who sung Mai mai, kaise jiyun ree (Oh my mother, how can I survive) was her favourite poet. In one of her last interviews with a Mumbai newspaper, she observed, "One should gently accept grief like delight."

Recently, there has been an uptick in those claiming to have known her throughout the years and claiming that she sung because Veer Savarkar encouraged her to do so, or that singing a song like Ai mere watan ke logo... was the perfect public demonstration of pure rashtra bhakti. According to what is known about this exceptional singer, she despised histrionics and public demonstrations of love or hatred. She, like George Bernard Shaw, believed that patriotism is essentially the belief that the finest country is the one in which one is born. The incredible weight of the joy her voice brings embarrasses exaggerated tributes, both professionally and emotionally. Inevitably, obituaries will refer to her as "the last of a kind," "Hindi film music's Sur Saraswati," or "the best female singer in the Bollywood firmament." They won't be soppy clichés this time; instead, they'll ring sincere.