Lata... a short and simple word... four letters in English, three in Urdu, two in Devanagari. A word that has gone beyond being a person's name, a word that has become a metaphor in its own right. There are countless people named Lata, and yet the standalone use of the word doesn't require any explanation or elaboration, not even the additional qualification of her last name. Would anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the music of the subcontinent need any explanation whenever that word is used?

A few years ago, I read a ghazal written by the Pakistani poet Habib Jalib. The matlaa (first verse) is…

bikherii zulf jab kaalii ghaTaa ne
nazar meñ phir gaye biite zamaane

The ghazal has nothing to do with music per se – like many Urdu ghazals, it is a series of couplets that are not linked by a common theme. I found the ghazal nice but unremarkable – that is, until I came to the maqtaa (the last couplet that has the poet’s name woven into it). That made me sit up and take notice:

qafas meñ mar chale the ham to 'jaalib'
bachaayaa ham ko aavaaz-e-lataa ne

The first line perhaps needs some explanation: Jalib was a dissident who was jailed as a political prisoner under at least two military governments in Pakistan, and was targeted in other ways (including physical violence). His experience in prison would have been a tough one indeed: mind-numbing days, physical and psychological violence, cut off from family and friends, not allowed access to books and writing materials…the overall experience is that of dying a little bit every day, and then he talks of the antidote to that: “what saved me was “Lata’s voice.”

That's it! The poet feels no need to explain it any more - even when writing for a predominantly Pakistani audience, just the name is enough. And what a wealth of meaning that name evokes in this sher! qafas meñ mar chale to ham to ‘jaalib’ – the travails of imprisonment were killing me…and Lata’s voice saved me. (It is, of course, metaphorical and not literal, but what a powerful metaphor!)

Jalib has another nazm that is entirely about Lata, which is a fairly standard homage. The nazm, again, is titled just “Lata” – no more elaboration. It starts thus…

tere madhur giitoñ ke sahaare
bite haiñ din rain hamaare

This nazm has a couplet that goes…

terii agar aavaaz na hotii
bujh jaatii jiivan kii jyotii

This would seem like an example of hyperbole that is often found in Urdu poetry, but if one reads it in the context of the maqtaa  quoted above, it seems a little more than that: clearly, Jalib wasn’t simply stringing rhymes when he wrote this bit – it came from the heart.

The evocation of Lata’s voice as a salve, a cure for all ills, recurs in a nazm written by another poet from Pakistan, Parveen Shakir, who was also a civil servant. In the nazm, she writes about sitting in a Chinese restaurant with some of her "nationalist colleagues" (the English phrase is used as is in the Urdu nazm), talking about diverse topics over steaming bowls of soup. The conversation ends up on the subject of "hind-paak siyaasat", with references to the wars of 1965 and 1971. When she ventures some view seen as less than patriotic enough, her colleagues snarl at her, and the Chinese woman at the cash desk looks daggers at her too (the poet surmises that perhaps some unfinished business from 1962 was sticking in her craw!). She says things were set to get really ugly... lekin...

lekin us pal orchestra khaamosh huaa
aur lataa ki ras Tapakaatee shahad-aageeñ aawaaz kuchh aise ubharee

jaise habs-zadaa kamre meñ
dariyaa ke rukhwaalee khiDkee khulne lagee ho

maiñ ne dekhaa
jismoñ aur cheharoñ ke tanaav pe
an-dekhe haathoñ ki ThanDak
pyaar kee shabnam chhiDak rahee thee
maskh-shudaa chehre jaise phir sañwar rahe the

meree 'nationalistic colleagues'
haathoñ ke pyaaloñ meñ apnee ThuDDiyaañ rakkhe
saakit-o-jaamid baiThee theeñ
geet kaa jaadoo bol rahaa thaa

mez ke neeche
restoraan ke maalik kee hañsmukh beewi ke
narm gulaabee paañv bhee
geet kee hamraahee meñ thirak rahe the

mushtarkaa dushman kee beTee
mushtarkaa mehboob kee soorat
ujle resham lehjoñ kee baaheñ phailaaye
hameñ sameTe naach rahee thee!

(A summary for those who don't follow Urdu: just then, the orchestra fell silent, and Lata's honey-dipped voice pervaded the ambience - it was as if a sea-facing window had been flung open in a suffocating room, as if a cool dew was soothing their overheated selves. My colleagues' tensed faces relaxed - they fell into an easy silence as they cupped their chins in their palms and swayed along to the music. "The song was working its magic!" Under her desk, the Chinese woman's feet were tapping away to the beat of the song. "The daughter of a shared enemy held us in her thrall like a shared lover...her radiant, silken notes became arms that opened wide to gather us in an embrace as we danced together".)

The simile Parveen Shakir uses here to describe how Lata’s voice filled the room – an airless room getting a blast of fresh, bracing air – rings startlingly close to how I experience the moment when the first notes of Lata’s voice enter any song – it does indeed feel like a life-giving energy has blossomed forth!

Again, just the one word, Lata... again, her voice used as a metaphor for healing, bridging divides, creating warmth and radiance and love...

Lata Mangeshkar has had every possible honour heaped on her, but to my mind the true measure of her place in the public consciousness is this: that just the mention of her first name evokes such immediate identification from people across the subcontinent. One doesn’t have to say a song is beautiful, uplifting, captivating, moving, melodious, rapturous…one just has to say, “it is Lata”!