February 6, 2022. Lata Mangeshkar, India’s singer extraordinaire, who influenced and shaped Indian music and cinema in equal measures, took her final bow from the world stage.  Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, an iconic public ground that has witnessed many defining moments in Indian social, cultural, and political history, would serve as the picturesque backdrop for the queen’s final departure.

Thousands lined up on the streets and in the balconies to catch her final glimpse, as an army truck decked with flowers and the songstress’s smiling photograph, carried her tricolored draped remains from her Pedder Road residence to Shivaji Park. Led by India’s Prime Minister, a host of prominent personalities paid their last respects. TV channels kept beaming the somber scenes live, as the flames of the pyre rose high to envelope and engulf the mortal remains of an immortal artiste. The sun finally set on one of the most epic, epoch-defining musical legends. Heart-piercing strains of ‘Akherchaa haa tulaa danDavat soDoon jaate gaav’ played in the background. It was Lata Mangeshkar’s own composition and rendition in her mother tongue Marathi. Its poignant words meant ‘Accept my final bow! I am leaving this abode!’

Mangeshkar’s demise at a ripe old age of 92, succumbing to the scourge of Covid, after a month-long hospitalization, was not a news that was shocking. Yet, the collective global emotional sigh that it induced, was something rarely witnessed. From literally every corner of the world, heartfelt farewells, condolences, and comments kept flooding radio stations, television channels, newspapers, magazines, and social media. From presidents and prime ministers, politicians and industrialists, artists and sportsmen, journalists and office-goers – people from all walks of life were unanimous in their appreciation of her musical legacy, bemoaning the end of the proverbial golden era. Besides genuine warmth, these tributes often revealed a common emotional thread of an inexplicable, irreparable, intensely personal sense of loss, felt by people who had never ever met her or spoken to her. Even in her death, the mighty Mangeshkar touched a deeper emotional chord in millions of hearts!

This uniquely personal emotional connect with her audience is one of Mangeshkar’s many stand-out musical achievements. For a country as diverse in languages and cultures as India, Indian cinema, especially Hindi cinema, has served as a cultural glue since independence, and the Hindi film songs as a common musical language. In the pre-independence years, film-songs were rendered by the performing actors themselves, many of whom had limited musical ability. Lata Mangeshkar’s entry in Hindi film music coincided with the advent of playback singing, where specialized singers provided the singing voice to the performing screen actors. Initially considered a misfit among the established heavy, forceful female playback voices such as Amirbai, Zohrabai, Raj Kumari and Shamshad Begum, Mangeshkar’s thin, tender, high-pitched voice, with her growing mastery of the craft, soon became the popular prototype ‘Heroine’s Voice’.

The ubiquity and popularity of Hindi film songs, and her premier playback singing role, made Lata (as she would be fondly called!)  the reborn nation’s new melody queen. Short-wave radio stations, and the globally spread Indian diaspora then ensured that her magical voice flew far and wide across the borders. Generations of listeners grew up listening to her songs and watching them being lip-synced by the silver screen’s leading actresses. Birth, childhood, youth, marriage, old age, death – there was always a Lata Mangeshkar song for each life-stage, and for every emotion- be it love, loss or longing. The times and trends kept changing, as did the pretty presences on the screen, but Mangeshkar’s distinctive playback voice remained a constant on the film’s, and life’s soundtrack.

Since the film music is such a collaborative art form where a lyricist writes a song, composer composes the tune, director conceives the imagery, actor gives a visual expression and the co-singer adds another color to the song rendered by any singer, Lata Mangeshkar’s success was not only hers. A long list of talented collaborators- lyricists from D.N. Madhok to Gulzar, composers from Khemchand Prakash to A.R. Rahman, directors from Mehboob Khan to Suraj Barjatya, actresses from Madhubala to Madhuri Dixit, and co-singers from Mohd. Rafi- Kishore Kumar to Suresh Wadkar- Udit Narayan did provide helping hands in building her legend. Still, Mangeshkar’s own special role in that collective equation was abundantly clear.

What separated Lata Mangeshkar from others was her timeless transcendence; the way she could straddle different eras, handle different styles and find top notch success with regularity. From 1940s to post-millennium, in every decade, she kept on delivering not just individual hit songs, but superhit soundtracks full of her songs. Such was her dominance in this area that even all-time blockbuster examples such as Barsaat, Anarkali, Nagin, Mother India, Madhumati, Mughal-E-Azam, Pakezaah, Bobby, Ek Duje Ke Liye, Ram Teri Ganga Maili, Maine Pyar Kiya, Chandni, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dil To Paagal Hai, and Veer Zaara would find it hard to find a place her absolute best soundtracks!

In a commercially dictated art form like film music, Mangeshkar steadfastly stuck to her choice of good lyrics and melodious musicality. Her best remembered songs such as Aayega Aanewalaa, Ajeeb Dastaan Hai Yeh, Allah Tero Naam, Lag Jaa Gale or Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hai are shining examples where classy lyrics, composition and rendition seamlessly gelled to create an immaculate musical and emotional ambience.

Her multi-lingual non-film musical repertoire is also in a class of its own. Albums like ‘Meera’, ‘Chala Vahi Des’,  ‘Lata sings Ghalib’, ‘Koli Geet’, ‘Ganpati Aarti’, ‘Abhang Tukayache’, ‘Dnyaneshwar Maaulee’, ‘Shiv Kalyan Raja’, ‘Ram Shyam Gungaan’ and ‘Sajda’ feature some of her best renderings. The same can be said about her Marathi bhaavgeet and Bengali adhunik gaan records. Her patriotic gem – Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo, an ode to the martyred Indian soldiers, is another timeless non-film classic, which had once moved Prime Minister Nehru to tears.

Lata Mangeshkar’s singing was not just about her command on perfect sur (notes), lay (beat) or taal (rhythm). It went much beyond- straight into the heart and soul of the song, and that of the listener. Her subtle musical expression of the most complex compositions and profound poems; flawless Hindi-Urdu or even regional language pronunciations, and uplifting underplay of the deepest emotions gave her songs a uniquely pure, ethereal, spiritual quality. So striking was that surreal feeling that not just her admirers, but even many of her celebrated co-artistes also would reverentially describe her as ‘Saraswati’ (the Hindu goddess of music and wisdom).

She became a barometer of class, quality and ‘Good Music’ in Indian popular music. Hard-to-please critics, connoisseurs and classical music exponents admired her interpretation of Indian classical ragas in her film-songs and praised her vicarious role in popularizing Indian classical music. Glowing accolades from Indian classical music legends like Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Kumar Gandharva, Pt. Bhimsen Joshi, Pt. Ravi Shankar, and Pt. Jasraj kept adding an extra sheen to her near mythical image.

More importantly, while doing these hitherto unseen, unheard, and unsung things, she never lost her Midas touch at the box office. No other artiste comes close to her in melding art and commerce in music to woo the classes as well as the masses over such a long period. No wonder, the global media lauded her as India’s ‘defining’, ‘most loved’ voice!

While celebrating her musical genius, her role as arguably the first ‘Power Woman’ in independent India is often overlooked. Much before any Indian woman could dream of becoming a prime minister, a president or a CEO in the traditionally patriarchic society, there was Lata Mangeshkar, a single lady, who reigned like a colossus over a notoriously fickle and male-dominated film industry. Supremely confident of her artistic and commercial worth, she was not afraid to stand up to industry’s bigwigs for her rights and got her own way in many a memorable stand-off. She did it, not through money or muscle power, but entirely on the strength of her peerless music.

What Lata Mangeshkar achieved in her life as a musical and sociocultural icon is unsurpassable. Her death just served to amplify that fact and brought forth a stark realization of the vacuum it has left. No honors and accolades would ever do full justice to the giant stature of this tiny lady in white. She was simply one of a kind!

(*This article was originally written for a special tribute magazine dedicated to Lata Mangeshkar by Maharashtra Mandal, France.)