On Thursday, Legendary Indian Singer Lata Mangeshkar turned 88 and she says that she doesn’t feel her age at all. Lata has always said that her age does not damper her spirit and she has always lived with a hope for a better tomorrow.
Lata says many times people come up to her with many questions like Why don’t you sing? Which is your favorite singer? Why don’t you meet your sister Asha Bhosle? She says that she has answered all this questions enough and she does not want to answer it now. She says that we should talk about the fun times rather than talking about old times.
Lata says that now it is the time that she should reveal the truth. She said she does not feel her age at all she still feels young. She said that she have never weighted down by her troubles because she feels that everyone in this big world has a problem in their life. She even recalled at that time when she was young and struggling and that time she was hoping from one studio an another studio with other strugglers like Kishoreda and Mukesh.
She says that those were the really fun time when she had to go hungry for the entire day and there used to be no money in her purse, but there was a hope in her heart and that no matter how much difficult the future looked, but there is always a hope for a better tomorrow. There were rumors that even once she got fainted during the recording. However, she clarifies that many have wrongly presumed that she had fainted while recording a song with Salida she said that it was nothing like that she did not faint. Lata says that Salida’s songs are very complex, but those were composed by her brother Hridaynath Mangeshkar, she feels that because of her father’s blessings she has always put up to any challenge in the recording studio.
That incident where she got fainted that actually never happened with Salida and that incident happened with Naushad. They were recording a song in a studio and that time it was long hot summer afternoon and in summers Mumbai atmosphere is very bad and at that time there was no air conditioning in the recording studios and during the final recording of the song even the ceilings fans were switched off so because of the suffocation she got fainted.
While remembering this she was laughing out loud and said that she had a really fun time. She still remembers that once she was recording a duet along with the singer Uma Devi who later become the comedienne Tun Tun, she was a well-fed singer at that time and she later becomes an actress. So there were only two of them and they are singing into the same mike because at that time duet was recorded on one mike. Lata was a frail reed like pint sizes girl in her physical appearance and she was given a stool to stand on as she was having a difficulty to reach the mike. So she sang her lines and then Uma Devi has to sing so as soon as she moved forward towards the mike she nudged my shoulder and she fell right on the ground and everyone in the studio started to laugh loudly.
Lata enjoys recording with Kishoreda the most because recording with him was like one full session of fun and games. He makes everyone laughs in the studio and Lata could barely sing so she has to stop him by saying that first, we should sing then we can do masti. It was really a problem for us when we used to sing a sad duet because instead of tears of grief her eyes were full of tearful with laughter.
There were many grief-stricken songs which she sang and she said that while recording such songs everyone in the studio was started to cry when she sang Madan Mohan’s ‘Heer’ in the movie ‘Heer Ranjha’ and Sachin Dev Burman’s song ‘Tum Mujhse Door Chale Jana Na’ in the movie ‘Ishq Par Zor Nahin’. She said that everyone in the studio except her was crying. She has never been a weeper while recording the most somber songs she has always preferred laughter to tears. She has been always blessed by God because she has never been given any reason for tears. She cried the most when she lost her mother and her father.
When asked that what are her Birthday plans. She says she just want to thank the listeners for bearing her for 70 years and she did not know that how times flew by. If she would have given a chance then she would like to live her life again, even that when she fell from the stool while recording her duet along with Uma Devi.