Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, who directed the 2006 hit Rang De Basanti, found himself to be in a lucky position when Lata Mangeshkar came in to sing the now famous 'Luka Chuppi' with AR Rahman for the film. Mehra, in an interview with O2 India, recalled that the late singer rehearsed the song for three days in Chennai before she recorded it in Rahman's studio. Written by Prasoon Joshi, the song appears in the film when R Madhavan's character passes away and Waheeda Rehman, who plays his mother, is trying to process the tragic news. "It's a mother who has lost her son and is looking for her son, and the son is singing back to her," Mehra said. Mehra recalled that it was Lata's "greatness" that she called him up and asked if she could rehearse the song and record it in Chennai. When he said that AR Rahman will come to Mumbai to record it, "She said 'no, it will be better to record in his space'. That's how humble she was." The veteran singer reached Chennai three days before the recording and as soon as she landed in Chennai, she asked to be taken to the studio instead of taking some rest at the hotel. "We went to the studio and AR received her and straight away, she heard the composition. And she said, 'Can I rehearse it? Can you give it to me on a cassette?' She belonged to a generation where you heard it on a cassette player, a walkman," Mehra recalled. After rehearsing the song for three days, she came to the studio on the fourth day fully prepared. "We had arranged a mic for her, some flowers, a bottle of hot water and a glass. She came and said 'Why is the mic so low? Bring it up'. We said 'you can sit and record'. She said 'no, I will stand and sing. And then she started singing and jamming with AR. She refused to sit down on the chair for the next 8-10 hours. She was standing till the song was over," he remembered. Mehra said that while recording digitally, if a particular portion is to be done again, they can do it in a non-linear fashion but Lata Mangeshkar was old school in that approach. "She insisted she would sing the whole paragraph again. Not just that one word or one line, she would sing all the four lines, or six lines again," he shared. 'Luka Chuppi' is still known as one of the most popular songs of Lata Mangeshkar.
