Opinion India’s song

The very heart of India throbs in your voice,” music composer Naushad once wrote to Lata Mangeshkar. Much of India’s population has not lived in a world that did not have her in it. The artist whose voice has been the sound of a nation ever since it gained independence, especially of its women, who expressed themselves in her voice even when they could not find their own, breathed her last in Mumbai on Sunday. With Mangeshkar’s passing, India is struck silent, so essential has she been to how it imagines itself through music and song. If there is succour in this moment, it is to be derived from the formidable and multi-hued oeuvre that she leaves behind. It isn’t often that musical virtuosity falls in place with lyricism, spirituality, integrity, expression — and soars.

Be it the defiant “Pyaar kiya toh darna kya” in Mughal-e-Azam (1960) or the watershed moment of her career, “Aayega aanewala”, so hauntingly picturised on Madhubala, or Waheeda Rehman dancing to “Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai” in Guide, the anthem and freedom song for a whole generation of Indian women, or the voice of the lovelorn courtesan in Pakeezah who sang “Yoon hi koi mil gaya tha/ sare raah chalte chalte”, to one of the most secular and uplifting bhajans from the Indian film industry, “Allah tero naam” (Hum Dono) — Mangeshkar defined the gold standard of playback singing. Female vocalists in the country aspired to sing like her. In recent times, there was “Dil hoom hoom kare” from Kalpana Lajmi’s Rudaali (1993), in which Mangeshkar sang of unbearable pain, and upbeat numbers that lifted newer films such as Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) off the ground. Through a universe of film songs in a number of languages and a large and varied repertoire of non-film pieces, Mangeshkar gave India not just a song for every mood, moment and journey, she also gave its people a feeling of shared cultural pride they had not known in quite the same way before. India had the Taj Mahal and Lata Mangeshkar, these were the wonders, and only one of them could sing. It isn’t often that India and Pakistan, the two peoples and governments, are completely agreed on anything, but there has never been any difference or doubt on Mangeshkar. The tributes that are flowing in from across the borders — from Pakistan and Bangladesh — are emotional and exquisite.

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At a 1974 concert held at Royal Albert Hall in London, the late actor Nargis Dutt was asked to invite Lata Mangeshkar to the stage. “Yun samajhiye, jaise kisi dargah ya mandir mein jaayen, toh wahaan pahunch kar sar ibaadat ke liye khud-bakhud jhuk jaata hai, aur aankhon se besaakhta aansoo behate hain (As if one goes to a shrine or a temple, where the head bows in reverence and tears roll down from the eyes, of their own accord)”. That was Lata Mangeshkar. It is why the stillness that she leaves behind will be broken by her songs that live on.