Mumbai: Singer Lata Mangeshkar celebrates her birthday 28 September and her life is full of achievements.
However the journey towards success was never easy. In this article we will tell you about the troubles which she has gone through to become the queen of music.
Lata Mangeshkar was born in 1929, the eldest daughter of Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar, a Marathi musician and his Gujarati wife Shevanti.
Lata was named ‘Hema’ at her birth. Her parents later renamed her Lata after a female character, Latika, in one of her father’s plays, ‘BhaawBandhan’.
Deenanath started teaching music to Lata since she was five years old. Her sisters Asha, Usha and Meena also learned music. For the first time, Lata acted in a play at the age of five but her inclination was always towards music.
At the age of 14, Lata used to play the role of a sister of the main lead, but also continued her musical education. Lata had gone to school for just one day. The reason for this is that when she took her younger sister Asha to school on the first day, the teacher expelled Asha from the school citing that she too would have to pay school fees.
Later she decided that she will never go to school. However, she was decorated with standard degrees at six universities, including New York University. She is the first woman in the film industry to be garnered with the Bharat Ratna and Dadasaheb Phalke Award.
In 1974, she set the ‘Guinness World Record’ of highest number of songs in the world with 30,000 songs in 20 languages to her name.
Lata had sung hundreds of songs with Mohammed Rafi, but there was a time when she stopped talking to Rafi. The two refused to sing together. However, after four years, with the effort of actress Nargis, both of them sang the song Dil Pukare in a program.
In 1962, an attempt was made to kill Lata by giving slow poison. Padma Sachdev, who is very close to Lata, has mentioned this in his book Aisa Kahan Se Lauen. However, no one has been able to find out who tried to kill her. Lata was very disappointed when Priyamvada, wife of singer and music composer late Bhupen Hazarika claimed that Bhupen had a love affair with Lata.
PNN/Agencies
