MUMBAI: In her book ‘Lata Mangeshkar: In Her Own Voice’, documentary maker and author Nasreen Munni Kabeer writes that the singing icon recalled with great amusement the first time she met Kishore Kumar on her way to the Bombay Talkies studio.
Mangeshkar said she was working with Khemchand Prakash on 1949’s ‘Ziddi’ when she crossed paths with Kishore Kumar. Mangeshkar had taken the local train to Malad, a suburb in Mumbai, where Bombay Talkies was situated. Kishore Kumar’s elder brother and actor Ashok Kumar was the owner of Bombay Talkies.
Kishore Kumar was also in the same compartment, seated close to Mangeshkar and also got down at the Malad station and was virtually walking behind her till she reached the studio. “I would take the train to Malad and one day Kishore da got on at the next stop. I thought he looked very familiar and wondered who he was. We both got off at Malad. Bombay Talkies studio was a long way from the station and that day I decided to take a taanga. And Kishore da hired one too,” Mangeshkar told Kabeer for the book.
Mangeshkar thought Kishore Kumar was stalking her and complained to music composer Khemchand Prakash, the musician credited with discovering the singer, on reaching her destination. “We rode along and finally we both entered the studio. I thought to myself, ‘something strange is going on here. This fellow is following me’,” she recalled.
“I asked Khemchand ji: ‘Uncle, who is this boy? He’s following me’,” Prakash cleared her confusion. “He laughed and said: ‘He’s Kishore. Ashok Kumar’s brother.’ That day we recorded our first duet ‘Ye Kaun Aya Re Karke Sola Singar’.”
Tryst with Urdu
In 1947 when Lata Mangeshkar met Dilip Kumar for the first time, he expressed doubts over her pronunciation, prompting her to get Urdu lessons from a maulana. “The remark that Yousuf Bhai made when he found out that I am a Maharashtrian is something that I cherish because it made me seek the perfection I then lacked in my Hindi and Urdu diction. He said very truthfully that singers who were not conversant with the Urdu invariably tripped in the pronunciation of words derived from the language,” she had said.