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Dheet langar natkhat harjai ( Radha Krishna, Lata)

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Lota Didi and Burman Dada

"Lata was always my first serve "

- Burmanda on Lata

                      In the following months we will extract select episodes from Raju Bharatan's biography on Lata Mangeshkar. Bharatan's biography presents a close-up of Burmanda's working style and personality and helps us get a closer look at the unique person behind this great composer. 

The episode this month deals with the (in)famous Lata-SDB split and their subsequent patch up a couple of years later with Bandini ...

Source : Lata Mangeshkar - A biography by Raju Bharatan, chapter East Bengal vs West Bengal

"Lata was always my first serve ..... Asha became my second serve!" - Burmanda uses tennis-speak. 

Dada Burman was now in coma, had been for month on end. He was recording Kishore Kumar for that moody number to go on Amitabh Bachchan in Mili, Badi sooni sooni hai zindagi yeh zindagi , when he had that stroke from which he never recovered to take up the baton again. Into a coma went Dada Burman for nearly a year, a coma from which he was mildly, very mildly roused just once, according to son Rahul Dev Burman, now sadly himself no more. East Bengal had beaten Mohan Bagan by a record margin. “The only time I could elicit a response from Dada while he was in that coma,” RD Burman told me, “was when I shouted into his ear that East Bengal had knocked the daylights out of Mohan Bagan.” .

For six years Lata had not sung for SD Burman. And those six years were the years in which Asha Bhosle had resonant reason to believe that she evolved as the total singer under Dada Burman, taking up from where she had left off in the recording custody of OP Nayyer. But Dada Burman was at all times a ruthless professional and, the moment he made up with Lata, he relegated Asha to second status, without a second thought. “Lata was always my first serve.” Dada explained to me, paan-tinged tongue-in-cheek. “Asha became my second serve, once I again got my first serve Lata working!”

“For a certain song,”, Lata is quoted as saying, “ I was asked by Dada Burman to sing in an extra-soft voice. I obeyed. The song as okayed. Later Dada thought that the choice of an extra-soft voice was not a happy one. So I got another message for a re-recording. I requested for a few days’s time, as I was busy with other recordings. The machinations of certain ‘kind’ souls led to a misunderstanding and Dada called in another singer to re-record the song,” ends Lata

That “another singer”, Lataji was none other than Asha Bhosle! And the song, as revealed to me by that certain “kind soul”, Jaidev, was Pag thumak chalat balkhaaye haay saiyan kaise dharun dheer (set to go on Vyjayanthimala in Sitaron se aagey : 1958). That Asha, in this saiyan kaise dharun dheer number, ultimately failed to come up with what Dada Burman wanted from you Lataji, is a pointer to how even something unsatisfactorily rendered by you, as Dada Burman saw it, was good enough finally to remain in Sitron se Aagey as it was in your voice. That is a tribute to the gap then between your vocals and those of others.

How ironic that this very saiyan kaise dharun dheer tune later came to be presented so evocatively as Saiyan be-imaan in your own voice, Lataji, on Waheeda Rehman in Guide ! If you at all failed Dada Burman, Lataji, in saiyan kaise dharun dheer you made up amply in Saiyan beimaan .

 I even remember trying to pin down Dada Burman on this saiyan kaise dharun dheer-saiyyan beimaan point. Didn’t you Dada,” I asked this composer at his “Jet” home in West Bandra, “repeat saiyan kaise dharun dheer from Sitaron se aagey as Saiyan beimaan in Guide?” But Dada Burman was a past-master in the art of diplomatic evasion. He knew exactly when to use his years to pretend that his ears had failed him! Dada studiedly walked away a little from where I was seated, as though he heard nothing. For he well knew that my next question, amidst all those gathered there that evening, would be why he had broken with Lata Mangeshkar, whose vocal finesse he always tested on the phone, on that very phone as in the case of saiyan kaise dharun dheer .

Break with Lata Dada Burman certainly did and “the machinations of certain ‘kind’ souls” Lata refers to is a pointed reference to Dada’s phenomenally talented assistant Jaidev. Jaidev must have narrated to me how it all happened atleast three times. Here is the sequence of events as related by Jaidev. Jaidev was on the phone at Dada’s (then) sion home when the request was made, through him by Dada, for a re-recording of Saiyan kaise dharun dheer by Lata. Jaidev told me he reported to Dada, even while holding onto the receiver, what exactly Lata had said. Lata, Jaidev said, had told him there was no way she could then fit in Dada Burman for a re-recording because she was on the verge of proceeding abroad. “In that case,” Jaidev said Dada told him, “tell Lota she must give us first preference when she returns from abroad.” Jaidev said he duly communicated those Dada tidings to Lata who, according to him, would make no such first-priority re-recording commitment over the phone. “In that case,” Jaidev said Dada finally told him in a fit of pique, “tell Lota that we don’t want her at all if she can’t give us first preference on her return!”

Maybe Jaidev, by displaying a little more tact, could have softened the tone of that final utterance by Dada. But the gut point is: Why did Dada leave such a serious matter to his assistant Jaidev? The simplest way for Dada Burman, who used to pick up the phone at random to merely test Lata’s voice, would have been to goto the phone himself. Obviously the vibes between Lata and Dada were already none to good, looking to how he let his assistant, no matter how gifted Jaidev was, do the speaking on his behalf on such a vital matter.

“I was upset,” Lata proceeds to tell her side of the story. “However, whenever we ran into each other(after that), the conversation followed the same course. “Namaskar, Dada”, I would say. To which Dada would say: “How are you Lota?” To which I would say: “I am all right Dada,” and Dada would move on. Then in Guide or Bandini, I cannot recall, I received a message that Dada wanted me. I was clearly reluctant. Then Dada telephoned himself: Lota, I have some work, do come.”

“I went planning to have a big fight,” goes on Lata. “When I reached his house, he took me to another room and suddenly started speaking in an angry tone asking: “Why are you angry with me?” I was infact the aggrieved party and here was Dada losing his temper on me. On my saying so, he brushed aside the whole episode by saying: “All right now you forget all that and sing one of my songs. What date will you give me?” After that who had the heart to argue with Dada?” asks Lata. *(See Notes)

Fair enough, Lataji, the film for which Dada Burman asked you for a recording date was , not Guide, but Bandini. The dulcet date you gave was for that Bandini beauty going on the dusky Nutun: Jogi jab se tu aaya mere dwaare. **(See Notes) And Dada Burman bought you back into his recording studio for this super Bandini number, Lataji, even while asking Asha side by side to put her heart and soul into the rendition, for the same Bandini, of Abke baras bhej bhaiya ko babul !

Talk of sisters in friendly competition --- Aie mere watan ke logon/zara aankh mein bhar lo paani! Let us be grateful that Dada Burman atleast let Asha sing Abke baras bhej even while getting his own ‘Lota’ back from Jogi jab se tu aaya mere dwaare. Having said that who will deny that, once Dada began re-tapping the gold in Lata’s throat, Asha started to sound eversilver at best! Am I being unfair to Asha? Okay in the same Bandini, compare not only Lata’s Jogi jab se tu aaya mere dwaare with Asha’s Abke baras bhej, also contrast Lata’s Mora gora ang laile with Asha’s O panchhi pyaare sanjh sakaare. Yes, Lata is Lata under SD Burman, Asha is Asha only under OP Nayyer. No doubt Dada Burman could out-Nayyer Nayyer but only with the vocal aid of OP’s own Asha, as in a Jewel Thief breathtaker like Raat akeli hai bujh gaye diye .

With good reason did Dada Burman on Asha’s own silver jubilee, praise her fantastic breath control in Raat akeli hai . Yet in the same Jewel Thief, on Vyjayanthimala, Dada needed Lata alone for Rula ke gaya sapna mera. Asha just would not do here, not any more. For all her display of distinctive talent under Dada Burman’s baton during those six years when Lata was away from the SD scene, Dada came to assert once he knew her had his pet singer back: ”With Lota I’m safe”!

To be continued..

Notes

* - Rahul Dev Burman narrates a slightly different version of the set of incidents that led upto the SDB-Lata patch-up. You can hear his narration in the clip below.  Raju Bharatan too alludes this account somewhat in passing later in the book  in the following words.... " he even adopted the ruse of getting composer-son Rahul Dev Burman to ring her up on the pretext that the boy was doing his first film in ‘Chote Nawab’ and could do with Lata’s vocal blessings"

** - According to other sources like RD Burman and Gulzar it was Mora gora ang laile and not Jogi jab se tu aaya mere dwaare from Bandini  that marked the end of the Lata-SDB feud.

RD Burman speaks of the Lata-SDB patch up    (Cick to play or Right click on your mouse and click 'Save Target As..' to save)

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Shri Satish Kalra for providing us with the material for this feature and we thank him for the same.