WOH RAAT, SWARLATA, LATA AUR MAIN...

I had finished my day's work and was walking alone in the lanes of MHADA in Andheri West, when Mahesh, the right hand man of Lata Mangeshkar came running after me - Ali Peter John

He told me Lataji was recording for a song in a bungalow called for Lata and she would be unhappy if I went away without meeting her.

How could I resist the temptation of meeting the Queen of song when I was so close to her and so I walked in to "Swarlata", the bungalow a fan had built for her to record her songs whenever she was in the suburbs....

Lataji welcomed me with a smile I couldn't buy by selling the whole world and got back to her recording.

She was singing a song for an unknown producer, writer and director called Santosh Kumar Jain, a young distributor and financer from Hyderabad who had met me earlier and told me that he was making a film on a budget of hundred and fifty cores with Brad Pitt, Angela Jolie, Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. He had told me that Parvatamma, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and widow of N.T. Rama Rao was financing his film.

I came to know his class and status when he invited me for dinner where a buffet was served for Rs 350/- and he called his staff to share the dinner with him without any shame....
Lataji continued to record the song under the music director Ram-Laxman and the song Lataji was singing sounded so very similar to the title song of Raj Kapoor's "Ram Teri Ganga Maili"..

Lataji came to me and sat in the chair next to me and I couldn't control myself from telling her that the song sounded like a copy of Raj Kapoor's song and she put her hands on my shoulder and said, "Mujhe kya pata nahin hai kya?

Main toh sirf Ram-Laxman ke liye gaa rahi hun jiski maali halat bahut kharab hai. Sochti hun, mere gaane se inko kuch paise mil jaaye"....

And that night Ram-Laxman went home with a lac of rupees and Lataji dropped me home before driving down to Prabhu Kunj.

I personally know of at least a hundred and twenty kgs of Lataji singing free for individual, institutional, national and international causes.

That is why she is Lata Mangeshkar, the woman with a Golden voice and a more precious heart.