Banglapress Desk: Singing legend Lata Mangeshkar has passed away after being hospitalized for weeks.The 92-year-old breathed her last on Sunday at Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital, reports Times of India. She was put on the ventilator on Saturday after her health deteriorated.
Mangeshkar was admitted to the hospital on January 8 following a diagnosis of pneumonia and Covid-19. She was on the ventilator for weeks but then on January 28, she was taken off the ventilator as she showed signs of improvement.
Mangeshkar is a recipient of the Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Dadasaheb Phalke awards.
Her career began in the 1940s and endured all the way into the present. She worked with nearly every director of repute. She was the singing voice of every major Hindi film heroine, from Madhubala to Preity Zinta.
Mangeshkar sang mostly in Hindi but also in other languages, including her native Marathi and Bangla. She even performed in Bahasa Indonesia in the 1970s and 1980s. Scholars are still debating the exact number of songs she has sung – at least 25,000, according to one account.
Mangeshkar was born on September 28, 1929, in Indore. Her father, Deenananth Mangeshkar, was a stage actor, Hindustani classical singer and composer for musical plays in the Marathi.
She was the eldest of five children. All her siblings – Meena, Asha, Usha and Hridaynath – have been involved with music either as singers of composers.
Mangeshkar first performed on the stage in Sholapur at the age of nine. The classically trained singer frequently sang in plays with her father, and also performed with him on the radio when she was 11.
The family fell on bad times in the 1940s and Deenanath Mangeshkar died in 1942.
Mangeshkar, who was 13 at the time, began acting in Marathi films to support the family. She sang a few lines for a song one of the four productions in which she appeared. She also starred in Hindi movies, but preferred to go behind the microphone.
Apart from emerging as one of the major star singers in Hindi cinema along with her sister, Asha Bhosle, Mangeshkar fought hard to protect her professional status. She was known to drive a hard bargain over songs credits and assignments, in the process rubbing her rivals, composers and male collaborators the wrong way. She also spoke strongly out against remixes, deriding them for their lack of imagination.
BP/SM
