Cover Stories

What the Headscarf Reveals

S Prasannarajan

Reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow in the time of hijab politics

The Heart of the Song

Lata sang for all of us. Her voice was instantly recognisable. Whoever the star, she brought us into the heroine’s inner life

She showed me a gramophone record made of gold. All the songs she sang in the UK were on it. Could I give her a letter for the Bombay Customs Commissioner, asking him not to charge any duty as the record had been presented to her?

Her Own Superstar

MJ Akbar

Listen to ‘Aye Mere Watan ke Logon’ in the silence of solitude and you will break down as everyone else has done at some point or the other

An Art of Meditation

AR Rahman

She was simply magical behind the mike, and she wasn’t afraid to make mistakes or try something new. Her understanding of music was beyond ragas and talas, it was deeper than that

Sense and Sensibility

Kaveree Bamzai

If the weight of the world’s expectations of rectitude from her was too much, Lata never let anyone feel it

The Echo of God

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

Lata was much more than the voice of India. She was the voice of humanity, cutting across cultures

Singing the Nation

Vinay Lal

We can begin to have a better conception of the extraordinary place of Lata in the life of the nation when we imagine how she not only embodied the nation but sang the nation