Rachel Dwyer
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?
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
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
If the weight of the world’s expectations of rectitude from her was too much, Lata never let anyone feel it
Lata was much more than the voice of India. She was the voice of humanity, cutting across cultures
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
She was the voice we all lived and loved by