I may have reached eighty. But I feel eighteen. Lata Mangeshkar said on her eightieth birthday. This is what it takes to be a Lata Mangeshkar who can sing Dil deewana/Bin sajnake mane na at the age of sixty, in the lips of coy teenager newcomer, Bhagyashree. To be a success in life preludes a zest for life and a passing jest for age. Lata Mangeshkar is a living example of it as she turns ninety one.
India and Lata Mangeshkar become synonymous. Decade before and decades after Independence, she is hovering over musical heavens like a fixed star. Other stars measure themselves in relation to distant solitariness of that radiant star.
She breathes into her songs the innocence of love, the pathos of separation, the purity of surrender to the Almighty and the dedication of a martyr. She did it with a silken melodic subtlety that is what people believe an act of God. Lata Mangeshkar herself thinks so.
Still she is doing her riyaz. Fingering down strings of tanpura, the non-agenarian summons notes to respond to her call. A benevolent queen must address the problems of her subjects every morning without fail at her durbar!
Music is sadhna. Life, too, is. There may be some distractions here and there but the committed traveller must move on with a fixed goal in sight where age can edge out odds.
The pilgrim in Lata is still trudging along with a passionate dedication, hoping, perhaps, to place one day, a wreath of devotion at the altar of Melody.