No one knew it then, but one song sung by a teenager in pigtails changed India’s music industry. The song, Aayega aanewala, was from Kamal Amrohi’s supernatural smash hit Mahal, which released in October 1949. The film starred Ashok Kumar and Madhubala, but the real star was behind the screen: a young singer named Lata Mangeshkar (September 28, 1929 to February 6, 2022).
Music director Khemchand Prakash knew Lata’s potential — he’d already given her memorable songs in Ziddi (1948) — including the delightful solo, Chanda re, ja re ja re, and Yeh kaun aaya re, her first duet with debutant Abhas Kumar Ganguly, who’d go down in history as Kishore Kumar.
But Prakash’s haunting Aayega aanewala, with lyrics by Nakshab Jaaravchi, took the country by storm. When the song played on All India Radio, everyone wanted to know who the singer was. Back then, playback singers weren’t household names, and the gramophone record credited the song to ‘Kamini’, Madhubala’s character in Mahal. Massive public curiosity forced AIR to contact the record company and announce the singer’s name.
Playback singing was never the same again. What was so special about Aayega aanewala? Never before had a song and its picturisation become such an impactful cinematic moment. The hero, Shankar (Ashok Kumar), enters a crumbling mansion at night to escape a storm, only to encounter the portrait of a man who’s his spitting image except for the beard. The eerie shadows add to his fears; the clock strikes two. Suddenly, a voice sings from a distance: “Khamosh hai zamana, chupchap hain sitare....” That’s the memorable prelude to Aayega aanewala, where the word ‘aayega’, repeated thrice, is the addictive hook. Lata’s voice became the soul of the film.
For the otherworldly atmospherics, credit goes to the ingenuity of the singer and composer at a time when sound effects were unheard of. Lata, in several interviews, recalled how she had to sing the prelude while walking towards the mic to make the song sound as though it were coming from a great distance. If you listen to the prelude, you’ll know how tough its long, slow notes are, with abrupt halts, to create the mounting suspense. Lata sang each note perfectly, walking.
History was created that day. Decades later, in a televised interview with journalist Pritish Nandy, Lata, then a legend, recalled Aayega aanewala with sparkling eyes, calling it her favourite. (Main kaa karun Ram mujhe buddha mil gaya from Raj Kapoor’s Sangam, 1964, was her least favourite, she said.)
India’s nightingale and Bharat Ratna had a rough start. Her father Deenanath Mangeshkar, a trained Hindustani classical singer, ran a travelling Marathi theatre company. He’d produced a couple of films too, which flopped. He died a penniless man on April 24, 1942, in Pune. Lata, the eldest of his five children, became the family’s breadwinner when she was not quite 13. She started acting in Marathi films, getting minor roles where she got to sing as well. She hated putting on make-up and being in front of the camera, but had no choice. There were just too many mouths to feed.
Initially, there weren’t too many takers for Lata’s singing in an industry ruled by the robust voices of Noor Jehan, Shamshad Begum, Rajkumari and others. Ghulam Haider, one of the first composers to believe in Lata’s talent, once took her to film producer Shashadhar Mukherjee, who famously rejected her, calling her voice “too thin”. Half a century later, Lata would sing Mere khwabon mein jo aaye for Shashadhar’s granddaughter Kajol in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995).
After Aayega aanewala, Lata never looked back. Her only regret? Prakash never got to enjoy the stupendous success of his music; he fell ill and died within months. Life offers no retakes.