They consider P Susheela one of the greatest singers in India. My father laughed and said, 'I know you are the greatest. Lata ji said since my father had asked them if they could sing as well as P Susheela, they sang the song in Tamil. When he reached her house, both sisters started singing Anthan Ennathan. Lata ji kept quiet.Īfter six months when he went to Mumbai, Lata ji asked him to come home as she had something important to say. My father asked if they could sing like that. Once the radio was playing P Susheela's song, Athan Ennathan. I'll tell you another incident that my father told us. When my father woke up, she told him, 'Anna, I am called the Nightingale of India, how can you, my brother, do this? Don't ever eat them.' My father never ate bird meat after that. My mother and grandmother watched quietly. She opened the cage and let them fly away. When she asked about the birds, somebody told her that they had been brought for her to eat. When Lata ji got up in the morning, she heard the cuckoos singing.
Somebody had sent some cuckoos to my father, as they are supposed to be a delicacy.
I have heard a story that happened in 1960-1961. They used to come and stay with us often. They would shop together and spend a lot of time together.Īs told to Shobha Warrier Image: Sivaji and Kamala Ganesan with Lata Mangeshkar at the play, Thangapadakkam Yet, we would see Lata ji and Asha ji talking to her for hours - my mother in Tamil and they in Hindi. I have seen them enjoying each other's company, laughing and talking. The funny thing about my father and the Mangeshkar sisters was that they spoke to him in Hindi and Marathi and he would speak in his broken Hindi. In the evenings, after the shooting, my parents would go to Peddar Road ( in south Mumbai) to spend time with them. I now share a very close relationship with them. Over the years, Lata ji started speaking to me more than she spoke to my parents. My first memory of Asha ji was that of a fun loving person. They attended my sister's wedding in 1968, but I was away then in a boarding school in Bangalore.I got to know them well only in the 1970s when I returned to Chennai after my schooling. I must have met them when I was six or seven years old, but I remember meeting them in the late 1960s when I was about 13. My father may be no more, but I have continued the relationship. They used to call my parents Anna and Anni. They came home, hugged him, tied rakhis and started crying.įrom the first meeting itself, everything clicked and the friendship that started almost 50 years ago continues till today. The next day, they contacted my father through HMV ( the music label) and flew to Chennai to meet him. All of them felt he ( Sivaji Ganesan) reminded them of their father Dinanath Mangeshkar. It was the first Tamil film that they had seen.ĭuring the interval, they realised all of them were crying even though no one understood a word of Tamil. So they watched Paava Mannippu at the Aurora theatre ( in King's Circle, north-central Mumbai).
When she returned to Mumbai, she told her family that they had to see a Tamil actor called Sivaji Ganesan. When Asha ji was in Chennai, she happened to watch the Tamil film, Paava Mannippu. Both Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle had sung for the films, but had never met my father, Sivaji Ganesan. In the 1950s, Sivaji Productions produced only Hindi movies.
Not many know that the legendary actor Sivaji Ganesan was a rakhi brother to both Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle, and their families have long shared a close relationship.Īs we celebrate Lata ji's 80th birthday on September 28, Ram Kumar, Ganesan's elder son, remembers the decades of long friendship with the Mangeshkar family:
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