Said Lataji, “He has been my elder brother and I, his younger sister for decades now. I met him last a few years ago when I went to visit him. I thought he wouldn’t recognize me. But he did and here is what I did to jog his memory. I sat down next to him and said the opening words of our song, ‘Lagi nahi chhute rama’. He looked back at me and smiled and said the rest of the first line, ‘Chahe jiya jaye.’ There is a special place in his living room where Sairaji makes him sit when meeting guests. But he insisted on sitting next to me. He also insisted that I feed him with my hands. I fed him some paneer. Then it was time for me to go. He wanted to see me off. But Sairaji insisted she would do it. I wasn’t able to visit him after that, much as I wanted to.”What about the comment that Dilip Saab made about the smell of daal-chawal in Lataji’s Marathi accent? It was because of his prompting that Lataji who was fluent in Hindi and Marathi and decided at a very young age to educate herself in the Urdu language.The year was 1947 and both Lataji and Dilip Saab—she a struggling singer and he an aspiring actor—used to travel by local trains. One day Lataji was introduced to Dilip Saab on a train by composer Anil Biswas.After the initial pleasantries when Yusuf Saab came to know Lataji was a singer he commented casually on how being a Maharashtrian she would have a tough time mastering the Urdu language.Rather than hold a grudge for Dilip Saab’s critical remark, Lataji was actually thankful to him. “If I am challenged I have to prove the other person wrong. I took it up as a challenge to improve my Urdu. I employed a maulana to teach me the nuances of the language. And I made sure my diction and my pronunction were adequate.”Lataji’s Urdu pronunciation in her Ghazals was considered flawless.Said the Nightingale. “Thank you for saying that. For that, I have my Yusuf Bhaiyya to thank. From that meeting on the train in 1947, he has remained my brother. In recent years we don’t meet that often. But we care deeply for one another. Both Yusuf Saab and Sairaji are very dear to me.”
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