I suppose all of us have to pay the price for who we are, and who we want to be. Oh, no, I am NOT talking of the fees and all, even when they ARE pricey these days. Rather I am referring to the values we stand for-n-by, and the sacrifices we are happy to, willing to make to thus hold our head and our backbone straight.
Well, agreed that most all people may appear as if they do not care for all such airy, high funda stuff. I do, however, feel that it is not so. Each one of us has this soft point that we would guard for our own self, and come what may. It could take any number of forms, family, genuine love, profession, passion, whatever, something not to be compromised, come what may, and whatever might be the price one has to pay.
Yet there is another side to this coin, too. And that is especially true of those successful in the glitzy way. They pay the price of stardom as they are the sitting duck for attacks. There would be constant and public tarnishing of their image, for example, though such smear campaigns can be the lot of us, mere mortals, just like those greats doused with the star dust.
What is all this leading to? Is that your question? Well, it is February 6, the death anniversary of Lataji. Two years are much too much long, I suppose, in the world of constantly gained and instantly lost celebrity status today. No wonder, there was not all that jazz today!
Yet I thought to myself what all price she must have paid to be Lata Mangeshkar. Tough life! A slip of a girl fighting it out in a patriarchal cine world dominated by the Urdu jaban, and the slightly heavy raspy voices of celebrated women singers then. She was a 'ghati' with a silken voice. Everything was pitted against her. Yet she made it.
And did she pay the price for it! Why, anybody and everybody could accuse her of playing politics, and finishing off competitors. Everybody would choose to misunderstand her, including, at times, Asha Bhosale, I suppose. Why, she was poisoned. When she stood up for the royalty rights which continue to help the third-ratest of the singers then and now, she was alienated. She would be mimic-ed, made fun of. Did she pay the price for being THE Lata!
Well, in the one-on-one which I was to hold when she came to Hyderabad after some twenty-five years, given her principled stance against conscious ill-treatment, I was to ask her these questions, and the interview would have been a song. Every which way!
Well, the awful audio-visual media interviewer (AV wala Abdul aisa hi ch tha!) disposed this proposal! For a five minute interview which he wanted to shoot, he made her stand up, sit down, adjust to lights so many times that she, a senior citizen in her mid-seventies, got real irritated, and cancelled all the subsequent interviews!
Everybody's loss, I would say! My Desk Editor understood my irritation. She wanted me to cover the great concert after twenty-five long years, and cajoled me in to it, and actually dropped me to my room after the show. Well, my review did get sent to Lataji's Prabhu Kunj.
I do, however, regret the missed chance of talking to her of the price she paid to be 'the' Lata! Well, the price of being a rookie freelancer with an English newspaper without the press-y glamour!
Pratima@Much later, I read somewhere that she had said she would not like to be born again, and surely not as Lata Mangeshkar. The subtle sad note of that remark rang in once again my irritation for losing a possible sensitive chat with her! Oh, yes, last week itself, I saw a reel where she talked of often not getting paid, and thus losing a lot. The price indeed of being 'the' Lata!
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