Unplugged with Lata

Melody queen Lata Mangeshkar, 81, is enjoying her well-deserved leisure time after more than 60 years of singing.

She has stopped her riyaz and spends time catching up on her favourite TV programmes, including Amitabh Bachchan’s Kaun Banega Crorepati and popular crime series CID. Melody queen Lata Mangeshkar, 81, is enjoying her well-deserved leisure time after more than 60 years of singing.

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The Nightingale also prefers to be extremely choosy about film songs she wants to sing.

“Everyone says that I should sing more often because people want to hear my voice. But the fact is that even I should like the songs to be able to sing them,” said Lata, the winner of Bharat Ratna award, India’s highest civilian honour. Lata, who has recorded songs for over 1,000 Bollywood movies and sung in more than 36 regional Indian languages, has just launched a five-CD album of her old songs. So was music better in the olden times? “It’s better for me not to comment on that. Audiences are the best judge and they know,” she answered.

Lata says she now sings very rarely. The last she was heard this year was in “Dunno Y...Na Jaane Kyun”. Among the existing filmmakers she admires Sanjay Leela Bhansali. “He (Sanjay) is very nice. I have heard some songs of his films and with that I understood that he knows what is good music,” she said.