Lata Mangeshkar’s foster daughter mourns in Jaipur

My last conversation with Lata aunty was on the day she was being hospitalised, remembers Sangeeta Gupta, daughter of late musician Madan Mohan. After Madan Mohan passed away in 1975, she recalls, Lata Mangeshkar treated her like her own daughter.

“When I got married in 1982, she invited the guests to the wedding and the invitation card went in her name. When my daughters got married, she was luckily still with us and showered them with her affection,” she says.

Her father Madan Mohan Kohli was born in Baghdad, she reveals, where her grandfather Chunnilal Kohli was a police officer. In the 1940s he returned first to Lahore but soon thereafter shifted to Bombay. Madan Mohan was a singer and joined All India Radio, first in Delhi and then in Bombay.

Sangeeta, who resides in Jaipur after her marriage, recalls that Lata Mangeshkar and Madan Mohan first sang together in 1948. They also recorded a few songs, which, however, were not used in any subsequent film. But as Madan Mohan grew into a music director, the bond between the two grew stronger.

“Papa one day had invited Lata aunty home. It was Rakhi that day and Papa asked her to tie a Rakhi and promise that she would sing one or two songs in each of his films,” she says emotionally. She did and when Madan Mohan passed away in 1975, followed by his wife Sheela, it was the singing sensation who anchored the two sons and the daughter that he left behind.

“I called her aunty but she was more like a mother to me,” she says, adding that this is the first time she is talking about her relationship.

While the singing legend had stopped going out, she loved speaking on phone and kept in touch with the family. She also loved showering gifts, recalls Sangeeta.

She confirms the much speculated relationship between Lata Mangeshkar and cricketer and former BCCI President Raj Singh Dungarpur. They both decided to remain unmarried after his father, a former Speaker of the Vidhan Sabha in Rajasthan and MP, opposed their marriage. But they always stood by each other. And because of her, Sangeeta’s own family were attached to him as well. “He too was very kind and affectionate to us and would meet us every time he visited Jaipur,” she recalls.

I feel bereaved of my parents once again, she signs off.

(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday)