When Lata Mangeshkar 'hit' Asha Bhosle over plan to wed, she left home

The rift between Asha Bhosle and the rest of the Mangeshkar clan led by elder sister Lata happened over her first marriage at 14 to Ganpat Bhosle, who was in his early 30s. In fact, so upset was Lata then that, decades later, she admitted to having "hit" Asha on learning of her marriage plans. "I hit her, and she got angry and walked out of the house," Lata recounted in the late 1990s.

According to Lata, the entire family, including their mother 'Mai', was upset over Asha's decision. It was the 1950s. Their father, Deenanath, had already passed on, and Lata was the breadwinner and, in a way, a quasi-parent to four younger siblings.

After she married, Asha, estranged from her family, shifted to Borivli. "Mai and everyone else at home were, in any case, unhappy... We were not in touch for so many years," Lata had said in her Marathi book 'Fuley Vechita'.

According to Lata, that period was one of serious trouble for Asha. Not only did the family one day suddenly find out that she had taken to playback singing (though Lata and Asha had in their childhood sung a song together in 1943 for Marathi film 'Mazha Bal'), but the two sisters began running into each other in recording studios, and awkwardness ensued. "She would not speak to me or to any of us (Mangeshkars) because her husband disapproved of it," Lata had reminisced.

Lata and Asha even sang some duets in that era, "but because Bhosle would be waiting outside, she would be too scared to talk to me", Lata said. One day, when Bhosle was not around, Lata told Asha, "Let's go and have a coffee together." That's when she realised Asha didn't have a "single anna" in her purse. "I was shocked. It meant she had no financial freedom," the elder sister wrote.

The family was further distressed to find out "from others" that Asha was "being made [by her husband] to sing three-four songs a day and go from studio to studio from Borivli to meet music directors and then, when she returned home exhausted, forced to cook" all kinds of food. "Truly, he (Bhosle) tortured her a lot," Lata had written.

One day, a girl who was part of the chorus told Lata that just hours before Asha gave birth to eldest son Hemant, she was in the studio recording a song. "We couldn't even say anything, and because she had left home in anger, she too was finding it awkward to come back," Lata had said.

The rift healed with time, and both Lata and Asha bought homes next to each other at Prabhu Kunj on Pedder Road.

Lata found Asha's ability to "endure" things extraordinary, but because of her "fertile imagination", she said, Asha was also in the habit of "taking small things to heart and cause herself mental anguish, though just as she could get angry in a flash, her temper would cool instantaneously" and she'd always rush to help others and shower her love on the household.

The reconciliation was strong enough in later years for Lata to also offer advice to Asha "to be more choosy" about the music directors she worked with. Despite her long association with O P Nayyar and R D Burman, Lata always felt there was something "unique" about her voice when she worked with Jaidev and Khayyam.

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