When Lata Mangeshkar agreed to perform the now-famous “Luka Chuppi” with AR Rahman for the movie, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, the director of the 2006 smash blockbuster Rang De Basanti, found himself in a fortunate position. Prior to recording the song in Rahman’s studio, the late singer spent three days practising it in Chennai, according to Mehra in an interview with O2 India.
The song, which was written by Prasoon Joshi, is heard in the movie at a scene in which Waheeda Rehman, who plays R Madhavan’s mother, is struggling to digest the death of her son.
“It’s a mother who has lost her son and is looking for her son, and the son is singing back to her,” Mehra added.
Lata’s “greatness” caused her to call him and request permission to rehearse the song and record it in Chennai, Mehra recalled. As soon as he announced that AR Rahman will travel to Mumbai to record it, “She said ‘no, it will be better to record in his space’. That’s how humble she was.”
“We went to the studio and AR received her and straight away, she heard the composition. And she said, ‘Can I rehearse it? Can you give it to me on a cassette?’ She belonged to a generation where you heard it on a cassette player, a walkman,” Mehra shared.
“We had arranged a mic for her, some flowers, a bottle of hot water and a glass. She came and said ‘Why is the mic so low? Bring it up’. We said ‘you can sit and record’. She said ‘no, I will stand and sing. And then she started singing and jamming with AR. She refused to sit down on the chair for the next 8-10 hours. She was standing till the song was over,” he recalled.
Lata Mangeshkar was traditional in her approach, according to Mehra, who claimed that while recording digitally, if a certain section needs to be redone, it can be done so non-linearly.“She insisted she would sing the whole paragraph again. Not just that one word or one line, she would sing all the four lines, or six lines again,” he shared.
One of Lata Mangeshkar’s most well-known songs, “Luka Chuppi,” continues to be played frequently.
