Bollywood legends—Dilip Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar— need no introduction. While the legendary actor late Dilip Kumar did many mesmerising roles in films Lata Mangeshkar sung a plethora of beautiful songs in her mellifluous voice. The Hindi film industry is proud to have these two icons.
Do you know that Lata Mangeshkar was once annoyed with Dilip Kumar for one of his comments? This was so severe that both the stars were not on talking terms for 13 years. The reason behind this will surprise you.
Lata used to travel by local trains for her recording at Bombay studios located in Malad, Mumbai. Music composer Anil Biswas used to accompany her at that time. Dilip was also struggling to make his place in the Hindi film industry those days. It just happened that he boarded the train with them.
Anil Biswas and Dilip Kumar knew each other very well. Both started having a conversation. Anil said to Dilip that he would love Lata’s voice when he hears it. When Dilip came to know that she belongs to Maharashtra, he replied that people from that state don’t have a strong command on Urdu. Dilip Kumar commented that their Urdu is like Dal Chawal. The term Dal Chawal was a metaphor for blandness. Lata felt hurt by this comment.
The determined singer made it a point to sharpen her Urdu pronunciation and she put in a lot of dedication and efforts to learn the language. Dilip, who had once made fun of Lata’s blandness in Urdu language, began recommending her for his films.
In reality, when Lata Mangeshkar entered the film industry Noor Jahan was the most popular female singer and she was almost dominating Bollywood. It was difficult for Lata to create her own space in the industry. Like many others, for Dilip Kumar Noor Jahan was the best singer and set the standard for female singers. Dilip Kumar’s comment on Lata’s Urdu language skills was perhaps with reference to Noor Jahan which was not received well by the iconic singer.
In another interesting incident, Dilip recorded a duet with Lata for famous filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s film Musafir. The song Laagi Naahein Chhute has been composed by music composer Salil Choudhary on Raag Piloo. Dilip, who had chosen the song and practiced it for many hours on Sitar, was nervous at the time of singing with Lata. Salil even gave him a peg of brandy for overcoming his nervousness but his voice sounded weak and unsatisfactory. This created bad vibes between Dilip and Lata which was put to an end when she tied rakhi to the star.
