In one of her exuberant moods, Bollywood prima donna Asha Bhosle extolled the supreme singing talent of her iconic playback singer sister Lata-didi at the recent 'live film-musical concert' dedicated to 'The Bengal Tigers' (S.D. Burman, Hemant Kumar, Salil Chowdury and of course R.D. Burman) – directed and conceived by Rahul Ranade.
“Way back, in my initial phase, I was so fascinated by Hemant-da's low-octave bass soulful voice, that I even named my son Hemant after him,” confided madame Bhosle. The sharp-witted Asha revealed, “Sachin-da would call me Aasa and not Asha and he would use the incorrect grammatical gender.
Once Sachin-da baffled me by saying, 'Imagine that you are the shapely cabaret dancer Helen', and I was shell-shocked. When he saw me gazing at myself in the mirror, he said 'aarey baba, apne aap ko Helen samajh ke gaana gaao'.”
Speaking about Burman Junior, she said, “RDB (Pancham-Da ) was so versatile that he was a trend-setting maestro in all genres of music. Very often, he would compose complex tunes, which he felt only I could do justice to,” shared Asha who feels that, “although today's singers are very good, they just can’t match the flawless vocal excellence of Lata-Didi.”
The outspoken Asha felt that sometimes, only the composers get the entire credit. “It's a classic trio-combination of the lyricist-composer and the extraordinary retro-legendary-singers, who in turn make the songs immortal.”
The celebs at the event brilliantly hosted by Sumeet Raghavan, included Shivaji (CID) Satam, Sharbani Mukherjee, Bharat Dabholkar, Sanjeev Kapoor and Sachin Khedekar.