Watch Lata Mangeshkar interview Kishore Kumar
This video isn’t merely a rare archival footage of Kishore Kumar speaking, it is much more than that. Whoever’s idea it was to make Lata Mangeshkar interview Kishore Kumar was a masterstroke in casting.
What makes this way more interesting than the regular interviews you come across is the camaraderie the two contemporaries share. It is almost like the camera and the TV audience they are supposed to cater to don’t exist.
Film blogger Anuradha Warrier informs us of this precious little fact about them:
Lata Mangeshkar used to travel from Grant Road to Malad by train. One day, a young man got into the same compartment at Bombay Central, and got off at Malad with her. She used to either walk to Bombay Talkies or take a tonga; that day, she decided to do the latter. She was a bit flustered to see the young man follow her in another tonga right into the studio. She quickly went up to tell music director Khemchand Prakash about the lad; he looked up, and laughed. And the two were introduced. Kishore Kumar had already recorded “Marne ki duaen kyun maangoon” for Ziddi under Khemchand Prakash’s baton; that day, he recorded his first ever duet with Lata Mangeshkar for the same film: “Yeh kaun aaya re karke sola singar”.
This incident is repeated in this interview along with a few other interesting anecdotes, including the one that requires Kishore da to imitate his elder brother Ashok Kumar.
If you know more about the interview and how it came into being, please let us know in comments.