Here is how Lata Mangeshkar became a part of a Mohammed Rafi solo

Tum jo mil gaye ho toh yeh lagta hai yeh jahan mil gaya. The imperishable love ballad from Chetan Anand’s Hanste Zakhm is hummed to this day, more than fifty years after it was first released.

The unusual part of this Mohammed Rafi–Lata Mangeshkar duet is that Lataji makes her vocal appearance only for a few lines at the end of the composition. For all practical purposes, Tum jo mil gaye ho is Rafi’s song till almost the end.

So why is Lataji suddenly heard at the end of the song?

Here is the real story for the first time. Tum jo mil gaye ho was conceptualized and recorded as a Mohammed Rafi solo. After the recording, Priya Rajvansh, who was the leading lady of Hanste Zakhm and director Chetan Anand’s muse, heard the song.

She was so enchanted by it that she insisted on being part of it.“How can such a beautiful song be filmed only on the hero? I also want to be part of it.”

Ms Rajvansh insisted on being part of the male solo, perhaps forgetting that she had two timeless Lata Mangeshkar solos Aaj socha toh aansoo bhar aaye and Betaab dil ki tamanna yehi hai all to herself in Hanste Zakhm.

Since Chetan Anand could never say no to Priya Rajvansh, he requested his music composer Madan Mohan to ask Lataji to do the needful.

“If it was anybody else I would have not agreed to such an unusual request. But Madan Bhaiyya was my rakhi brother I couldn’t say no to him,” Lataji recalled the incident.

That’s how Lataji shows up at the tail end of the composition in Tum jo mil gaye ho toh yeh lagta hai.

Not too many heroines of yesteryears had the clout to command a song for themselves. Priya Rajvansh’s personal equation with director Chetan Anand worked in this case.

To take the opposite example, when Anil Kapoor saw how Saroj Khan’s choreography and Madhuri Dixit’s dancing had turned out in the number Ek do teen in N Chandra’s Tezaab he decided to do something about it or the film threatened to slip completely out of his hands.

This is where the male version of Ek do teen came in. It was never meant to be in two version. It was written by Javed Akhtar and composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal only for Madhuri Dixit. But when Anil saw the rushes he knew that song and dance was going to be the USP of Tezaab. So he persuaded his friend director N Chandra to record and shoot a male version of Ek do teen on him That’s how singer Amit Kumar’s Ek do teen came into the picture. The song was shot on the streets of Mumbai in Bandra quite close to where Shah Rukh Khan’s resident Mannat is.

But the streetwise tapori version of Ek do teen chaar had no impact on the audience or in the music charts. Audiences went to see Tezaab for Madhuri Dixit dancing to Ek do teen and it was Alka Yagnik’s version that stormed the charts. Anil thought he had done his maths well in Ek do teen. But his calculations failed.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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