Lata Mangeshkar is indeed the living Goddess of vocal music on the Indian horizon. An ultimate benchmark to follow. Whether she sang along with Mohammad Raffi, Talat Mehmood, Manna Dey, Mukesh, Hemant Kumar or Kishore Kumar or Jagjit Singh, she has always left an indelible imprint of her voice as much in all her matchless solos. No wonder Jagjit Singh described her as one of the three most important happenings in the world in the last century.
The way she has maintained the freshness of her voice has been indeed incredible, may be a matter of research too. I was lucky to secure her blessings on phone some two years back, when she blessed me to go ahead with my desire to learn singing. I have seen my mother getting inspired by her outstanding voice and I today I enjoy my daughter and son listening to her melodies with the same fervour.Perhaps her impressions will go in our next generations too. Coming to think of picking her best ten or twenty numbers, seems to be a naive excercise as she has never given anything less than her best.
A perfectionist to the core, her inimitable success inspires many of the true lovers of music. It is indeed the best thing that not only has she been bestowed with the coveted Bharat Ratna but also enjoys the unique opportunity of having sung in the parliament, the highest temple of our governance though the audience there literally may not have made up still for the best audience for a singer of her class, callibre and excellence. May She live long!