LATA & RD & KISHORE – THE FINAL CHAPTER (NEE DHARAMYUDH)! ……. OF THE MYSTERIOUS HEART ATTACKS BOTH KISHORE & RD WERE AFRAID OF! …… OF 1985: THE YEAR THAT CHANGED BOLLYWOOD FOREVER!

This strange (below) Aajtak video clip caught my attention, & got me googling a while.

And what came of it was highly interesting to say the least!

As it turns out, Lata Mangeshkar on average sang only 2 songs per year for R.D. Burman all life/career, while he on average composed 36 songs/year for 36 years straight!

A further cursory glance reveals even more startling facts- Lata Mangeshkar it seems stopped singing for R.D. Burman for the last ~9 yrs of his life/career, after 1985-early 1986 at most, till his death in 1994! All RD films releasing thereafter (’86-’94), bearing Lata’s voice, if pry a bit, either shot/recorded in ’85 or early ’86 at most!

P.S. Seems this year 1985 has some strange significance in lives of all 3 best friends-Rajesh Khanna (as explained in blogs pertaining to him), R. D. Burman & Kishore Kumar.

For Kishore Kumar we learn announced retirement from Bolly in May 1985, (at the peak of his demand having just recorded 300 songs in 1984), but his pending work lingered till his death in Oct ’87, from his 2nd heart attack (his first having been received in 1982)!

https://indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/from-

No one till today for certain knows the exact reason for this most surprising & most illogical & obviously highly emotional decision of Kishore Kumar to retire from Bollywood.
But one of the public speculations that’s been doing the social rounds since those times, & we don’t know if this the real or sole reason, is that it could’ve been borne of his showdown with his brother-in-law & Leena Chandavarkar’s brother Anil Chandavarkar, perhaps sometime in the beginning of 1985, on the sets of Kishore’s last directorial venture ‘Mamta Ki Chhaon Mein’ which he’d begun directing in 1984, in which Anil, who’d also acted in films like 1977’s Aafat & 1980’s Khanjar earlier, was employed as a production assistant by then, the issue for which has not been posted anywhere online, but that was serious enough in Kishore’e eyes, for getting him publicly thrown out of the film, by his own brother-in-law! And that many people believe, certainly contributed to Anil committing suicide just a few days/months later in early 1985, & just few days/months before Kishore’s then announcement of retirement, leaving all work on his own film too, that was 90% complete by then, in the process (& perhaps as we see it, merely focusing on completing his pending assignments for others thereon), (a home production that incidentally did make it to screens in 1989 finally, with Rajesh Khanna making a significant contribution).

Anil Chandavarkar, apart from being Leena Chandavarkar’s brother, was also the son-in-law of director Atmaram, as husband of his daughter Anjali.

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Now another highly curious incident from the very day of Kishore da’s heart attack has caught mass attention. Per his wife’s statement to the media, Kishore before his death, was looking pale since morning, & post-lunch, lay on his bed, after moving some furniture, & upon inquiry by his wife said, “I am feeling weak”. His wife immediately tried calling the doctor, to which Kishore got angry & shouted, “If you call the doctor, I will get a heart attack”. His eyed were open & he was breathing out. And just a few moments later, died.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishore_Kumar

People online have wondered what made Kishore da so wary of the doctors coming to his house then. Others dismiss it as another joke on his part given how he was a habitual jokester. But remember, this was a man clearly experiencing a fatal heart attack just then (as evidenced by the fact that he succumbed to it just few mins later), yet that even in such agony & strife, found the strength to shout out to his wife to not call the doctors, for fear that he may (actually in his mind) get a heart attack if they came. Isn’t this most perplexing & mysterious???! Why was Kishore Kumar so phobic of his home-visiting doctors??? What kind of experiences had he had with them over time, to make him so afraid of their mere name, during his last moments???!

Questions none of us can now with any certainty answer, yet safely & privately (& oh so obviously) guess.

And when Kishore Kumar finally did pass away just 2 yrs after his decision of retirement, while completing his huge pile of pending work, on that fateful day of Oct 13, 1987, his friend R.D. Burman reportedly told Kishore’s son Amit at his funeral, as recounted by Amit in his video interview to Rajeev Bajaj, that it was time for him, the great R.D. Burman, to retire as well, as he knew his innings was up too!

R. D. Burman would go on to have a heart attack in the very next year of 1988, & would have a heart by-pass surgery needed to be performed on him abroad the following year in 1989, having his work-rate reduced by half for the next 5 yrs.

Another interesting publicly available post–1989 interview excerpt has also come to light, drawing further attention to his state of unease & perhaps anger. RD had always been very careful to not make hyperbolic statements about (his brother) Rajesh, most likely as instructed by the latter himself. Yet on this one occasion in 1990, made an exception, & almost purposely, gave a provocative interview about his bro being the best & all, knowing full well as an insider, how this whole silly Rajesh-Amitabh battle was a mere artificial ‘establishment media’ creation:

“Amitabh would best be remembered by historians as a ‘Bollywood Legend’, but Rajesh Khanna would remain a ‘Permanent Superstar’ for generations because of his natural charisma on and off screen. Khanna has done vast genres of films, experimented and performed many roles and also has keen interest in story, music and lyrics of songs in his films. Khanna is more versatile.”

This was an obviously angry RD deliberately hitting out the only we knew how to, & taking “panga” with the establishment, for reasons we can perhaps now well guess.

RD would land up having his 2nd & most fatal heart attack 3.5 yrs later, on Jan 4, 1994, to eventually pass away.

Followed by a years-long media drive on how RD was unhappy & alone & doing very poor work in his final few yrs, while reality is that music stds of Hindi Cinema as a whole had gone down a few notches by the mid 80s anyway. Also that he was leading essentially the same royal life (albeit in poorer physical health)(he came from a super wealthy North-Easthern royal family btw), as also a bachelor’s life since his divorce in 1971, as claimed by the musicians who worked with him (incl guitarist Vineet Shrivastava on Yt), whatever the exact truth of his marriage to Asha Bhosle, that apparently was a secret btwn him & Asha till his death, that no one really knew of, till Asha ji herself made it explicitly known to the world after his death.

P.S.:

1. Some interesting emerging tidbits herein, even if people find outta context, being how twas RD Burman, more Lata’s gen, being just 9.5 yrs younger, that ended the Lata-SD cold war on since mid 1950s, by going to her house & asking her to sing his 1st song as a independent composer in ‘Chhote Nawab’ in 1960. The 2 never parted for next quarter century!

2. Further, Chaitanya Padukone’s book ‘RD Burmaniya’ carries a Lata intv, stating how RD asked her to give him a ‘counselling letter’ of “Do’s & Dont’s” when he did marry her sis Asha at a time in 1980’s, as a gift.

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https://www.amarujala.com/photo-gallery/entertainment/bollywood/rd-burman-aka-pancham-da-death-anniversary-lata-mangeshkar-remember-him

To then set into motion the final (as in Rajesh’s case, we know for fact) project, in 1994, by the unseen & unnamed & unknown powers-that-be, for total dismantling of the last & most famous of this legendary trio, Project Rajesh Khanna, as already amply blogged on before.

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