Lata Mangeshkar's 97th birth anniversary: one date, two careers

Lata Mangeshkar was born in Indore on 28 September 1929. She died in Mumbai on 6 February 2022, at 92. Between those two dates sits a working life of roughly eight decades — long enough that she recorded for films whose directors, composers and leading actors had themselves been born, become famous and died while she was still working.

The numbers, and the one to be careful with

She sang for the soundtracks of more than 2,000 Indian films, in more than 36 languages — mostly Hindi, Marathi and Bengali, but far from only those.

You will often see a figure of 25,000 songs or more attached to her name. That number has been disputed for decades and has never been settled; it is repeated far more often than it is checked. The film count is the firmer ground, and it is remarkable enough on its own.

What India gave her

• Padma Bhushan, 1969

• Dadasaheb Phalke Award, 1989

• Bharat Ratna, 2001 — only the second singer ever to receive India's highest civilian honour, after M. S. Subbulakshmi in 1998

• Legion of Honour, France's highest civilian award, 2007

She was also the first woman to win the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award.

The other 28 September

This is a birthday site, so here is the part the headlines usually miss: 28 September belongs to more than one person.

Ranbir Kapoor was born on the same date in 1982 — fifty-three years after Lata Mangeshkar, into the third generation of the Kapoor film family, the son of Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh and the grandson of Raj Kapoor. He has six Filmfare Awards of his own, for work across Rockstar, Barfi!, Sanju and Animal.

One date, then, holding the voice that defined playback singing in Indian cinema and an actor from the family that helped build the industry she sang for. There is no significance to it. That is rather the point of a calendar: it puts people next to each other for no reason at all, and the pairings are often better than anything anyone would have designed.

Born on 28 September yourself? You are in good company. See everyone who shares your date on the Who shares my birthday page.