How I met Lata Didi for the first time and she shooed me point blank from the sets of her film Lekin: Jyothi Venkatesh

By Jyothi Venkatesh

I remember how I had met Lata didi way back in 1989 at the shooting of the film Lekin produced by her and directed by Gulzar and starring Vinod Khanna, Dimple Kapadia and my friend Amjad Khan at the far flung Rajkamal Studios in Lower Parel. It so happened that I was associated with the popular video magazine Eknath Video at that point of time and on the invitation of my find and PR person Bunny Reuben, I had trekked all the way to the studios though I was staying at Charkop in Kandivali having shifted from Worli just a year ago.

Before Bunny Reuben and Gulzar could eve introduce me to the songstress who had also turned a producer with the film Lekin, Lata didi saw my crew capturing the off screen moments during the rehearsals for the film and straightaway asked the PR person to shoo away the cameraman and the crew, because  Lehren Video and Eknath Video were fairly new to the film industry at that point of time and Lata did was worried that even before she could release the film, the contents of the film would be pirated by the video magazine crew.

Also read: Iconic Lata Mangeshkar – immortal voice that will resonate for generations

Since I was keen to interview Vinod Khanna and Amjad Khan for the video magazine, I decided to go up to Lata didi and politely request her to kindly allow me to cover the shooting for the video magazine since I felt that if I could not cover the shoot, I will be sacked by the owner Mr Eknath. To my consternation, Lata proved to be too tough to crack and as a shrewd business minded producer, she told me point blank that since I was a print journalist, I was free to cover the shooting but at no cost would she allow me to go around the sets with my camera and let my crew cover the shooting and poor PR person Bunny Reuben had no other alternative but to ask me to send my crews away and cover the film shooting just as a print journalist.