The soulful song from the 1955 film Santhanam set a trend of sorts for two reasons after its release; one, the reigning playback star of Bollywood, Lata Mangeshkar rendered it with a heartfelt emotion that would have been possible only for a native singer and two, a lullaby that played three times in the movie depicting the sibling bond.
In 1954, while in Madras (now Chennai) to record a song at the Vauhini Recording Theatre, she gave an interview to a local film magazine where she expressed her desire to sing for a south Indian film. Around that time CV Ranganath Das was planning Santhanam with ANR, Savitri and Sriranjani Jr and its music director Susarla Dakshina Murthy, after seeing the interview approached Lata to sing for his film and she immediately agreed.
The heart-wrenching lyrics by Anisetty Subbarao speak of a helpless nine-year-old girl left to take care of two younger siblings.
Despite the success of Santhanam‘s song, Lata did not sing in Telugu films till 1988. She sang the duet Tella cheeraku thakadhimi tapanalu, an Ilayaraja composition with SP Balasubramaniam in Akhari Poratam picturised on Akkineni Nagarjuna and Sridevi.
This K. Raghavendra Rao-directed film was an adaptation from Yendamoori Veerendranath’s novel.
When the hugely popular Bollywood Sridevi-starrer Chandini was dubbed into Telugu, Lata rendered a couple of songs in Telugu but did not receive much attention.
