India’s nightingale Lata Mangeshkar may have ended up as one part of a composer duo – a bit like Shankar-Jaikishan – rather than the singer of 27,000 songs had her brother not dissuaded her. 

Unknown to the rest of India, Lata – the country’s greatest female non-classical singer – was quietly composing music for films in her native Marathi language and nearly ended up scoring for Hindi films, according to a new book on her.

Lata says she wanted to keep her identity as a composer a secret but was outed at an awards ceremony when one of the four Marathi films for which wrote the music ended up a multi-award winner.  She even gave herself a male pseudonym, Anandghan.

"No one knew I was composing film music, but then Sadhi Manas went on to win eight Maharashtra state awards, including best director, best singer, best story and best music," she says in the book, "Lata Mangeshkar, In Her Own Voice", written by London-based documentary filmmaker and author Nasreen Munni Kabeer.