Suman Kalyanpur

Suman Hemmadi was born in Dhaka in 1937 to a Mangalorean family that moved to Bombay in 1943. She trained in classical music, studied at the Sir J.J. School of Art, and began singing for Marathi films and then Hindi: her first Hindi song was in Mangu (1954), for Mohammed Shafi, and she worked early with Shankar-Jaikishan, Hemant Kumar and S.D. Burman. She married the businessman Ramanand Kalyanpur in 1958.

Her busiest years were the 1960s, particularly 1961–67, when Lata's dispute with Rafi over royalties kept them from recording together and composers paired Rafi with Suman instead: Shankar-Jaikishan, Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Roshan and Ravi all used her. She also sang solos of note — Mere Sanam, Shagoon, Jahan Ara, Dil Ek Mandir — and a large Marathi output. She retired gradually in the 1980s.

She was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2023, at eighty-six, and lives in Mumbai.

Her voice is high, pure and sweet, with the same light placement as Lata's and a slightly softer edge; on a radio in the 1960s the two were hard to tell apart, which helped her get work and hurt her reputation. Heard on its own, it has a gentleness of its own, especially in the slow duet.