And thus came about the real, the truly solid, the immensely -stimulating (for them) and the eminently rewarding (for music lovers) super hit muqabla between them.

The LP-RD battle was fought mainly on the Kishore battleground, as Rafi mattered only to LP, and though LP basically went the Lata way and RD the Asha way, both (one speaks of LP as one entity) did come up with winners for the other sister.

The same was the case with Anand Bakshi and Majrooh - the master composers’ pet poets - though Bakshi did more work with LP than Majrooh and the reverse was the case with RD. And how LP - even without jettisoning Rafi - gradually acclimatised themselves to Kishore in their own special way, and challenged the challenger with his own raambaan weapon to success is a saga without parallel among the exciting professional battles which have been fought in the world of Hindi film music.

Rising swiftly to the occasion, LP, whose leitmotif was solid melody as against RD’s trendy rhythms, got Kishore Kumar to vocalise the feather light Accha to hum chalte hai, a benchmark in the conversational song genre, and the ‘fizz’ical Jawani o diwani tu zindabad in Aan Milo Sajana as the first follow-up to their first Kishore offering to the new phenomenon Rajesh Khanna, Khizaan ke phool (Do Raaste).

Then amidst the Rafi-dominated score of the Muslim social Mehboob Ki Mehndi, LP made Kishore do something hitherto considered unthinkable - they made the comic-and-sad specialist sing a languorous ghazal -Mere diwanepan ki bhi dawa nahin.

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