Asha Bhosle in an interview once revealed that she was “afraid” of the late Kishore Kumar as the latter used to tease her a lot. The legendary singers have collaborated on many timeless tracks like ‘Ek Main Aur Ek Tu,’ ‘Pyar Ka Dard Hai’, and ‘Haal Kaisa Hai Janab Ka and ‘O Sathi Chal’, among others.

In an old interview with actor Amrita Rao and her husband RJ Anmol, Bhosle spoke about her collaboration with Kumar. “Kishore Da and I were too new when we sang songs for a film called Muqqadar. He was very quirky. Once we were singing a song which went like, ‘Ek, do, teen, chaar, baago mein aayi bahaar.’ In Marathi for Do, they say Don, so I sang it like that. Ever since that, he named me Don and would always make fun of me by recalling that. I was very afraid of him because he would always tease me. He would gang up against me with the chorus singers. After a point, I started to give it back. He said, ‘Tu bhi pakki hai’ and we became friends,” she said.

Bhosle also recalled the time when she along with Kumar was rejected by a recordist. She said, “Back then the mic used to be huge and they started the recording quite late. There was a recordist called Robin Chatterjee, and the music director loved us, he was Khemchand Prakash. When we started to sing, Chatterjee said, ‘This won’t work. They don’t have good voice, call another artiste.’ We heard it and we left, and went to Mahalakshmi station. It was quite late and we were starving. We were not feeling good. We got some food and chai.”

She added, “Kishore da was upset, but I was positive. I did tell him that day that he will become a great artiste. A couple of years later, we went to record again. We had become known faces. Coincidently, the same recordist was present there too. When we went there, Kishore da looked at him and told me, ‘Asha, villain is here.’ I didn’t care, but Kishore da said I will go speak to him. He said, ‘I won’t sing if he is the recordist.’ I stopped him. I said, ‘Dada, this is not right, we should never snatch someone’s job.’ Kishore da reminded me of what he had done to us. I said, ‘The time was not right.’ But yet, Kishore da went and yelled at him. It is all destiny.”