Madan Mohan · Lata Mangeshkar · 1964
Lag Ja Gale is sung by a ghost, and Lata Mangeshkar picked it as one of her own favourites
Madan Mohan wrote it for a film about a haunting. It is now the song Indians reach for at funerals, weddings and last calls.
Woh Kaun Thi? is a 1964 mystery in which Sadhana may or may not be a ghost. The song arrives in that register: a woman asking to be held tonight because tonight may not come again.
The music
It sits in Raag Pahari, a light, folk-derived raag associated with hill country and with longing rather than grief. That choice is why the song does not curdle into melodrama. Madan Mohan keeps the arrangement thin, mostly strings and a slow, unhurried pulse, so nothing competes with the voice.
Raja Mehdi Ali Khan's lyric does something similar. It makes no argument and tells no story. It asks for one thing, and then repeats the reason.
What Lata said about it
Lata Mangeshkar recorded thousands of songs across six decades and was asked to name favourites often enough to get bored of the question. This one appeared consistently in her shortlists. On its fiftieth anniversary she said it still did not sound old to her. It does not.
If you want the argument for why Madan Mohan is the composer other composers name, it is this song and the rest of his catalogue, which sold fewer records than Shankar-Jaikishan's and has outlived a great deal of it.