Asha Bhosle, the last surviving singing legend of the golden era of Hindi cinema, has died at 92. She debuted in the industry shortly after Indian independence in the late 1940s and is now widely considered the best-known singer in India, with more than 12,000 songs to her name. Over the course of a long and prolific career, she demonstrated extraordinary enthusiasm for reinvention, and a range and versatility that still remain unmatched.
Fans of Bhosle found joy in her singing and intrigue in her tumultuous love life. She was often associated with the trope of the fallen woman in the public imagination and pitted against her singing elder sister, Lata Mangeshkar, who famously did her best to steer clear of “vulgar” songs and was seen to embody piety, modesty, and self-sacrifice.
The painting of Mangeshkar’s good sister to Bhosle’s bad reflected the distinct categorisation of female characters as either submissive women of virtue or self-serving women of vice, which prevailed in Hindi cinema well into the 1980s. This was mapped onto the singing voices of the sisters by music directors. For instance, Anil Biswas, the pioneer of playback singing, quipped that “Asha has body while Lata has soul”.
