Asha Bhosle, the playback singer with a gifted voice, is no more. Yet her voice would always be there to evoke nostalgia of yesteryears when the music was largely instrument-driven and auto-tune wasn’t heard of. Though her singing career spans eight decades but she adjusted and adapted to changing times beautifully and sang for several generations. She had a voice that teases, consoles, and soars — sometimes all within a single song. With her demise at 92, Indian music does not merely lose a singing legend; it loses the grainy innocence of early cinema.

She began her career in 1943, as a teenager under the shadow of her sister Lata Mangeshkar, but soon carved a place for herself with patience and sheer hard work and hours of practice. It was the time when compensation for playback........

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