Lata Mangeshkar, one of India‘s biggest cultural icons and a singer who defined music and melody for generations of her countrymen, died on Sunday. She was 92 and is survived by her four siblings. She was hospitalised on Jan. 11 after being infected with what a doctor told Reuters was COVID-19.
Mangeshkar died on Sunday morning of “multi-organ failure after more than 28 days of hospitalisation post COVID-19,” said Dr Pratit Samdani, who was treating her at Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital.
Mangeshkar’s voice has rung out of television sets, on crackly airwaves and from movie theatres for most of independent India’s three quarters of a century, making hers the defining voice of many generations and earning her the title “the Nightingale”.
I am anguished beyond words,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on Twitter. She will receive a state funeral, and the government will observe state mourning with the flag at half-mast through Monday, the Home Ministry said.
“The kind and caring Lata Didi has left us,” the prime minister wrote, using an affectionate term for older sister. “She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled. The coming generations will remember her as a stalwart of Indian culture, whose melodious voice had an unparalleled ability to mesmerise people.
Other Bollywood personalities and politicians also offered condolences. The only songs she refused to sing were cabaret numbers and songs that had bawdy or racy lyrics, saying those did not fit with her personal values. Mangeshkar, nevertheless, dominated the Hindi film industry for almost five decades until the 2000s, along with her younger sister Asha Bhosle.
Detractors accused her of using her Bollywood clout to limit the entry of newcomers. Her influence was such that Mumbai authorities in 2006 scrapped a planned highway flyover after she objected that it would disturb her privacy.
Known for soft-spokenness and wearing a saree, her hair in two schoolgirl-like braids, Mangeshkar received India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 2001. She was awarded France’s highest civilian honour, the Legion of Honour, in 2009.
“Music is incomplete without your voice,” actor Amitabh Bachchan said of Mangeshkar in 2019, commemorating her 90th birthday. “It has done the work of saints.
Source: BBC
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