Asha, the Hope, and Tai, the Elder Sister

To me, the demise of Asha Bhosle signifies the "Hope of my Elder Sister." In this war-torn world, she spreads hope through her eternal longing for love in "Salona Sajan." Amid the darkness engulfing West Asia and the Middle East, Asha Tai evokes Macbeth's words: "Let not light see my dark desires." Through her melancholic and lustful "Tanha Tanha," she illuminates humanity's dark desires, while in A.R. Rahman's "Kahi Aag Lage," she cries out in fiery defiance.

To imitate human life in a futuristic world of robotics and humanoids, one must sing like Asha Bhosle, layering emotions as she did in her songs. As musicians and vocalists compete for coexistence with AI-generated voices and music, they must hum the Asha-R.D. Burman duets—manifestations of soul and blood that, like power, should not be concentrated but transcended and distributed.

Asha Tai is not merely a relic of the past; she embodies hope for a dystopian future, where lust, anger, hope, love, and desire might seem utopian amid a synthetic civilisation.

Her tenor, soprano, alap, meend, and operatic flourishes once echoed in our childhood imitations. Now, with her passage from mortality to immortality, she opens the doorway to "Asha and Hope" for generations to come. Her legacy and body of work will course through humanity like blood, imbuing it with vital power.

Therefore, for the vital power to sustain a future conscious state, Asha Tai and her music will blend Western Materialism and Eastern Spiritualism. For instance, the spiritual lineage of Raag Kamod in “Jaane Kya Baat Hai” from the film Sunny will mix with “Duniya Main Logo” ko to bring in two different dimensions of restlessness in a human soul. A soul that starts to cry out with “Jane Ja” from the backend notes of " Yeh Jawani Yeh Diwani", then questions a free-spirited soul and its longing through AR Rahman’s “Rangeela Re”. As an avid music fan of Asha Bhonsle, the same Rangeela Re was a delight of evolution of music from the “Rangeela Re Tere Man Main” of her own elder sister Lata Mangeshkar.

The two songs across two time frames clearly capture how our society moved from a spiritual, soulful society to a materialistic one. Both were contextual in their own times. While Lata’s Rangeela Re was about a “Brahmin” and “Kshatriya” society of Vivekananda where culture, consciousness, intellect flourished, Rahman’s Rangeela Re through Asha Tai brought the “Vaishya”, “Shudra” into the music. It became the music of trade, mass, people, commerce and equality.

The portrayal of the AR Rahman song on the film screen also depicted the people as in a free-spirited, equal, evolutionary society. Asha Tai brought it to us. In a world of discrimination, religion, she brought equality and light of the morning like her song - “Bheeni Bheeni Bhor” through the “Raga Mian Ki Todi” and “Adha Teental”.

The rhythm of the song, which is half-filled like a cup, only projects the essence of incompletion of life and suggests that Asha Tai only made us say - “Dil Padosi Hai (1987)”. This is because only when the heart is your known neighbour, you can make a discriminatory society as an equal one!

(The writer is a Professor, Director, Manav Rachna Centre For Peace and Sustainability, Research Lead, Ashoka Centre For People Centric Energy Transition. Views personal.)