told interviewers.
She got a big break in 1949 – it was a haunting song called Aayega Aanewala for the movie Mahal.
“Soon every female actor wanted her voice. But she was always busy and only a few fortunate music directors got the chance to make her sing,” music director Mohammed Zahur Khayyam later recalled.
Over the next few decades, Mangeshkar sang thousands of songs lip-synced by Bollywood’s biggest heroines across generations.
She was nominated to the upper house of India’s parliament in 1999, but said later that she had been “reluctant” to take it up and that her tenure there was “anything but happy“.
She received India’s highest honour for civilians, the Bharat Ratna, in 2001.
In 2004, when she turned 75, one of Bollywood’s biggest directors, Yash Chopra, wrote for the BBC that he saw “God’s blessings in her voice”.
Mangeshkar, who never married, had a rich life outside her work, with interests ranging from cricket to cars.
Her younger sister Asha Bhosle is also a celebrated Bollywood singer. The two always dismissed any hint of sibling rivalry, and even performed together occasionally.
“We’re very close – we have never competed with each other,” Bhosle told the BBC in 2015. (BBC)
