It is one of her earliest performances picturised on a leading lady, Madhubala, and Asha Bhosle begins as she was to continue. The film is Howrah Bridge (1958), directed by Shakti Samanta and the setting is a club with the hero Ashok Kumar in a white jacket and a black bow tie. He is smoking, looking superlatively cool, as she swirls around him, stubbing out his cigarette with a look of distaste and then virtually lifting him from his seat for a dance.
The thriller has Madhubala playing a cabaret dancer called Edna, while Kumar is a businessman from Rangoon searching for his brother's murderers. The music is by Bhosle's long-time partner OP Nayyar, the lyrics are by Qamar Jalalabadi, and the words could not be more come-hither: Aaiye meherbaan baithiye jaane jaan/Shauk se liijiyegi ishq ki imthihaan (Come my friends, take a seat/Come test my love).
Compare this with Helen's Piya ab tu aaja in Nasir Hussain's Caravan (1971), where there is yet another cabaret, and yet another lover being pursued and persuaded. The music is by RD Burman, whose music replaced Nayyar's in Bhosle's life, but the sentiment is the same: the woman may be waiting, she may be yearning, but she is still the dominant voice, the seeker rather than the sought, the hunter rather than the prey, ready to sacrifice all for love.
Indeed, that is Asha Bhosle's lasting legacy. Her extraordinary voice, sometimes complete with heavy breathing and tasteful moaning, taught the women of the 60s and 70s that it was all right to ask for love, sometimes even demand it. Take the beautiful Gulzar song from Ijaazat (1987) composed by Burman: "Mera kuch saaman tumhare paas pada hai/Saawan ke kuch bheege bheege din rakhe hain/Aur mere ik khat main lipti raat padi hai/Vo raakh bhujaa do, mera vo saamaan lauta do" (There's something that you have of me/The memory of some rain-soaked days/Wrapped in some letters/Put out that fire/Return those memories).
Legend has it that Bhosle sang the song in ten minutes in a conversational style that captivated both Gulzar and Burman, and the rest, as they say, is history with the song winning the National Award for Best Playback Singer and Best Lyrics in 1988.
The tale of a doomed marriage ending in a hopeful union, directed by Gulzar, where both the women in the movie strive to strike their own paths, for better or worse, could have had only one emblematic song, and it could only have had one voice: Asha Bhosle. She taught young women more about love and longing than many others, with her voice channeling her own experiences as a divorced woman, a single mother to three children, a singer struggling to find her own voice in an industry dominated by her elder sister, and a woman defying all convention to marry a younger man.
As she sang in Hum Dono (1961), supposedly directed by Vijay Anand though credited to Amarjeet, "Dukh aur sukh ke raste/Bane hai sabke vaste/Jo gam se haar jaaonge/To kis tarah nibhaaonge/Khushi mile hame ke gam/Balenge hum na apne gam (Paths of sorrow and joy, are made for everyone/If you give in to sorrow, how will you live life?/Whether I receive joy or sorrow, I will not change my ways)".
Could there be a better song to embody Bhosle's life, one of laughter and courage in the face of such odds?
