New Delhi, April 17 -- For one or the other the world goes wild-love, or youth. Asha Bhosle first sang those words, written by Anand Bakshi for an R.D. Burman song in Hindi, in 1979. Jiske liye hain, duniya deewani, ya hai mohabbat, ya hai jawaani. That is Zeenat Aman pretending to interpret the song of a Venetian gondolier for Amitabh Bachchan in The Great Gambler. It is Asha Bhosle describing herself and her voice to her listeners. Until very recently, India was a young country, and Asha, who died on 12 April, was the last of a generation of singers whose voices were the soundtrack of youth in India.

To many of her fans, she, more than any of her colleagues, was the vocalised embodiment of jawaani. At the beginning of her career, it wa...