INDIA High Commissioner to TT Arun Kumar Sahu says the passing of legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar signals the end of an era in Indian culture and leaves void which is near impossible to fill.
However, he stressed in a release on Thursday, her voice will continue to reverberate around us for centuries to come.
"As long as civilisation exists and human beings sing to express, create, connect, and communicate, her melodic voice will live on and be remembered. Through her voice, Lata Ji has bound the hearts of billions across geographical boundaries."
Mangeshkar who was born on September 28, 1929, was an singerwhose songs were played in thousands of Bollywood movies and lip synced by some of India biggest and greatest actresses.
She is widely considered as one of the greatest and most influential singers in the world. She died on February 6 at the Breach Candy Hospital Trust in Mumbai, India after having been warded and treated for covid19.
High Commissioner Sahu said her career spanned over 75 years, during which she is reputed to have sung over 35,000 songs in more than 35 languages. Besides filmi songs, she sung innumerable geet, ghazals, bhajans and patriotic songs.
No national day celebration in India and outside India seems complete without her quintessential song, Ei Mere Watan Ke Logon.
[caption id="attachment_939009" align="alignnone" width="1024"] India's High Commissioner to TT, Arun Kumar Sahu. -[/caption]
He said that what made her remarkable was her life-long dedication to her craft, uncompromising approach to perfection and the art of expressing the soul of a composition.
"When Lata Ji sang, she transported her listeners to the inner world of human emotions of happiness, sadness, romance, love, and separation," Sahu said.
Musicians and music lovers all over the world, including those in the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean cutting across ethnicity, genre and style, have been mesmerised by Lata Ji's singing and her voice.
"Her influence can be felt in many songs of soca and chutney singers, and her voice has served as an umbilical cord between the Indian diaspora and their ancestral land."
He said that music is an integral part of life, and consciously or unconsciously, many people would connect with the songs of legends including Lata, her sister Asha Bhosle, Muhammad Rafi and Kishore Kumar.
"Lata Ji has sung two film songs in my mother tongue Odia. One in the 1963 film Surjyakukhi and the other is in the 1967 film Arundhati and even today, when one listens to these songs, one gets transported to that inner world of human emotion."
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