Long-lost Asha Bhosle songs released

PUNE: Sarhad, a city-based non-government organisation, released two songs by Asha Bhosle in Kashmiri - the only ones she has sung in that language - on Wednesday, the eve of the legend's 83rd birthday.
In 2014, when the NGO had visited flood-affected Kashmir valley for rescue work, they found and rescued these records from the inundated Radio Kashmir station.
"Asha Bhosle has lent her voice to songs written in almost every language in India, and all Indians love her for her songs. She is one of the unifying factors among our people. Our idea to release these songs as a complimentary CD, which has been enthusiastically supported by Ashaji, is our gift to all music lovers, and especially to Kashmiris, because we must reach out to them at this time, when the situation is one of the worst in memory", says Sanjay Nahar, founder of Sarhad, which works in strife-torn border areas.
The songs were popular in Kashmir and were recorded multiple times even before Bhosle's renditions, which were recorded by Radio Kashmir in 1966, and were written by two of the finest poets the valley has ever produced Shams Faqir and Rasool Mir.
One of the people who were instrumental in getting Bhosle to lend her voice to those songs, recalled Bhosle's confidence in recording in a language that she did not speak.
"I was amazed at the dedication and confidence of Ashaji in singing in Kashmiri. We had gone to her seeking an interview, since Asha Bhosle coming to visit Kashmir at that time was a big deal. But we later convinced her to sing in Kashmiri as well," says Pran Kishore Kaul, the erstwhile chief producer at Radio Kashmir's Srinagar station.
Kaul has since moved onto screen-writing and television, including a notable stint at the public broadcaster Doordarshan. Yet, to this day, he remembers how the recording process with Bhosle went.
"She, of course, did not understand Kashmiri. So she had someone narrate the lyrics to her and she wrote them down in the Devanagari script. The recording process was not so simple back then as it is now. But she immersed herself in the recording and ultimately, the songs came out good. After the songs were aired, she received a lot of love from Kashmiris. Whenever she went to handloom emporia and bought things like Kashmiri shawls, businessmen did not charge her anything, saying that the joy she spread with her Kashmiri renditions was enough for Kashmiris," Kaul fondly recalled.