India declares two days of national mourning after death of 'Melody Queen' Lata Mangeshkar

India has declared two days of national mourning following the death of Lata Mangeshkar, one of the country's most prolific singers revered as the "Nightingale of India".

Her voice recognised by a billion people in South Asia, Mangeshkar died in hospital aged 92 having been hospitalised with Covid last month.

Tributes and messages of condolences flooded in for the star, who for nearly eight decades provided the soundtrack to many of India's Bollywood blockbusters - actors in the movies would lip-sync her songs.

“I am anguished beyond words,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet.

“She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled. The coming generations will remember her as a stalwart of Indian culture, whose melodious voice had an unparalleled ability to mesmerize people.”

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Revered as the “Melody Queen”, Mangeshkar will be given a state funeral and the country’s flag will fly at half-mast, the public broadcaster Doordarshan said on Twitter.

Mangeshkar’s songs, always filled with emotion, were often sad and mostly dealt with unrequited love, but others involved national pride.

The voice of more than 5,000 songs in Bollywood

Born in Maharashtra on September 28, 1929, Mangeshkar first sang at religious gatherings with her father, who was also a trained singer.

After she moved to Mumbai, India’s film industry capital, she became a star with immense popular appeal, enchanting audiences with her smooth but sharp voice and immortalizing Hindi music for decades to come.

Few musicians defined singing versatility like Mangeshkar, who issued her debut song in 1942 for a Bollywood film when she was just 13.

Soon after, she became an icon of Hindi singing, lending her voice to more than 5,000 songs in over a thousand Bollywood and regional language films. She sang for Bollywood’s earliest stars Madhubala and Meena Kumari and later went on to give voice to the industry’s modern celebrities like Priyanka Chopra.

Mangeshkar was still in her twenties in the late 1950s when she had already been established as one of the best playback singers in India.

But her career-defining moment came in the epic historical “Mughal-e-Azam,” a romantic tragedy that was released in 1960. The film's iconic song “Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya?” (Why fear if you are in love?) is considered one of the defining songs in Bollywood films, one that over decades has become an undisputed epitome of love’s often rebellious nature.

Throughout her career, Mangeshkar worked with nearly all legendary Indian music directors, including the duo Madan Mohan, Naushad, SD Burman, RD Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and A.R. Rahman, selling tens of millions of records.

She also won dozens of singing awards, earning her a near saint-like status in the Bollywood music industry.

“I can’t believe I’ve been tolerated by music lovers for 75 years!” she said last year in an interview with the news website Rediff.

Mangeshkar’s popularity extended far beyond India. She was celebrated not only in neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh, but was also known more globally.

In 2001, she was awarded the “Bharat Ratna,” India’s highest civilian honor. The government of France conferred on her its highest civilian award, “Officier de la Legion d’Honneur,” in 2007.

Mangeshkar never married. She is survived by her four siblings, all accomplished singers and musicians.