“If we play her songs one by one, we could hear her for a month and never hear the same song again,” Kajol said Sunday on Twitter. “Prolific and profound.”
Ms. Mangeshkar also had a career as a live performer, usually appearing onstage in an understated white or cream-colored sari. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was said to have been moved to tears by her rendering of a patriotic Hindi song, “Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon,” after India’s war with China in 1962.
“She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled,” Mr. Modi said Sunday on Twitter. Ms. Mangeshkar was an early supporter of Mr. Modi.
Lata Mangeshkar was born on Sept. 28, 1929, in the city of Indore, in what is now the state of Madhya Pradesh. She was the oldest of five children born to Shuddhamati Mangeshkar and her husband, Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar, a well-known classical musician active in Marathi-language theater. Her sisters Meena, Asha and Usha and her brother, Hridaynath, all of whom survive her, are also musicians.
The family was prosperous at first, living in a large house in the city of Sangli, in what is now the state of Maharashtra. Her father was her first music teacher, and she acted in a few plays as a child, though her father was reluctant to let his daughters appear onstage. Ms. Mangeshkar spent much of her childhood on the road, as the family accompanied her father’s theater company on tour across the region.
In the 2009 book, “Lata Mangeshkar … in Her Own Voice,” written by Nasreen Munni Kabir, Ms. Mangeshkar said she gave up formal education on her first day of school. She had brought her 10-month-old sister, Asha, with her, and the teacher refused to allow the baby into the classroom, she said.
