Asha's Filmfare winning song that was never picturised!

Do you know that Asha Bhosle won the Filmfare Best Singer award of 1974 for a playback song that did not figure in the movie at all?
The award was for 'Chain se hum ko kabhi aap ne jeene na diyaa', the last song she sang for composer O P Nayyar which was supposed to be used in the movie 'Pran Jaye Par Vachan Na Jaye' but was not done.
This interesting fact figures in music historian Raju Bharatan's new book 'Asha Bhosle: A Musical Biography', published by Hay House.
Also soon after her marriage to Bhosle, Asha wanted to give up singing and just be a housewife.

"All that I sought, the, was to keep house and play the mother to my first-born: Hemant. But my husband would not hear of my giving up the mike. He forced me to continue singing. Left to myself, I would have definitely quit," the author quotes Asha as saying.
On the Filmfare award thing, he says, "In fact I don't think that this feat of hers has been matched by any singer in the world."

He terms the song as a torch song recorded as we were set to move into the Asha-OP 'cut-off' month of August 1972.
"It was recorded during an hour in which both Asha and OP knew that they were through. Yet, at the end of it all, there was always in this remorse that you could not retrieve...," he writes.

Soon Asha and Nayyar parted ways after an association of 15 years.
The song, penned by S H Bihari, was first played in November 1973 on Radio Ceylon and the film which was supposed to picturise it was released on January 18, 1974.
And when the Filmfare awards ceremony came to be held in March 1975, Asha had no motivation left to receive her prize. Bharatan cites another anecdote connected with the episode.
Anticipating Asha's absence, Nayyar in a "malicious manoeuvre calculated to rile her" telephoned the Filmfare editor to say that he would be happy as the song's composer to receive the award on "behalf of his best lady singer ever".

So why a book on Asha with special focus on her
association with Nayyar and the Burmans?
"From the outset, I was clear in my mind that this book intrinsically, is going to be about Asha vis-a-vis OP, SD and RD. Individually, OP, SD and RD have been written about extensively. But no one has attempted a book that places SD at the 'traditional' Asha core while having OP modernising her, in one era, and RD revolutionising her in another age.
...Therefore, a book on Asha Bhosle woven around these three - even while spanning the full range of film music and film music makers - has to be different. It necessarily has to offer personalised glimpses into a chain of events," the author says.

An Asha-OP recording had the look of a romantic interlude, according to him.
"The two might not have been exactly ennobling to watch but they cared two hoots for what the world thought of them. Come to think of it, never was Asha selective even about with whom she mixed in the recording room. Maybe such an approach was in harmony with Asha's audacious outlook."
Bharatan, who has previously authored 'Lata Mangeshkar: A Biography' (1995); 'A Journey Down Melody Lane' (2010); and 'Naushadnama: The Life and Music of Naushad' (2013), gives enthralling behind-the-scenes happenings that shaped the advance of Asha with a remarkable range and a noteworthy body of work.

This book captures Asha in her numberless shades. It is about how - in her silken rivalry with elder sister Lata Mangeshkar - she moved with panache from Nayyar to the Burmans. It is about how she served a galaxy of composers; about how, in the end, she reached the pinnacle all by herself. Against odds that would have driven any other woman into quitting.
No quitter ever, Asha, as the supernova supreme, just went on to underline the adage: 'No power like woman power'.
The book is also replete with a great number of statistics related to singers and musicians like Asha sang 324 Nayyar compositions, much more than Geeta Dutt's 62 and Shamshad Begum's 39.

Asha sang 840 R D Burman compositions and a staggering 880 songs with Mohammad Rafi and 656 duets with Kishore Kumar. He also claims that Asha sang 7595 film songs, more than Lata's total of 6541 songs.
According to him, Asha's first film song is 'Gareeebon ke data gareebon ke waali' rendered along with Zohrabai Ambalewali for the 1947 film 'Andhoki Duniya' and not 'Saawan aaya' from 'Chunaria' (1948) as is widely believed.