The wonderful duets from Jaalsaaz have been uled before on the KK forum--here is the Asha solo from the film. It is interesting to note the 2 beginnings of the song. In a small way it reflects Ashaji's career and the way she often had to sing. The song begins with a girl singing and dancing on the road. She has hardly completed the mukhda when our heroine imaginative as usual and labouring under severe mental strife relates to the lyrics and pictures herself singing the song. She decides to start from the very beginning as it were. The difference in Ashaji's style and voice is so apparent. While the lyrics are the same the first voice was for someone singing on the road for money, an unimportant character, a dancing girl etc etc etc. There is a little bit of harshness and lack of sophistication in that part of the song which changes the minute it gets picturised on the heroine. This has been the bane of Ashaji's career often. Irrespective of the fact that she made the best of what she got and took it to the level of art and made a mark in the history of HFM and the hearts of music lovers, the fact remains that often she has had to compromise her own musical talent. It is only now that we are seeing in films the shades of grey--heroines who are human and not epitomes of goodness and self sacrifice, other women (and all who belong to that 'secondary' category in our films) who are not all bad and scheming and heartless (except in the last scene where they take the bullet or chaku wound and die for love!!!). Ashaji has sung countless songs where her voice and singing are soft, gentle and indescribably beautiful but for a large part of her career in the big budget films that got noticed she has been the voice of the 'lesser' characters and hence has had to adapt her voice and style to a generation that had a certain mindset about how such singing should be.
Anyway enough of my treatise.

PS MD N Dutta