New Delhi: Ladakh based activists Sonam Wangchuk The region is “oscillating between trust and distrust” due to the delay in the next round of talks with the Centre, it said on Monday, warning that a prolonged gap risks deepening divisions in the sensitive border area.In a post on X, Wangchuk said that more than two months have passed since the last round of talks on February 4, with no new date announced. “People have become frustrated and demoralized in this sensitive border area,” he said, urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to take “timely measures” to resolve the issues.He also warned that the delay was allowing “shadowy entities” to “sow the seeds of Leh-Kargil (Buddhist-Muslim) divide”, raising concerns over social cohesion in the Union Territory.

Cancellation of house arrest raised hopes, but talks stalled

Wangchuk pointed out that it has been a month since his detention under the National Security Act (NSA) was revoked on March 14, a move that had raised hopes of “building mutual trust” and starting “constructive and meaningful dialogue”.He was detained by the government citing law and order concerns following the unrest in Leh in September 2025. His release came with the Centre’s assurance about continued engagement with stakeholders in Ladakh.

Demands remain intact amid calls for flexible talks

Ladakhi groups, including the Leh apex body, have been pressing for statehood and Sixth Schedule status, with Wangchuk saying the demand comes under the Constitution. He has advocated a “flexible approach” to the talks, urging both sides to avoid a “win-lose” outcome.The first round of talks, including October and February meetings between Ladakhi representatives and the Union Home Ministry panel, remained inconclusive, leading to calls for fresh talks.The government has said it is committed to addressing the concerns of Ladakh through dialogue and mechanisms such as the High Powered Committee. It emphasizes the need to maintain peace, stability and mutual trust in the region.

Asha BhosleWhose voice evoked the rebellious tones of desire and abandonment in Hindi film music at a time when such qualities were frowned upon in cinema and society, overshadowed the looming shadow of its peerless sister. Lata Mangeshkar The versatile music empress, whose voice is subconsciously a part of every Indian’s emotional collection, passed away on Sunday. She was 92 years old. Asha Tai, as she was fondly called, was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai on Saturday after suffering from exhaustion and a chest infection. A Dadasaheb Phalke recipient, his career spanned nearly eight decades and over 11,000 songs; He gave his best performance under the guidance of OP Nayyar and RD Burman. From duets (especially with Kishore Kumar), bhajans, ghazals, qawwali, disco, indie-pop, Bhosale not only sang for every possible genre, but she was a master of them all, enthralling Gen Now and Gen Nehru alike. He once said, “All singers are actors. We just act with our voices.” His voice was the ideological opposite of his sister’s voice. At its core, Lata’s voice expressed decency and goodness, attributes tailor-made for civilized leading ladies in the 1950s and ’60s, while Asha’s embodied disaffection made room for celluloid social outsiders like cabaret dancers and gangster girls. No one adapted to changing trends better. And no one has defied age like him. It’s hardly believable that even in 2026, he collaborated with a virtual British band Gorillaz. An era has ended. But Asha Bhosle is forever. avijit ghosh Asha Bhosle, whose voice underlined the rebellious tones of desire and abandonment in Hindi film music at a time when such qualities were frowned upon in cinema and society, who transcended the looming shadow of her peerless sister Lata Mangeshkar to become a versatile music empress, and whose voice is subconsciously part of every Indian’s emotional archive, died on Sunday. She was 92 years old. Asha Tai, as she was fondly called, was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai on Saturday after suffering from exhaustion and a chest infection. A Dadasaheb Phalke recipient, his career spanned nearly eight decades and over 11,000 songs; He gave his best performance under the guidance of OP Nayyar and RD Burman. From duets (especially with Kishore Kumar), bhajans, ghazals, qawwali, disco, indie-pop, Bhosale not only sang for every possible genre, but she was a master of them all, enthralling Gen Now and Gen Nehru alike. He once said, “All singers are actors. We just act with our voices.” His voice was the ideological opposite of his sister’s voice. At its core, Lata’s voice expressed decency and goodness, attributes tailor-made for civilized leading ladies in the 1950s and ’60s, while Asha’s embodied disaffection made room for celluloid social outsiders like cabaret dancers and gangster girls. No one adapted to changing trends better. And no one has defied age like him. It’s hardly believable that even in 2026, he collaborated with a virtual British band Gorillaz. An era has ended. But Asha Bhosle is forever.

There are singers who belong to an era, and then there are Asha BhosleOne that treated decades as passing trends that it would dip into and then outrun. Bhosle was a singer and was entertaining great singers of pop and jazz long before the internet became accessible. She said in an interview, “I watched Carmen Miranda a lot and tried to copy her style, as I later did with Shirley Bassey.“ Asha Tai, who wore thick sarees and loved making her signature ‘maa ki dal’ and jaggery kheer, was the same woman who watched Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’ thrice for ‘Eena Meena Deeka’; who received a letter from the Vatican for the singing of ‘Ave Maria’; And in the 1980s, he became the first Indian singer to form a pop group in Britain named West India Company. At a time when playback voices in India were still neatly boxed – classical, romantic, devotional – Bhosle was slipping between them. Trained in Hindustani classical music, he said, “If you have the will and the passion… you can sing anything.” She strayed into cabaret, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and global pop long before the industry had decided what to call any of it.

As many stories say, the turning point came with the Burman family. SD Burman was the first to show him how to add his ‘input’ to a track to make it play, but it all started with RD Burman, when both of them would sit till 4 in the morning, listening to jazz and rock. When he handed him ‘Aaja Aaja’ for ‘Teesri Manzil’, he is said to have objected to its western swag. This was not a tune that you could understand as a ghazal. It required breathless phrases and limp shrugs. After ten days of rehearsals, he took such ownership of it so completely that it now felt as if it had always been his. That became a pattern. Be it the smoky, rhythmic breath of ‘Piya Tu Ab To Aaja’ or the pop-ballad ease of ‘Chura Liya Hai’, Bhosle could adjust her vocals to match every mood. By the 1990s, when ‘crossover’ became a buzzword, she was already living it. Of his entry into the West India Company he said, “I told my son Anand, I have sung in practically every Indian language, but I have not sung in English.” It was a leap into the unknown that would have intimidated a younger artist. He said of merging Indian vocals with Western club rhythms and electronic music, “Although the music was ready, there was no fixed tune to sing. I created my own beats and melodies.” This ability to improvise allowed him to record ‘Bow Down Mister’ with Boy George, where Indian devotional style met synth-heavy pop. This could have been a drama. Instead, it seemed like a natural extension of what she’d always done with unaffected ease. At the age of 64, she stepped into the spotlight of MTV. She teamed up with Code Red for the song ‘We Can Make It’ and appeared in a music video, matching the boy band and their R&B groove with her silk saree and alopecia. Soon after, she appeared on ‘The Way You Dream’ with REM’s Michael Stipe for his project ‘1 Giant Leap’, this track moved to Hollywood with the 2003 action-comedy film ‘Bulletproof Monk’. Bhonsle did not so much cross the border from east to west as do it on equal terms. Cornershop’s ‘Brimful of Hope’ turned him into a cultural reference point, later remixed by Fatboy Slim. The Black Eyed Peas weave their sound into 2000s hip-hop on ‘Don’t Funk With My Heart’. Sarah Brightman takes ‘Dil Cheez Kya Hai’ to operatic pop. In 2005, the Kronos Quartet created an album around them, ‘You’ve Stolen My Heart’. They recorded RD Burman classics at such a pace – three to four songs a day – that the quartet struggled to keep up. This earned him a Grammy nomination. Even in her later years, she seemed game for unlikely pairings, be it a duet with cricketer Brett Lee or a collaboration with Pakistani pop singer Jawad Ahmed that ignored the politics of the times. Which brings us to 2026. Bhosale, now in her nineties, is recording ‘The Shadowy Light’ from her Pedder Road home for genre-blurring British virtual band Gorillaz – her sound a blend of hip-hop, dub and electronica, with a vintage harmonium in the mix – which will be her final collaboration.