Singer Shamshad Begum, whose lilting voice charmed fans of Bollywood films for more than 60 years, has died at the age of 94. The singer's daughter Usha Ratra told local media that Begum died in Mumbai on Tuesday after a period of declining health. "The golden voice of Shamshad Begum, play back singer of great eminence in some of the most historic film songs .. now silent ..

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a German-born novelist whose fiction was set largely in India and who gained her greatest acclaim as a two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter with the Merchant-Ivory filmmaking team, died April 3 at her home in New York City. She was 85. She had a pulmonary disorder, said James Ivory, the film director who had worked with Jhabvala since the early 1960s.

– LEMONT, Ill The Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago here celebrated Nataraja, the Lord of Dance, March 10 to observe Maha Shivaratri with a cultural program that saw wide participation from across Chicagoland. Classical styles from both South and North India were represented, a press release said, as well as old devotional songs rendered through contemporary fusion.

Lena Golden, senior director of digital content for The Weather Company and a former senior vice president at CNN International and CNN.com, died in her Atlanta, Ga., home after a two-year battle with Lymphoma. She was 51 and is survived by her husband Rob Golden, and two children - daughter, Sabrina, and son Adam.

Former video jockey Sophiya Haque died in a London hospital Jan. 16 after having been diagnosed with cancer two weeks earlier. She was 41. Haque, who shot to fame in the 90s as a VJ on MTV India, moved to Mumbai in 1997, when she began appearing in Bollywood films. Haque acted in films like “The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey,” “Pehli Nazar Ka Pehla Pyaar: Love at First Sight” and  “Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors.

Sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar, who helped introduce the sitar to the Western world through his collaborations with The Beatles, died in Southern California on Tuesday, his family said. He was 92. Shankar, a three-time Grammy winner with legendary appearances at the 1967 Monterey Festival and at Woodstock, had been in fragile health for several years and last Thursday underwent surgery, his family said in a statement.

It’s the million-dollar question, and not only here in the U.K. Jacintha Saldanha — one of the nurses taken in by the prank phone call to the hospital where Catherine, duchess of Cambridge, was being treated for acute morning sickness — killed herself early Friday. And we are all left scratching our heads. Why did she do it? Of course, the first thing we all wonder is about her mental stability.