RMIM Archive Article "254".


From the RMIM Article Archive maintained by Satish Subramanian

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# RMIM Archives..
# Subject: Asha Bhosle
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# Source: G magazine (http://www.chitralekha.com)
# Author: Varsha Bhosle
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----------------------------------------------------------------- Asha Bhosle by Varsha Bhosle ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hers is a profile of true grit. Emerging out of the shadows of a sibling who is an undisputed Titan, conquering personal vicissi- tudes, Asha Bhonsle's career is a triumph of spirit and courage. Her daughter Varsha Bhonsle pays a brutally honest, uncloying, yet touching tribute to the woman she terms, Saturday's child. (Friday's child is warm and giving, Saturday's child works hard for a living...) The earliest memory I have of my mother - Mrs. Asha Bhonsle to you - is a fleeting montage of door-bells rung very late in the night, a sobbing woman hugging me back to sleep, the strains of strange, repetitive ringing emanating from behind a closed door. I bang on the door wanting to go in, but am roughly pulled away by a man when the music threatens to cease. Later, I learned that that was a routine day in the life of my father, guarding my mother against all impediment which may have prevented her from singing for their supper. I have erased my father from my memory, and with him, some of my own childhood; a defense mechanism, peo- ple call it. Mother came into her own quite suddenly. One day it struck her that her third, and advanced state of pregnancy may not be able to sustain the daily dose of bashing that came her way. She left behind every single she had earned, her bungalow, her car, even her clothes, and sought refuge with Mangeshkar, her mother. Of course, there were instant theories in the industry about this `desertion'. From now I am on safe ground: I do not have to rely on hearsay. However, my memories of my mother are still not that bright. She has to work twice as hard, as she has to rebuild from scratch and there is one more mouth to feed. Although she was always there to make our home, put us through school, spoil us with luxuries and take us on outings, I never had enough of her. How a single- parent manages to merge the roles of provider and home-maker is beyond my comprehension. Much later, I asked her, you had the security of the roof of your mother, your sisters; what was the rush to set up your own house? Instead, couldn't you have given us more time?" Without missing a beat she replied, "Never again did I want to be at the mercy of anyone else. It would have been equally harmful for you three. You had to grow up in your own home, with the freedom I alone sanctioned." We did, we did. After setting up independently, rebelled a textbook kind of rebellion. Much more than today, the film industry, like our society at large, was saturated with prejudices, hypocrisy and factions. And it wasn't surprising that Asha Bhonsle was branded a fallen woman. It certainly didn't help when the closest compar- able rival was her own sister, the ethereal Lata Mangeshkar. Soon, choice assignments were withdrawn and a conspiracy of silence manifested itself into her career. But if anyone so much as suggested something to alleviate the situation, you could bank on Asha Bhonsle to do the opposite. After more than a decade of suppression, and of keeping the shame of her squalid married life from her family and colleagues, she simply revelled in her abso- lute freedom. What still fascinates me is the total honesty and fearlessness with which she lived, as if to say, "My life is an open book, make what you will out of it". It's accepted that one needs to humanise a hero in order to understand and truly appre- ciate him, the corollary to which may be that anidol admitting to be made entirely of clay, as they all mustbe, is soon relegated to the pits. Whatever others may say, I remain convinced that her being gen- erally type-cast by music-directors as the perennial cabaret, or singer is a fall-out of her early life. I am hardly qualified to comment on music, but one fact is undeniable like any other extraordinary singer, she excelled in all genres, but Hindi film- makers were ticklish about giving their epitomes of Indian woman- hood, the voice of this rather camp personality. If the character was `westernised', her voice was that of Asha. The label stuck just at the time when the most memorable music was being composed for the Indian heroine. Curiously, the Marathi, Bengali and Gujarati music industries were totally unaffected by any of these tags: some of her best heroine-songs of that period are in these languages. At the risk of appearing politically incorrect, I have to say that it speaks volumes about certain regional-culture and sensitivity. Moreover, what a coincidence that just around the time of hermar- riage to R.D. Burman, the `cabaret-singer' label was replaced by the respectable `versatile'. I grit my teetheach time I hear it. Just another label signifying nothing. If I were to sum up my mother in one word, it would have to be `wilfulness' or `obstinacy' doesn't quite connote the shades of determination, and readiness to toil that I associate with it and her. The more formidable the issue, the harder she applies herself to it. Like her venture into the English music world as a member ofthe pop-group The West India Company, formed with Steven Luscombe of Blancmange. One fine day, Anand casually informed her that he had he had finalised the deal, and that in a month she would have to: compose, sing, interact with British musicians and technicians, give live interviews on radio, appear on television - and all this in English, in England. For a middle-aged person who had never been to school, let alone spoken a complete English sen- tence, this, I thought, was an impossibility. I was appalled. I had the stomach runs for a month, while she diligently rose at four a.m., donned her walkman and heard ` Spoken English' cassettes for hours. Well, she did it all: entered the Top-20 charts with her song `Ave Maria', appeared on British and German television shows, spoke lucidly on radio, addressed the British press, all with her usual unfazed panache. Her spirit reaches dizzying heights during concert tours. In 1989, she underwent the most rigorous schedule ever devised, dur- ing the USA tour. We had to play 13 cities in 20 days,which entailed cross-country flights taken barely a few hours after the completion of each show. Every musician was sapped by the time we boarded the plane immediately after the last concert in Houston. We were on our way for yet another gig in Stockholm, Sweden. This journey was the proverbial last straw: suffered a massive attack of colitis, together with fever, cough and weakness. The very first result of even one of these complaints is trem- bling of the voice, which then `splits' into two. At the pre- concert crisis meeting, it was short of cancelling the gig, the only way out was that the orchestra play umpteen instrumental tracks, the accompanying singers (Suresh Wadkarand yours truly) shoulder the load, and the billed star make a cursory appearance. Which would, no doubt, have led to a riot. Hereupon my multiple visits to the toilet commenced. At the stage-wings that evening, our band-conductor approached me with the news that Asha had rejected all such `insane' proposals; she would sing exactly what the audience had to come to hear. I must add here that most of Asha's hits, like etc, sound `frothy' and `airy' it is only when a lesser singer attempts them that one can gauge the tremendous breath-control and pitch modulation required for these non-classical, hence `lightweight', songs. It is solely her mastery that makes them seem so easy to execute. Anyway, I had been clutching at the misguided belief that the turnout in any city of Continental Europe would be less than moderate. But, as it must happen at such times, the whole show was a sell-out. The hall was packed with Indian and Pakistani expatriates when started with her first set of six songs. I could recognise the strain in the moments when she suddenly dropped the volume or signalled the violinist to join in. All I could do was deliver glasses of glucose to the stage. At best, it was an indifferent performance; I couldn't blame the audience for its lack of response. Before the start of the second set of songs, a lone voice cried out from the audience, "Asha - please sing a Marathi song. We've come a long way for it." She hummed the open- ing lines of a song which roughly transalates as "I'm also so very tired of this endless dancing, oh Lord..." I have yet to accept what happened in that flash. Perhaps it was a case of putting mind over matter. Or, perhaps she heard, under- stood and experienced the words like never before. Or, maybe the Conductor in the sky decided that she had been tested enough. Her eyes were closed, both hands clenching the microphone, as she crooned or belted out the stanzas as the mood gripped her. The notes and words seemed to swirl in a lazy vortex around the stage, gently eroding even the mildest defence in their path, till all was one pristine, homo-centric entity. I remember crying unashamedly, and a moist-eyed Suresh hugging me whilst murmuring things like "There will never be another like her; how can she conjure such magic, against such odds; how do they do it?" There was absolute silence when the song finally ended. And then, very slowly, as if gradually awakening froma stupor, the claps and encores started, building up to such a crescendo that the audito- rium virtually erupted. I was shocked after all, it wasn't a predominantly Maharashtri anaudience. But, that is the power of music. It is the last remaining frontier where complete harmony exists amongst people of all castes, religions and languages. From that point of time, the concert gained a momentum of its own: wecould do nothing to curb it, and Asha Bhonsle could do nothing wrong. What did happen to the colitis, fever etc? She was in bed for a full month, recuperating from over-exertion. But that was after- wards. Ater all committments had been honourably discharged. -----------------------------------------------------------------
From the RMIM Article Archive maintained by Satish Subramanian