Asha is fairly glamorous when she is on stage. Her performance avatar is blingy and the embodiment of granny-gone-glam. Embroidered and zari-worked saris, generally in pale pastel colours, are offset by gorgeous jewellery, her large bejewelled cuff with the long fringe of gems that swing with the movement of her arm a staunch favourite. Her wardrobe is planned as per the location of the concert and the weather. ‘I prefer white saris and pearls rather than diamonds.’

Her eyebrows are carefully drawn in, her bindi a visible dot of bright colour, her lips painted subtly. ‘Artistes must keep reinventing themselves. Whenever I go on stage, my hairstyle, bangles, and sari are appreciated. I started the trend of wearing a coat over my sari,’ a style that is still seen on runways at fashion showings today.

Many years ago, when she sang at a concert in London, ‘I was referred to as Madonna in a sari!’ And there is a fun element too when Asha performs. ‘One day I saw a magic show and thought of introducing tricks like that into my stage shows. Now I can make handkerchiefs disappear, or make burned cigarettes appear. It’s a sleight of hand that I learned!’

And when she is at home – most often making magic in the kitchen, singing as she cooks, she could be just another housewife and grandmother, albeit a glamorous one, from any small Maharashtrian community anywhere. ‘I have always been house-proud. Nobody disturbs me when I am singing, but after that there are things to be done, like planning the menu at home.’ Her inspiration, she once said, comes often from her home and family.

The story goes that when she was recording Sachin Dev Burman’s ‘Chhod do aanchal’ for Paying Guest (1956), ‘I was not getting the right expression in this song. So, Sachin dada told me to imagine that my husband was pulling my sari and how I would react to that. That gave me the right expression!’

The ease with which she was able to fit the song with the character it was sung by onscreen made her a musical chameleon, her success, as Ken Hunt, contributor to Rough Guide to World Music wrote, due to her uncanny ability to ‘change the colour of her voice. She is convincing as the ingénue, the matronly woman, or the old lady looking back wistfully.’

There is also the willingness to keep learning. She managed to switch from her native language, Marathi, in which she was initially trained, to Hindi. She absorbed enough Tamil to sing in that language, learned English from ‘Listen and Learn’ books and tapes and when in her seventies, started learning how to play the guitar. ‘If you are determined, you can do anything at any age,’ she has maintained.

But in carving her niche in the film world, her feet firmly based on the foundation of rather risqué –for the time – songs, there was a touch of discomfort, she has admitted. ‘When the lyrics were not in good taste, I felt uncomfortable. But not with the tunes, not ever. A song is a song, after all. If I sing a tawaif (courtesan) number, it does not mean I become one, right?’

And there is a triumphant feeling that shows when she says, ‘The same people who criticised me then now say I sing good numbers.’ Astonishingly, ‘Those who liked my music then were too young to buy my records. Today they are grown up and their children are listening to that music and I am still singing!’

Adaptability has perhaps always been Asha’s biggest plus point, apart from her voice. It comes from being aware of what life has to offer. ‘My mother used to say that a human being should not be like a frog in a well. The world is a vast place – and I remind myself of that all the time.’

Asha was a practical woman. As she told an interviewer, there was not much she could do besides sing to support her family. ‘I have not studied, so I couldn’t be a writer. I am not beautiful, so I couldn’t be an actor. But I could sing – I could sing anything. And all my pain disappears when I am in front of a microphone. Music is my favourite companion; it never lets me down. I may have been very naïve when I started and it was hard to understand how the industry worked. But rejection and ridicule pushed me on and finally I found success.’

Her music is now being heard in forms she could never have expected. The remix wave has taken much of the harmony and lyricism out of music as it had been composed and made it all about rhythm and a dance floor vibe.

‘No one can stop anyone from doing a remix,’ Asha said a few years ago. ‘But please, if you are doing remixes, be thoughtful towards the original; these days people are changing songs too much. Some remixes are good. The videos are often vulgar, and can change the original meaning of the song. But even that is okay. I wish, though, that the directors would pay more attention to the lyrics so that it supports the visualisation. The other day, for instance, I saw a remix of my song, “Chhod do aanchal”: the girls were in pant–shirt with no aanchal in sight!’

Excerpted with permission from Asha Bhosle – A Life in Music, Ramya Sarma, Manjul Publishing.

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