In Memorium: Asha Bhosle

This is a post I almost did not write.

A wound that will never heal and another that has been freshly cut open.

It is not easy to write about my mother. Will it invite pain that is constantly lingering under the surface? But I cannot think of one of them without thinking of the other. So write I must because they gave me so much together.

Two of my favourite people. Lives intertwined through the memories they created for me, and how they made up my world.

The Songs of Memories

I was introduced to songs and melody through the radio that was constantly playing in our kitchen. Ashaji’s voice filling the space, rising above the sounds of cooking and my mother rolling rotis as she sang along.

I would be loitering around, eating a banana, hopping-skippping a little, asking a random question, looking into the fridge again to see if it had somehow produced something yummy to eat a minute after I last checked.

As a kid, my existence started and ended with Aai. Along with her, the radio, the kitchen, and the food dominate my memories of these women. One readily available to hold and hug. And the other beckoning me through the ether.

There are some of Ashaji’s songs I associate with the friction of the spatula on the tawa from when Aai flipped perfectly round bhakris, and other songs that revolved around the room along with the hiss of tadka in the pan.

If the voice defined my childhood, my ear was shaped by Aai’s insights about Ashaji’s songs, and the cinematic situations they were sung in. She would describe them vividly, sometimes from having watched the movie and other times from her eye’s view of what they could have been. We barely watched television, so my imagination ran wild just hearing the song on the radio and Aai’s attempt at describing the settings. It made my appreciation for Ashaji’s voice sharper. Guided by Aai, I learnt to listen in between the lyrics.

Listening Live

As an appreciator of music, I have ever wanted to listen to only four people LIVE  — Pt Bhimsen Joshi, Pt Ravi Shankar, Ganasaraswati Kishori Amonkar and Asha Bhosle.

In 2007, I got the privilege of ticking her name off this list.

It was Aai and me at the concert in Pune. Ashaji was singing live after decades away, and it would be one of her last live performances. On the day, it rained heavily, and the venue was washed out. Ashaji appeared in person, assured us that the program would happen tomorrow, and that our tickets would hold good.

I took another leave from office without a second thought, and armed with umbrellas, we were back at the venue the next evening. It poured that evening too, testing everyone’s resolve. The venue was muddy, the chairs turned lopsided in the soft earth, and everyone was soaked. But they had eyes and ears for only one person. And Ashaji made us forget where we were soon enough.

Aai, who usually hated mud and slush, stood without complaint. Whether it was for me, Ashaji or herself, I will never know. It was my last concert with both of them in live attendance.

Ashaji sang as only she could before an adoring crowd. Rain, and instrument glitches notwithstanding. Her sadi with millions of shiny sequins dazzling us, her bracelet that swung in tune with the melody and a voice that spoke to you from deep within yourself.

I can almost taste that moment.

Meditative Melodies

I have not watched any of the hundreds of interviews she must’ve given, nor heard her speak at the music reality shows where she turned up as a judge.

I did not need to. Her songs were everything. They gave me a glimpse into her soul as much as they did into mine and my Aai’s. The little pauses before stressing a word in the lyrics, the extended ‘taan’ before arriving on cue at the ‘sam’, or the very slight change of tone in between lines. Aai would sing them back to me just as well.

It was the vocabulary of a language Ashaji shared with her listeners. You were rewarded only if you listened intentionally.

Her voice was pure perfection. You did not need a meditation practice in your life if you had Ashaji’s singing in your ear. It was the ultimate ascendancy into a higher form of consciousness.

How else can you describe her voice, holding a 6-year-old in thrall and the same voice mesmerizing that person at 28 years old?

The voice sat with you long after the audio cassette stopped spinning on the walkman or the radio station tuned off for the day, the music replaced by melancholic static.

In Her Own Category

Ashaji was no one, and Ashaji was everyone.

To this day, most of my writing is fueled by Ashaji’s songs on repeat. Her ghazals with Ghulam Ali in Meraj-e-Ghazal, her songs for composer Khayyam, her countless hits with O P Nayyar, the Burmans, Naushad, and C Ramchandra. An album of evergreen Marathi bhavgeet, natyasangeet and film songs with the Phadkes, her brother and Datta Davjekar, among others.

She was in a category of one.

Last

Every time I take a pause in between sentences or stop writing to listen to her particularly melodious piece, a little bit of Aai’s voice mingles in, telling me why listening to good music is her legacy.

And it reminds me why Ashaji is not the second best, as they say.

She is the only, just like Aai.