comprehension. Much later, I asked her, "Aai, you had the security of the roof of your own mother, your sisters -- what was the big 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, and with the freedom I alone could sanction". We did, we did.
After setting up independently, Aai rebelled a textbook kind of rebellion. Much more than today, the film industry -- like our society at large -- was saturated with prejudice, hypocrisy and factionism -- and Asha Bhosle had tacitly been branded a fallen woman. It certainly didn't help when the closest comparable rival was her own sister, the ethereal Miss Lata Mangeshkar. Soon, choice assignments were withdrawn, and a conspiracy of silence manifested itself into Aai's musical career... But, if anyone so much as suggested something to alleviate the situation, you could bank on Asha Bhosle 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 absolute 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 of it what you will."
It's accepted that one needs to humanise a hero in order to understand and truly appreciate him; the corollary to which may be that an idol admitting to be made entirely of clay, as they all must be, is soon relegated to the tar-pits. Whatever others may say, I'm convinced that her being typecast by music directors as the perennial cabaret/ mujra/ qawwali singer is a fallout o ..... |
