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nyone who has spent time around her will know that her passion for cooking extends well beyond Asha’s, the chain currently with restaurants in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Newhall Street, Birmingham. She has a respect for food and good ingredients. There is a joke chez Bhosle about how it is OK to criticise her voice, criticise her singing, but do not criticise her cooking. When she was making You’ve Stolen My Heart – the collection of Hindi and Bengali com- positions by RD Burman with the Kronos Quartet – in Marin County, north of the San Francisco Bay, she personally cooked the meal for the wrap. Her daughter-in-law Santosh told me that she had got stuck into preparing everything well before the rest of the family was up.
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“All the time during the recording sessions in Bombay, apart from the first day when she saw me eating catered food, she would cook herself every morning and bring food and serve me herself like [I were] a little child, like a friend. Herself, she’d sit and see me eat. Then there were exchanges on the phone between Dubai, America and India. My wife and she are exchanging recipes. They’ve become good friends.”
The album completed, the next big step was touring Naina
Lagai Ke. The first three concerts took place in England. When going on stage audiences overlook or never realise those small acts of bravery that musicians commit each time when overcoming pre-stage nerves, feelings about inadequacy or, the big one, get- ting rumbled. “Every time, every show I get very nervous,” she admits, looking me straight in the eye, “afraid that I won’t be good, afraid that I’ll forget this or that even after so many years. But not once I’m on the stage. I get on it and…” She clicks her fin- gers in affirmation.
I have watched her at close quarters. Once in Amsterdam there were just three of us at the side of the stage – her, her son Anand and me. Oblivious to me a few paces away, she charged up her energy levels before stepping into the lights. There is some- thing, I tell her, that happens on stage. It is as if she grows in height. It’s not just wearing her stage saris. “My height?” she gig- gles but she locks eyes. “The stage gives you something. It gives you strength. When I go on stage I know this is my career, my call- ing. It gives me strength and I become very alert. I may be talking, telling jokes, dancing and everything but the stage is something else. Marathi has a saying: the stage is like a goddess. When we go on stage first we touch the ground. It’s not a [theatrical] custom. We think that the stage is a god. It’s a sign of respect.” “You can see that when she’s performing,” interjects Anand, “she doesn’t wear anything on her feet.” Once on stage she deftly flicks her chappals (sandals) off her feet and under the dais. Responding to this observation, she agrees, “Because when you’re touching the stage it’s almost holy.”
“She was nervous to begin with,” Shujaat smiles. “‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ Ah, c’mon, you’re Asha!” he declares, though one suspects he would not have dropped the ji honorific suffix conveying respect. “You see, us classical musicians, she teas- es us because classical musicians are really snobbish about who they are. As opposed to film musicians. ‘Classical musicians, you can do things ten different ways!’ That’s not true. Her base and her background are in classical music. She can do anything she wants to do if she puts her mind to it. There are times when she can be a little nervous but also there is her experience. Once she gets on there after a million stage shows, she’s up there. I feel the same way. All of us are on tenterhooks in the green room. I walk on and that’s my world. This [doing interviews] is not my world. I’m doing this because this is what is asked of an artist now: to talk about his music. At the end of the day what Shujaat should be heard doing is playing the sitar.”
Of course, on stage things can go awry. Shujaat returns to a culinary image: “You cook one day and it’s a beautiful dish and it turns out too spicy. Too bad. Put some yogurt in and have it.” That is the beauty of cooking and live music-making. You think you’re working with the same ingredients but you know the recipe can never quite work the same.
With thanks to Anand Bhosle, Atul Churamani, Sareata Gind- ha and Scheherezade King at Saregama. Photography: Janio Edwards of GDM, courtesy of Saregama.
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