High priestess of change

How times change! When I was young (and I am no longer young) the expression used to be -- `The times, they are a'changing'.No longer. The t...

How times change! When I was young (and I am no longer young) the expression used to be — `The times, they are a’changing’.No longer. The times — they have changed. And how!

We have our dear Govinda, whose very appearance makes one go for the remote to change the TV Channel. The fellow has obliterated all distinction between the earthy, the vulgar and the obscene. For all the jokers, like yours truly, he looks like a retribution for past sins. And yet, he is one of the more successful of our actors. From Dilip Kumar to

Govinda — I tell you the times have really changed. But to talk of music and the High Priestess of change.

I recall a Bombay TV show Yeh Hain Asha‘, inspired, no doubt, by This is Lucy. It was a programme brimming with over-acting and spurious dramatic effects. The time was sometimes in the seventies when I was officially accepted as the drummer boy for the mighty Mangeshkars. Drummer boy or no drummer boy, my old-fashioned sense of decency and decorum was aroused to an extent that I went to town with the show. It lasted less than four episodes — a great victory for decency and the fourth estate, or so I thought.

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Asha Bhosle had other ideas. She did threaten to clip my hair for the heresy but beyond that she didn’t give a damn. Now more than two decades after my diatribe, here is Asha still singing to swooning youngsters and jealous peers.

What is the secret of Asha’s success? The most obvious, of course, is her amazing talent. She came to the world of background music because Lata spurned O.P. Nayar and he embraced Asha (I mean figuratively please!).

From then on, there has always been this undeclared war between the two sisters. The elder forever image-conscious, wrapped in white, deliberately low-key, slowly but surely scaling the peaks of public approval and acclaim. And Asha — aggressively flamboyant (remember, she used to wear an O.P. Nayar pendant predominantly around her neck for years?), not caring a whit about public esteem but always going for popular taste with gusto.

Knowing both the sisters at close quarters, one always had the feeling that Asha was a deliberate foil to Lata in everything, from singing to lifestyle.

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But listening to Asha today it is clear that apart from reacting to her older sister’s talent and success, Asha had a burning desire to excel Lata.

Whether she has excelled her badi didi or not, Asha seems set to outlive her in this lifetime. She has done that by her inner fire and her capacity to re-invent herself time and again.

While Asha Bhosle is having a ball with her current success one wishes her more success and many more incarnations.