Sukalpa Dhar, Kolkata: It was December month in Kolkata and the atmosphere was very pleasant. The sky was clear and blue. Not a single rain cloud could be visible. On December 8, 2019 the Times group had arranged a literature festival at Swabhumi, a cultural complex in Kolkata. The entry was free for all the visitors. We reached there after 12 noon. There were many volunteers present to help the visitors.
One of them handed us a printed piece of paper where the time and the name of the manchas (auditoriums) and programmes were mentioned. In the top left corner of the paper it was written TIMES litfest Kolkata December 8, 2019. It was printed in grey scale. It helped us to select our events and reach the venues in appropriate time.
There were numerous events taking place in the various venues simultaneously. There were five venues (i) Rang Darbar (ii) Rang Manch (iii) Raash Manch 1 (iv) Raash Manch 2 and (v) Workshop Venue. Many people had arrived to enjoy the events which were taking place in these darbars. My parents and I were no exceptions. The Times Litfest was a one day programme. It started at 10:30 AM and continued upto 6:00 PM.
At first we entered in the Rang Manch and there a programme had already been started. It was a Bengali session. The name of the programme was ‘Lekhok Kise Bhoe Pae’ (Bangla session). The guest was Mani Shankar Mukherjee. Mani Shankar Mukherjee was in conversation with Kalyan Moitra. He is popularly known as Shankar. Some of his popular books are ‘Chowringhee’ (novel), ‘Gharer Madhye Ghar’ (1962), ‘Kato Ajanare’ (novel) and many other. Discussions veered around who the writer is most scared of. Shankar after a lot of elaborate narrations ultimately concluded that a writer is actually afraid of himself. My mother, Kalpana Dhar Homchaudhuri went near Mani Shankar and gifted him her book ‘Amader Santiniketan’. I clicked a photograph of my mother with Mani Shankar.
After this event we were started visiting the other venues and kept exploring the events that were in progress there. In the process we attended a poet’s meet, a seminar on health issues and the stalls dispensing handicrafts, books etc. It was 5:00 pm and I was near Raash Manch 1 a programme named ‘Usha Uthup: Life of the pop star’ was about to start. We went to Raash Manch. When we entered the hall I found it was quite a big one. The room had air coolers by it’s sides. Suddenly, I saw Usha Uthup coming inside the hall. She came in and sat in one of the chairs in the first row placed in the audience’s side. She wore a tikli. She had clipped white flowers in her hair. She also wore a black coloured bindi with a Bengali letter ‘ক’ written on it. Here ‘ক’ denotes Kolkata. She was wearing a spectacle and a nose ring and a beautifully designed maroon coloured sari. She wore a beautiful silver necklace and silver ear rings too. She is very tall.
She has a vivid face. She has a very powerful voice and she rules over the stage and her audiences. Her flamboyant and dynamic voice can attract anyone and make them dance in it’s notes. She said she sings everyone’s songs which range from Kishore Kumar, Yasudas, Tom Jones, and many others. There was a request from the audience for the song ‘Bulleya’. I quickly went near her and asked her whether I can take a selfie with her. She happily agreed. I immediately took out my mobile phone and took a selfie and thanked her.
Then there was an interview which continued for more than an hour followed by an energetic and electrifying performance of Ms. Usha Uthup. The manch was quite a big one. When she invited everyone present there to come and join hands and dance in her tunes a few of the audience participated, I also joined them.
There were men, women, boys and girls of different age groups. We removed the plastic chairs in one side of the hall and held each other’s hands and formed a huge circle. We danced inside the manch (hall) holding each other’s hands. She sang quite a few numbers such as ‘Darling’, ‘Bulleya’, etc. She said she gets her energy from her audience.
Music is communication. It’s a horizontal two-way communication. There is a sender and a receiver. She shared her experiences with the audience. She said a good artist has to be a good camouflager. One should cover up one’s mistakes and never show it to the world.
She told her voice is completely different from any other voice. She said people know it very well that once upon a time there was a situation in India that it had got only six popular singers among millions of people in India. They were Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh and Manna Dey. There are innumerable singers nowadays. But during her time Lata Mungeshkar’s voice was held as a benchmark singing style and pattern. People were stereotyped about voice texture. They believed that in case of a girl a beautiful voice means she has to sound like Lata Mangeshkar or at least close to Lata Mangeshkar.
Usha Uthup had a completely different voice of her own. It was fresh, powerful, unique and completely unlike any others. She has got an X factor in her voice and style. She isn’t a typecast. Whenever she calls room service in hotels the person from the other end greets her as ‘Hello Sir’ or ‘Good morning Sir’. Even after knowing her the person from the other side calls her as ‘Sir’. Usha Uthup says a singer has to be an original one. She says that she hasn’t made her voice sound like that intentionally. She said that her voice is a powerful one. Originality always plays a vital role. The music which can relate a listener’s surrounding atmosphere can connect with the listener more easily. I think people fear from our Indian classical music because it is not made known to many of us clearly or appropriately. So it feels like as if it is unattainable or unreachable.
Music shouldn’t be a treated as a fearsome, dangerous or tough subject. According to me, any topic or subject on which one has a good knowledge or at least a vast knowledge doesn’t feel like scaring to him or her. Unknown creates fear. Unsuccessful attempts while doing anything creates frustration. She said she was exposed to lots of music when she was growing up. Her parents never had any objections to listen any kind of songs. In her early years she was exposed to a number of musicians Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Begum Akhtar, M S Subbulakshmi, Kishori Amonkar, Radio Ceylon and Vividh Bharati and many others.
She said nothing in her life was forced. Her USP is that without any formal training she could reach or touch the hearts of other people or her listeners. She started her musical journey in Trincas Restaurant & Bar at Park Street, Kolkata. She also met her husband in Trincas. According to her one should always dream big. She is a pure optimist. She said she is just like a tennis ball. The harder one throws it down the higher it bounces up. She had suffered from polio. She said that every woman’s issue is also a man’s issue because men and women are complementary to each other. She always says woman is shakti and overdose of shakti will always destroy everything. A healthy collaboration of man and woman is always a better solution.
Usha Uthup said that she has sung in 17 Indian languages and 8 foreign languages. She is very fond of languages. She learns different languages. She said she works hard in her pronunciations. She keeps on writing her songs and memorise them. She says nowadays singers used iphones and ipads where the lyrics of the songs are stored. She is very afraid of it because if unfortunately it gets hanged in the middle of a show or performance it will become very difficult for a singer to perform well. She always writes her songs.
Whenever she writes a message she always uses full form and never uses short form. Because she never believes in short form. She said whatever you want to express, say it right now and in details never in short form. Life has no guarantee. Usha Uthup said change is life. She keeps on reinventing herself. She said one has to try to reinvent oneself continuously.
We should upgrade our knowledge continuously and keep on updating ourselves every now and then to be a better person from yesterday. We should accumulate knowledge and meet more and more positive people and try to find out our true self. She says earlier there used to be analogue recordings with live musicians. If one committed any mistake then one has to record again from the beginning. Now we have many channels, mixtures, auto tuners. But the sweet flavour of analogue recording is missing nowadays. She said she had acted in quite a number of films too, such as ‘7 Khoon Maaf’ (2011), ‘Rocumentary: Evolution of Indian Rock’ (2018), and many others. The session ended up with the lovely numbers of Usha Uthup.