This is what Varsha Bhosle, the daughter of playback singing legend Asha Bhosle, wrote about her famous mother. Varsha committed suicide on October 8 by shooting herself in the head. This article was first carried by the Gentlemen magazine in September 1993. It was later reproduced by the web portal rediff.com.
"The earliest memory I have of my mother, Mrs Asha Bhosle, is a fleeting montage of doorbells rung very late in the night, a sobbing woman hugging me back to sleep, the strains of strange, repetitive singing emanating from behind a closed door... I bang on the door wanting to go in, but am roughly pulled away by a man when the music threatens to cease. Later, I learned that that was a routine day in the life of my father: guarding Aai against all impediment which may have prevented her from singing for their supper.
I have erased my father from my memory, and with him, some of my own childhood: a defence mechanism, people call it. From the sordid tales I hear from our old cook, I must have desperately needed to do it. Suffice to say that it is the stuff which has fed scriptwriters and novelists from time immemorial, of indignities heaped upon submissive womanhood.
Aai came into her own quite suddenly. One day it struck her that her third and advanced state of pregnancy may not be able to sustain the daily dose of bashing that was her lot....
This is an excerpt from Rediff. The entire article can be read at rediff.com.
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