My songs resonate with life in all its splendid hues, for mine are the songs of “love and longing”.
I sing of the joys of union and the pangs of separation.
My songs are eternal, the quintessence of love and beauty.
Thumri is my life and my raison’d etre. I live and breathe the enchanted world of thumri.
I feel blessed to be a performer of thumri, dadra as it is the most sensuous and sublime of all genres of Hindustani classical music. Thumri is evocative and its provocative.
And therein lies its ability to captivate and to move the listeners.
My thumris are integral to the Indian heritage. They encapsulate the music of Banaras, Lucknow and Gaya. These are not mere cities on the Indian map; they are “a stream of consciousness”.
I revel in the role of the “nayika” of my thumris who is an enchantress and the enchanted both. She is femme fatale. She teases, cajoles, complains, and she surrenders. She is “all women” in her myriad moods. I absolutely adore the juxtaposition of the thumri protagonist in her anxious waiting for the beloved and the subsequent throes of passion on their union and the separation that comes out in the heart wrenching lyrics of Thumri…. Only to meet again!
To me, Gauhar Jaan was the ultimate diva! She had the taleem, the taiyari and the taseer as they say (the training, the competence and the ability to mesmerize her audience).
Music is a state of sheer “ABANDON”. An artist must submit to her music and experience a mystic and magical union with it. Music must span the terrestrial to the celestial.
If I had to rewrite the script of my life, I would choose to be a Thumri diva again and yet again…