ASHA KI KOI UMAR NAHI HOTI, ASHA AMAR HOTI HAI

In my 70 odd years,i have a very strong feeling that the God i firmly believe in has an identity crisis once in a way -ALI PETER JOHN

He feels the necessity of proving that he is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient .

He has also to prove that he is not a partial God and that he can stilll create human beings in his likeness .

And that is why when he feels suffocated of creating the routine kind of his creation ,he feels the absolute necessity of creating someone extraordinary.

It has happened in the past and it will continue to happen if both God and man have to survive ....

It was something like a similar situation in September 1933. The world was going through very prime times .

The dark clouds of war were hovering all over the sky and God was worried about the future of the world he had created with so much of love.

He was not satisfied with his creation and was spending sleepless nights when he thought of creating a woman who would be a bright ray of hope and would be born in a family where music was a religion and in a family in a country callled India .

That creation of God is Asha Bhosle whose bright ray of hope has been shining all over the world for more than 60 years and both human beings and God are stilll marvelling at her existence even though her immortality is assured....

This reality about Asha Bhosle was once again seen in all its glory at one more morning organized by Rajesh Subrahmanian and his team which has sworn to keep the soul of great music alive in all its spendour.

I have been involved with Soulful Saturdays for hardly a month and a half but i can asure all those who are reading this piece that i have already had several intoxicating mornings and sometimes evenings while listening to these soulful spirits singing thier souls and hearts out and if they continue to sing like this ,i wonder if they have any soul or heart left in them .

On Sunday September 12th Soulful Saturday's took a purely soulful decision to celebrate the life and music of Asha Bhosle ,a woman who even God is greatly proud of now after knowing what her life and her music means to him and his world .

I take great pleasure in inviting people who have had close encounters with legends who are honoured by Soulful Saturdays Sunday and Sunday .

And so this time i didnot have one chief guest, but an entire family which had in a way dedicated thier lives to bring honour to the most honoured Asha Bhosle .

I had my friend ,Mr.Subhash Dawar from Surat who had taken the bold decision of producing a feature film with Asha Bhosle in the lead character and had spared no pains to make the film memorable without thinking about the financial consequences .

The film ,"Mai " was released in 2015 and is still one of those films which creates a stirr in minds of people when it is screened on one of the OTT platforms.

Mr. Subhash Dawar was so visibly excited about being a part of Soulful Saturdays that he was in Mumbai with his wife , son and daughter-in- law on Saturday night itself.

And when the Asha Bhosle show kept growing ,the Dawar family couldn't keep their feet off the floor and didn't lose any oppotunity to show that they were still filled with the spirit of youth ,which was so infectious that even some one like me who had last danced when Adam danced took to the floor and danced till both my feet started singing like K.L Saigal.

The music director of Mai ,Mr. Nitin Shankar who is also a guide and an instructor of Asha Tai was so impressed with the souls of SS that he was overflowing with praise for the singers and offering them suggestions and even practical help to some of the better singers of SS who he felt could grow into more polished singers with a little more guidance.

His ispiration and offer to help must have certainly made that Sunday a Blessed Sunday for the singers of the day ,Aparna Dongriker (she was the star of SS undoubtedly the star of the morning, afternoon and evening ), Pervin Kotwal (she is like best old wine) Shraddha Wagaraikar( she keeps growing better with time )Pragati Vaidya(it is difficult to judge whether her singing is better or her smile or her stage presence ) Nikhil Bhakta (little more bhakti and he can be on the top anywhere) Satish Nair ( i dont know why ,but he seems to be my personal favourite) Sonam Dharod( She is very natural) Narayan ( A very pleasant face with a matching voice which can take him far ) Vanita Shah ( i need to listen to her more often) Prakash Bhavsar ( he is perhaps the life the show,use him more often Rajesh) .

And how can i forget Vanveer ,my good old friend Homi Pantakhi and his sweet wife who defy age to dance away the blues, reds, and safforns of life .

And finally full marks to all those men who smuggle in hot stainless-steel glasses of tea for me to keep me alive for almost four hours of a Soulful Saturdays which the power of Covid has turned into a Soulful Sunday .

And how can i forget my Betaal who carries me in his auto with all the care from my home to Prabodhankar and then back home?

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