Eideard

 
‘In the old days all the movie songs were recorded right there on set,” remembers Asha Bhosle, the quintessential Bollywood singer. Now 77, Bhosle was just 11 when she performed her first song on a movie soundtrack, Chala Chala Nav Bala from Majha Bal in 1943. In the 68 years since, she has provided the on-screen singing voice for generations of actresses unable to capture and deliver a song as brilliantly as she could, singing around 20,000 tunes in 14 languages, as well as recording with Robbie Williams, Michael Stipe and the Kronos Quartet, and lending her name to Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha, one of the landmark No 1 hits of the 1990s.

“My son Anand first heard that song in San Francisco and told me all about it,” she says, via a friend and translator, from Australia where she is appearing in concert. “I was at the immigration counter at Heathrow Airport once and the young officer read the profession listed in my passport as ‘singer’. He was intrigued, so I told him I was the Asha from Brimful of Asha, and he was so excited he left his post and called his friends over to meet me. So I guess, at the very least, that song helped me clear UK immigration faster than usual.”

When Bhosle thinks back to the start of her career she remembers dusty movie sets, people running around, lights and cameras. “And there was little me,” she says, “falling asleep and being woken up to sing my part. I think of that time fondly – it was pre-independence India. Only my sister Lata [Mangeshkar, a hugely popular singer in her own right], Manna Dey [the 91-year old Bengali singer] and I are left from those who began their careers in what was British India…”

Bhosle became particularly well known for her ability to change her voice for each role and a huge amount of film work, alongside established male singing stars such as Dey, Kishore Kumar and Mohammad Rafi, followed…

“Rahul Dev’s music was way ahead of its time,” she says. “He had so many different styles and rhythms in his music. You can hear jazz, Latin, that John Barry, super-spy sound, some blues, calypso and pop in there; 17 years after he died, he’s more popular than ever.”

RTFA. Learn to love some of the best pop music ever to reach out to the whole world.

Bollywood is to make its first film about the childhood of Jesus.

Director Singeetham Srinivasa Rao said his production will be narrated in four languages and feature an all-Indian cast of child actors and seven devotional songs.

Producer Konda Krishnam Raju said that the film focuses on the childhood of Jesus, a contrast with other movies that depict the later years. “This is the first presentation of this type in Bollywood history,” he said.

While the movie has special significance for Christians, it is “intended for a global audience,” Rao said.

Christians in India number 24 million, or about 2.3 per cent of the country’s population.

Religious Indian films have traditionally used child actors to highlight the “innocence, sanctity and divinity” of religious figures, the director said. Rao’s film will follow that tradition, using the child actors to depict adult characters as well as children.

American makeup artist Christien Tinsley, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his work on The Passion of the Christ, will also be involved in the film.

Aditya Productions plans to release the movie next year in English and three Indian languages – Telugu, Hindi and Malayalam. South Indian star Pawan Kalyan will narrate the Telugu and Malayalam versions, while other well known actors will narrate the English and Hindi versions, the filmmakers said.

You can be assured that questions of youth and sex will be handled with the same innocence and gentleness as any Hindu film. And that won’t make the least little bit of difference to American fundamentalist hypocrites.

Har!

Transocean President and CEO Steven Newman performs a Bollywood dance after the company’s Indian division achieved top safety award targets – and he was able to take a few minutes away from concerns in the Gulf of Mexico.