If you Google for Mehdi Hassan’s immortal ghazal ‘Baat karni mujhe mushkil’, the top hit would be a YouTube video of Gayatri Asokan singing the popular number for a show she used to anchor.
The video has so far garnered over 1.6 million views from across the world. Many of the listeners had not heard – or heard about – her before, but that didn’t stop them from posting appreciative comments on her fine rendering of the classic.
On a warm summer morning at Kozhikode, when I mention this to her, Gayatri smiles. “Little could I have imagined that the cover version of an iconic ghazal sung by him would fetch me international exposure. I have to admit that the videos of ‘Baat karni mujhe mushkil’ and other ghazals I sang on Khayal, aired on Media One, have been of great help to my career,” she says.
It was, in fact, after watching some of those videos that she was invited by organisers of Jashn-e-Rekhta – believed to be the world’s biggest Urdu festival – to perform in Delhi a few months ago.
“The invitation, to be honest, took me by surprise; I wasn’t expecting an opportunity to sing on that stage. Performing on the same stage where Vishal Bhardwaj and Shabana Azmi were part of the mushaira, and where the Sabri Brothers presented their qawwali was indeed an honour.” Early this year, she performed at the Ghazal Bahaar festival in Pune. “It was great part being of a prestigious line-up of singers that included Suresh Wadkar, Anup Jhalota, Jaspinder Narula, Jazim Sharma and Pooja Gaitonde. I was the only singer from South India,” she says.
Trained in Hindustani classical music, it was always Gayatri’s dream to perform before a north Indian audience. She has been living that dream, over the last couple of years, after moving her base to Mumbai from her home in Thrissur following her marriage with Purbayan Chatterjee, a leading sitar player.
“I knew that I had to live in Mumbai if I wanted to make it big as a Hindustani or ghazal singer, but I wasn’t ready to take that plunge earlier. But after meeting Purbayan in Bengaluru and marrying him some six months later, I moved to Mumbai. That has proved one of the best decisions of my life,” she says. Gayatri believes she would not have got these many opportunities if she was based in Kerala. “Logistics is an issue. Who would be willing to fly you and all of your musicians in for rehearsals? Besides, most of India’s best accompanying musicians are based in Delhi and Mumbai.”
She, however, continues to perform in Kerala often and record film songs. In fact, it was for a live stage show that she had come down to Kozhikode. Her previous performance was in Nairobi, Kenya, a show in memory of ghazal singer and composer Jagjit Singh. “I sang for three-and-a-half hours and so I could sing most of his hit songs,” she says.
Though Gayatri sings ghazals of maestros such as Jagjit Singh and Mehdi Hassan, she often performs her own numbers from her début solo album, Ghazal Gaze.
“I am glad that the album was released by Pankaj Udhas and it was well received too. I had also composed one of the ghazals,” she says.
As regards film songs, Gayatri recently recorded a song for composer Mohan Sithara. “Playback singing and the way of tuning songs have changed a lot since I made my début nearly two decades ago. I am lucky that I could sing at a time when music was less digital and we had more composers than programmers. I am happy that I could sing for great masters such as Raveendran, Ilaiyaraaja, Johnson and Ouseppachan,” she says.
It was with a bang that Gayatri had begun her playback career, while her early notable songs include ‘Ghana shyama’ (Kochu Kochu Santhoshangal) and ‘Deena dayalo rama’ (Arayannangalude Veedu). Her distinctive voice was duly noticed.
Gayatri has also made a mark with some dulcet rendering in light music, amply manifested in Alakalkku, an album of poems tuned brilliantly by Shahabaz Aman, a singer-composer she has shared many stages with. Some of her songs such as ‘Alayothungia’ and ‘Orila’ are deemed pure gold.