Book Review | In The Queen of Indian Pop, Vikas Kumar Jha channels his unabating awe of Usha Uthup

The importance of being Usha Uthup cannot be overstated.

In a world full of sweet-pitched shrill singing vocals that was representative of the entire female population in India, hers was a voice that dared to be different. She took her uniqueness, wrapped it in six yards of Kanjeevaram silk, and garnished it with a generous dose of jasmine strings. Five decades on, it remains her calling card. You can spot her bindi from a mile away, and you keep her vivacious optimism long after you have met her.  

In all this, the one thing you cannot forget is the sound of her voice. When the prototype is a glass-shattering palette that spanned Geeta Dutt, Lata Mangeshkar, and Alka Yagnik, Uthup sang for a populace that welcomed her with the widest arms. In her quest to be true to herself, she validated so many of our voices in the most literal and metaphorical sense. She has given us the confidence to be ourselves in the most unbridled manner, free to feel, to emote, and to be. Generations of Indian women singers have Uthup to thank for breaking the mould and daring to be.  

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Suffice to say I have been a huge fan of the Tamilian demigoddess from Mumbai who calls Kolkata her home. As a Tamilian from Mumbai, my father’s admiration for her played a huge role in shaping our musical sensibilities at home; where Hindustani and Carnatic were the norm but even there, Uthup was the rulebreaker.  

In the recently released English translation by Srishti Jha of her father Vikas Kumar Jha’s Hindi biography of the legendary chanteuse —  Ullas ki Naav, we get an honest look at the life and times of a woman who became pop royalty in the country.  

Titled The Queen of Indian Pop: The Authorised Biography of Usha Uthup, and published by Penguin Random House India, the book explores her early life in Mumbai with a strong emphasis on the joys and the quirks of her immediate and extended family, who contributed a great deal in making her who she is. From there, we travel to Chennai and its swanky nightclubs, where she was noticed while performing with jazz bands. Onward we move to Kolkata, where Uthup found love in many hues, and a compelling reason to make it her home. As she travelled extensively for her work, she also navigated many personal and professional struggles and pressures threatening to alter her course.  

But Jha’s deftness comes in by bringing her inimitable optimism without making it out to be the proverbial Pollyanna. His admiration for the subject of the book is seen repeatedly as he delicately handles how Uthup realised her marriage was truly finished even as she stood at the threshold of a more nurturing relationship with unmissable chemistry.  

In tracing the life of a singer, Jha does a super job of narrating how she discovered her own musical influences: from listening to Bach and Mozart in Kripakar Mama’s house to how she got her hands on her first Jose Feliciano album or recognising Shankar-Jaikishan’s jazz predilection. As fans of her work, it is fascinating for us too to see the various sources of her inspirations or reasons why certain songs make it to her setlist. In that sense we feel like a constant companion in the narrative even as Jha makes us tirelessly root for her all the time. With a wonderful selection of personal photographs to look through, we are reminded of the peaks of fame Uthup has scaled, and the kind of world celebrities she has touched with her remarkable voice and richness of heart.

While the author’s admiration for Uthup is noteworthy, it does appear to blind his ability to call a spade a spade, resorting to instead defending her choices even as he narrates them. Shifting roles from being a fact presenter to an opinion maker, it appears Jha feels the need to justify Uthup’s life and choices, which is particularly strange because we fans are already predisposed to loving all of her, without judgment. She does not need Jha’s protection because loving Uthup has meant embracing her for being everything that she is.  

In presenting her life story in a book loosely translated as a “boat of joy,” Jha pivots every struggle back to her infectious optimism.

One cannot blame him entirely because if any of you have Usha Uthup in a WhatsApp group, you know she is that early morning shot of cheeriness and gratitude who instantly lights up your day. Taking adversity in your stride is something we can all learn from Uthup, and her life is a testament to that mantra.

A difficulty that I have struggled to look beyond lies in the editing of this book. While I have only read Srishti Jha’s English translation of Ullas ki Naav, the experience has not been smooth sailing. The early pages are riddled with grammatical errors and shoddy metaphors that change the true meaning of what has been said. They are the kind of errors that will not show up in a spell or grammar check but keen proof-reading from a legacy publishing firm like Penguin Random House India ought to have caught. There is no reason for Geeta Dutt being called Geeta Dutta while referring to the singer from the film Love Marriage.  

Factual errors aside, the language of the translation itself is jagged — either beautifully poetic or woefully repetitive, making what should have been an easy reading experience a distracted one for all the wrong reasons. For that, I am deeply disappointed because the force of nature like Usha Uthup who has sung in so many languages but shot to fame for her English repertoire and unmatched diction, truly deserved better.  

Nevertheless, The Queen of Indian Pop: The Authorized Biography of Usha Uthup is definitely worth a read. We have always loved her voice and her on-stage persona. Jha gives us access to her as a human who can be both fragile and strong, cheerful and despondent, and through all the shades of emotions, a person with unhindered honesty who lived life on her own terms.

Senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri has spent a good part of two decades chronicling the arts, culture and lifestyles.

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