Is that really me?

I have been singing professionally for close to four and a half decades, and all along I have received requests from concert presenters, record labels, PR teams hired by organizations and companies to provide photographs and images that could be used on album covers, posters, and creatives for concerts. I think I am usually quite prompt in sending the requisite images and information, and one would imagine that this is pretty routine for any artiste anywhere in the world. What I haven’t been able to reconcile with is the slight recoil and embarrassment that I have often had to muffle or camouflage on receipt of the album covers and posters and designs. Designers, don’t get me wrong, especially since I have no idea of the brief you were given, or what you were asked to convey. But just imagine me as a young stripling of an artiste, waiting excitedly to see one of my first album covers, only to find that in between the time that I recorded for the album and sent my photographs, I had grown a dark mound of a bouffant atop my head. No? Don’t believe it ? Take a look 🙈:

Image sourced from

I do realise that I am no cover girl material, but an anthill growing out of my head is rather unfair, wouldn’t you agree? I almost began to hope that instead of a picture, perhaps a nice graphic might work better !

And along came Ali More Angana ! This time there was no picture but just a graphic on the cassette cover. In fact, the album was launched and copies sent to retail stores without anyone bothering to show it to me. Not that I could have offered much by way of suggestions, but the fact remains that I had no idea what the cover looked like and no one felt the need to consult me. The very first time I set eyes on the album cover was in the producer-music director’s office and while I mean no disrespect to the designer, I cannot say that it made for a masterful means of communicating what the album held in store for listeners. The figure of the lady with outstretched arms could well have been someone reaching up to a clothesline to hang out the washing to dry. My name, if at all familiar to music lovers, would have been associated with classical music. But the album had already been launched and there was little I could have done about it other than fret.

Image sourced from:

It was years later that I discovered that there was more to the sketch of the lady with outstretched arms and billowing skirts than I had imagined. An interview of a popular singer-actor whose Indipop albums were on the Magnasound catalog (the label that also produced and distributed Ali More Angana) includes her recounting of a conversation with the then Managing Director of Magnasound, on the subject of why my image was not used on the album cover. His opinion was that putting my photograph on the cover would have been disastrous for album sales. What? A woman in a sari, middle aged, overweight? On an album cover? Never, never,never !

Years later, I did an email interview with industry big-wig Atul Churamani who worked with Magnasound at the time and asked him about the album cover. Atul valiantly and with great chivalry responded saying:

“….there was a lot of confusion over the marketing of ‘Ali More Angana’. We had set a large sales target for the album so Marketing and Sales wanted to do the tried and tested, ie artiste image on the inlay, posters, music video etc. However, the conflicting view was that a classical singer’s image would not portray the music well, the Sufi element of the album (sic!) required the image of a dervish….all very confusing to us people who know nothing about music!! Ultimately we launched the album with only store danglers for support and those too with a sketch of a dervish that was also the album cover.” I remain deeply grateful to Atul for his candor and explanation which leaves me convinced me that my photograph could not in anyone’s wildest dreams have passed for that of a dervish. The lady with the billowing skirts and outstretched arms comes closer to a dervish any day, albeit one who is hanging the truth out to dry on a clothesline!

Interestingly, a later edition of the same album featured a new album cover, in which my photograph from a photo-shoot commissioned by Magnasound for a classical album I recorded for them, was found appropriate and not disastrous ! I guess I should be pleased to see for myself that music does indeed transcend all biases, making even a once disastrous face, favorable. 😊

Ali More Angana

I am also left wondering why organizers even ask me for photographs if they are finally going to take any image from the internet, without permission from me or the photographer, manipulate it to suit their aesthetics and design plan, and create a mess. On umpteen occasions, I have had to ask why the pallu of my saree which I always wear draped on my left shoulder, has been flipped and placed on my right shoulder. Or I am shown playing the tanpura with my left hand when I have always been right-handed. And if you think these are minor irritants, and I’m just whining on and on about a non-issue, wait for this one.

Some years ago, an overenthusiastic design team for an event worked on an image I sent them, turned a color image into a black and white one, except for my bindi which they colored bright red. Splashed across the red bindi was the name of the brand organizing the event in merry yellow ! Here’s a Chat GPT generated version of the design for reference:

Original photo courtesy Raghav Pasricha

The cultural significance of the bindi or a tilak had obviously escaped the minds of the event organization team. For them it was just another space to be branded. For me, it opened a third eye on the many battlefronts that artistes need to negotiate and combat.