Many years ago, a young Kavita Seth cycled through the roads of Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. She wore white salwar kameez and a colourful dupatta to college and was followed by eve teasers saying that they were alive and that she and her friends didn’t have to sport the color white.
“Nobody in my home knew the abcd of music when I received an award in singing from OP Nayyar,” she said. She trained in music and trained enough to be able to be invited to local radio stations and concerts. Her parents didn’t approve of her late evening performances at the station or events. She eventually had to cancel at the last moment because no one from her family would agree to accompany her to the evening concerts to perform. “I was left to my own fate and everything was tied to my marriage when it came to my dreams of pursuing playback singing,” she said.
Her parents found her a suitable groom in an arranged marriage set up, where she took her fiance’s word that he would let her pursue her singing and music career post the wedding. He agreed. They moved to Delhi and she started teaching at Delhi Public School. Her sons were studying in the same school and got a fee waiver as their mother was a member of the teaching faculty. She was also studying music at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya for which she had to use DTC buses to travel, which are infamous for being unsafe for women. Her husband would come to receive her at the bus stop and she wondered that if she could make an entire journey in a DTC bus which was absolutely unsafe, a 500 metre walk home was nothing as compared to the bus ride.
One day, she received an offer to perform in Norway, but the then principal didn’t approve her leave. She also had to sometimes perform her duty as the teacher incharge of a school bus. This wasn’t the life that she expected and it was holding back her ambition of pursuing her passion for music. Her first offer for a playback came from filmmaker Satish Kaushik. She couldn’t believe it. It could be a prank or an offer which would vanish the moment she kept her foot in Mumbai. But Kaushik kept his promise, and gave Kavita, her first song, Maula in the film Vaada.
After recording the song, she had a few more hours until she had to board the Rajdhani to Delhi. So she wrote a message for filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt on her card, that it’d be kind of him to meet her at a short notice since she’s in the city and that she had a train in about four hours. Mahesh Bhatt’s office received it and the filmmaker left an ongoing meeting to interact with Kavita. They came back to Delhi.
Months later, Bhatt gave her the song Mujhe mat roko in his film, Gangster. After that, Kavita realised that Mumbai was the place to be and that her presence in the city was imperative to get more work. So she spoke to her husband, resigned from the school and reached Mumbai with her sons while the couple worked out the logistics.
Kavita Seth’s rendition of the song Iktara in Ayaan Mukherjee’s Wake Up Sid is an integral part of many young persons who travel to new cities and strive to settle down amid cultural shock, while juggling with personal and work life. Eleven years later, fans still walk up to Kavita, identifying her as the voice behind the song of the millennials. She still ends or begins almost every concert of hers with this song.
In an hour-long conversation with Kavita on a Friday afternoon, she told us the above story of how she came to Mumbai. We spoke about her selective taste in giving playback for Hindi songs and her latest album as a composer & singer for Mira Nair’s adaptation of Vikram Seth’s novel, A Suitable Boy.
When asked about her favourite composer in the industry, she promptly named Vishal Bharadwaj. She reminisced about recording Tum Hi Ho Bandhu (which was originally written for singer Shubha Mudgal) and not telling anyone at home that she had recorded it. “Amit Trivedi called me and expressed his astonishment and happiness over the fact that I had sung a song that was a bit of a departure from my regular work and that the playback and visuals were synchronized well,” she said.
Kavita added, “I’m very selective in the songs I sing. You can see that the list of my renditions is not too long. I read the lyrics first, that’s paramount. If that works for me, then I proceed with the song. Good producers and music directors give me fifteen to twenty five days to prepare for a song and I’ve been able to do justice to them.” She refused to sing many item songs post Cocktail, like Hookah Bar because the lyrics didn’t appeal to her. She told Himmesh Reshammiya that she’d be happy to give an alaap but won’t be able to give playback for the entire song.
Kavita is not oblivious toward the politics of the music industry. “I do not like to spend money on my songs overnight to hit a million or two. I keep it organic as long as it is in my hands. My songs have over half a million streams on Spotify as well,” she said. She affirms that she has been extremely picky all these years and that’s the reason why people don’t offer her random songs anymore because they know she won’t take up the project unless the work is meaningful. She’s been running her own series of music videos and been composing a lot lately.
Seth said, “Mira had been following my work for over two years until she stumbled upon a song that she realised I had also composed. That’s how she came to me to work on the ghazals used in A Suitable Boy. She was astonished during our recordings, when she was doubtful of one of the songs and I quickly improvised the tune there and then. She also brought Tabu to the recordings so that she could learn the gestures and understand the essence of the ghazals she was supposed to perform in the series.” Seth has recorded famous ghazals like Dil-e-nadaan tujhe hua kya hai by Mirza Ghalib, Lutf woh ishq mein paaye hain k jee jaanta hai - Dagh Dehelvi, Mehfil Barkhaast Hui - Ameer Menai, Marsiya - Syed Zia Alvi, Na ravaa kahiye - Daagh Dehelvi and Muddat hui hai yaar ko by Mirza Ghalib for Mira’s drama series.
Her son Kanishk helps her in recording and editing. Kavita is fully up to date with the number of streams on her songs across platforms and fondly remembers and continues to credit her husband for his support.
Looking back, Seth thanks her stars that she never made it to the concert in Norway and took the audacious step of quitting a stable full time job and moving to Mumbai.
