A life beyond prejudices

MARGAO

: “Once I was sitting on the parapet of the Someshwar temple in our home village

Kurdi

, when I was rudely asked to get down from there and sit on the step below. Why? I failed to understand. I did not budge. Later on I learnt that our low social status automatically assigned us to a place at the bottom,”

Kishori Amonkar

is quoted as having said in an article profiling her life and work.

While Kurdi now lies submerged, Amonkar’s aforementioned statement is a poignant pointer to the prejudices she suffered on account of her ‘devdasi’ lineage. Hindustani classical singer

Mogubai Kurdikar

, mother of Kishori Amonkar, is from Kurdi and the ruins of her house close to the Someshwar temple can still be seen.

The villagers of Kurdi and

Selaulim

, over 3,000 in number, were displaced after the villages came under the reservoir submergence of the Salaulim irrigation project.

Kurdikar performed at a time when women singers were looked down upon. Amonkar would often express her angst recollecting how the organisers of that time would treat her mother, speaking down to her, paying her little, and making her stay in someone’s home and not at a proper guesthouse. She felt her mother was denied the respect a classical musician desires and deserves. “I saw this shoddy treatment of a legend like her. It hurt me deeply. But my mother had three children to bring up, so she continued. I decided that when I become a musician, I would never allow any of this. And I don’t. I always stay in a proper hotel suite, I make sure that I am provided with a car, which is available at all times, and that all the payments are made properly,” she is quoted as having said in an article.

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