Fan pens Palash's biography

Around three years ago, singer, actor, and now music director, Palash Sen, got a mail from a 22-year-old Euphoria fan from Pune, which read, ‘Almost all heroes are written about only when they are gone. But I want to write about you when you are alive. Would you do this book with me?’ Palash wondered, “Why would someone want to pen a book on me?” But 36 hours later, gave him a call. “And before I could talk to him about his music, he was discussing my paintings,” recalls Ashish Kate, the author, who is a painter by profession, and paints only with shoe-polish. “I didn’t want to celebrate a dead hero. I wanted people to know how this original Hindi rocker lives and used to live. People warned me claiming he’s arrogant, and perhaps the worst person to work with. Yet, I thought I could give it a try.” Palash, on the contrary, agreed for it, and had regular telephonic conversations with him around midnight. “I ruined his routine for 3 years by keeping him awake for hours post midnight, but he was very cooperative,” remembers Ashish. Given that he is a Euphoria fan, will his biography be able to bring out all the sides – negative, positive, controversial – of the musician? “If I were to praise him, I could put this together simply by assembling my research material on him and the band. But this one is all out of conversations with Palash. And not all our conversations have been polite, when I asked questions at a very gut level, like, ‘Do you really mean it when you say you perform at every concert, thinking it’s your last one?’ and ‘Do you cry?’ I have seen him argue, scold, laugh, and break into tears while recalling how people in Srinagar looked down to him, saying, ‘Arre, yeh toh Hindustani hai’. I have mentioned about his aggression, and where that comes from. Palash is a common man, his story is everybody’s story,” reasons the artist, who has included views of popular singers who have worked with Palash, like Shaan, KK, Strings, Daler Mehndi, etc, in this book, which will be available to readers in February, next year.Follow us on Twitter for more stories