It didn't quite register at first. So the son repeated the sentence to his mother. The son, JAG, a 31-year-old cutting edge film-maker, told Asha Puthli who 'they' were. 50 Cent. Redman. Ka-No. Notorious BIG. P.Diddy. The kings of hip-hop breakbeats. Artistes known for their shrewd sampling of cutting edge music. Who have picked up her 1970s classic Space Talk and sampled it in so many chart-breaking waves, that once again Asha is hot. With dollar royalties clinking the cash registers.

In 2007 Asha Puthli, Indian-born singer and New York citizen by choice, finds not one but several spotlights on her. Life is a cabaret and Asha is the new beat of Nostalgia. A phrase that is presciently the title of her 1998 album.

Nostalgia is the rhythm of the moment, the flava of the year and Asha is being called Diva. Again. Indian diva of jazz, funk and soul. After over 30 years in USA, her career shows no sign of flagging. She is now a red hot guest artiste on the buzzing electronica music scene. Millions listen to her yoga music albums. And in November 2006, the 7th Bollywood Music Awards took place in Atlantic City and Asha won the Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contribution to global music.

If you've been familiar with Asha's music over the decades, you'll know this too. Her distinctive unusual recordings are pioneering. World beat or bhangra. Jazz or electronica. Pop or fusion. Asha Puthli did them all before anyone else. Herein lies her daring, her fearlessness, her adventure. Remarkable for having done it in an alien environment of New York which in the 80's music industry was almost impossible. Namumkin, as Don says.

Holidaying at her sister's home in Bandra right now as you read this, she exults, "It feels great to be appreciated by the younger generation. It's exciting to be getting all this recognition in the United States once again. When I recall how difficult it was for an Indian woman to survive singing jazz, funk and R&B in New York in the early 70s."

Not only did she survive in an alien, difficult environment, she flourished. Chalking out a career that proudly exhibits 28 (count them) albums! Spanning styles that jump genres. Blues, pop, rock, soul, funk disco, even techno, Wikipedia will provide you names of artistes with whom she has recorded, sung or shared the stage. Barry White (the deep voice that gave the world, You're My Last, You're My Last, You're My Everything), Grace Jones (Slave To The Rhythm), Patti Smith, Don Cherry, Tom Jones, Django Reinhardt. Rolling Stones ?
She has done that too.

Remember Savages? That path breaking Merchant Ivory film of the 70s? Asha played the lead role in that. As she did in Bruno Corbucci's film, The Gang That Sold America. In the 80s, her outré style sense added one more feather to her hat. She became part of the Andy Warhol set, a headliner at Studio 54, a fashion icon dressed by the likes of Manolo Blahnik and shot by Richard Avedon, among the world's most famous photographers.

Yet the paradox of life. The games of Karma. The inexorable march of time. In America, her fan base borders on the reverent and adoring, but in native India, she can drift unnoticed through a crowd unrecognised by the superficial P3 media. Sigh.

"I am," states Asha, matter-of-factly. Like all artistes, she has layers. Ask her about her career and her answer can fill up an entire volume of Panchatantra, one story leading to a second leading to a ninth before coming up for air 25 minutes later, to address the first question. But ask her if there is room for regret and there's the briefest of pause for introspection.

Then, as if reinforcing her own answer, she repeats, "I am. That's it. Abstract? Not at all. I have learned to live in the moment. It's a learning that comes when you have lived life on your own terms. So, I just am. I just can be. Happiness happens with a conscious application of this belief. Go with your instincts, follow your dreams, ride the wild wind, whatchamacallit! No regrets. If it means that a Mumbai born girl had to sing for her supper in New York to gain fame there, so be it."

That part, luckily, is not true. Singing for her supper bit Asha Puthli never had to.
Imagine this. An Indian singer in the 70s in New York. Having left a comfortable life in Mumbai to follow her dream. An impossible dream of making it as a singer in a city known for chewing up talent and spitting it out, a city where Asha had no contacts. Just the conviction of which Sting would many years later sing 'Be yourself, no matter what they say.'

The only way Asha knew how to be herself was to sing. Which she did for anyone willing to listen and soon enough word of this four octave singer spread strongly enough for her to audition for one of jazz music's outstanding legends, Ornette Coleman. Once people heard her sing on Coleman's Science Fiction album, a star was born. She could (and she still can) roller coaster notes indefinitely in perfect pitch and nobody would want her to stop. Because if she did, the angels would disappear. Devilish talent you might say. Not surprising then that the producers of her third album titled the best-seller 'The Devil Is Loose.'

That's where Asha's intriguing contradictions tantalise all those who meet her. Sometimes a devil, at others an angel. Sometimes an introvert, other times a seductress tormenting your sleep with her songs. An artiste famously known to have said, "I gargle with champagne every morning," but who now will not indulge her palate with even a glass of wine. An olive-skinned woman with blonde hair in an emerald green sari flirting coquettishly with every male at a Chivas Regal soirée. A woman who with a straight face tells me, "I started singing in the womb. Having been born a Saraswat Brahmin with only a passion to sing, what does that make me? A direct descendant of Goddess Saraswati!"