My First Break/Nandu Bhende

In 1971, a band called Velvette Fogg lined up to warble its way through the Simla Beat Contest at Shanmukhananda Hall, Sion. Simla being the name of a cigarette and the contest a promotional brand building exercise carried out all over the country. The band, which performed covers of bands like the Doors, won, and Nandu Bhende was officially in the business of crooning. It is perhaps a sign of the times that the cigarette never did as well as the contest. For Bhende, who also plays Yudishtira in Lillete Dubey's musical Jaya, this first breakthrough only led him onto some more music. A product of the seventies ferment in the West that also trapped the imagination of a section of Indians, Bhende, a student of Elphistone College, started singing in 1970. His band Velvette Fogg even cut an album, and in 1974, Bhende was singing on stage, as the lead, for Alyque Padamsee's adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar in 1974. "The kind of singing you do on stage is so different from what you do in a studioor, say, at home. When you're singing on stage, you're singing with your whole body. It's incredible."

Today, Bhende sings several ad jingles and stagework is far and in between. With the final show of Jaya last weekend, it may be a while before he unleashes the power of his vocal chords. "In the seventies, nobody thought of singing as a career option. One was doing it because one was having such a great time. One was walking on a cloud! It was a great deal of hard work, but it wasn't looked upon that way."

-- Nandini Ramnath

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