'I still get nervous before a show': Usha Uthup

It is almost impossible to realise what it is about 57-year-old Usha Uthup that hits you straight in the head. Is it her sheer energy that refuses to fade away, her colossal bindi on her forehead, her contagious smile, or her baritone voice that sings 'Shaan Se' and 'Jambal Aya' with equal fervour?
And after much pondering, you just settle with the fact that the entire package is what's striking you. Even one thing missing, and it won't be Usha Uthap you're looking at.
She's looking a little disoriented today though, as she walks out of the lift of the Marweb hotel, dressed in a white silky salwar kameez and sneakers.
Is she tired after the previous night's jam-packed show in Bahrain? Or has she just woken up?
And then she stuns you with an unbelievable reply. "I'm nervous," she says, showing her bitten nails. This is just a couple of hours before her show in Al Khor.
The veteran singer has been performing on stage for about 35 years now. She's done a countless number of shows the world over. Nervous? Still?
"Oh it's terrible," she says, still biting her nails. "And now after so many years, it's even worse. There is a standard you have set, and you have to match it every single time you step on that platform."
She can't recall how many times she's performed in Qatar. "15, I think," she says looking up at the ceiling. "Maybe more."
"I just love this place. Especially Doha. It's got the small town feel to it - a small town with all the modern amenities. I adore the laid-back attitude."
Probably the anonymity too? And she smiles, to herself. Oops! Wrong question.
"No way. Everywhere I go people recognise me. They walk up to me and ask me, 'You are Usha Uthup, right?' There are so many Indians here. Even this morning when I went shopping all the shopkeepers recognised me. It's a great feeling," she says.
Uthup says though she is "terribly fond" of the Mumbai buzz, for a change, the small town feel is very relaxing.
Despite the previous night's show in Bahrain, which went on till the wee hours of the morning, 'Didi', as she is fondly called, made it a point to wake up early and go shopping in Doha.
Shopping for what? She points at her kurta. "For this cloth (the white polyester-cotton fabric which the Arab men wear)," she replies. "I love it. I get my kurta's made out of it."
The singer of Tamil-origin, who can sing in 14 Indian and about 10 foreign languages - which is a record by itself - says Ramada Hotel is her favourite place in Doha. "For no other reason but that I got a fantastic response for a show I had done there some time ago. It was fantastic," Uthup says.
Learning different languages has always been a passion with Uthup. "I agree music knows no language, no boundary. But when you are singing words that your audience can understand it will immediately strike a chord."
"And as far as languages are concerned, I have always said, living in India you already have a great advantage since it is a country of so many languages," she says.
Ask her what foreign languages she can sing in, and she'll take a long breath, hold her fingers out, and start counting. "Spanish, French, Italian, German, Hebrew, Russian... umm... oh yeah, African, and Srilankan, and Thai... How many has it been? There are a few more actually."
Singing happened to Uthup. "Happened... just happened, by chance. Never dreamt of being one," she says.
She recalls: "I was 22. I was amongst the crowd at the Inter Continental in Mumbai and I was incidentally asked to sing. I sang, and got stuck to that platform ever since."
An unintended rebel of sorts, Uthup says she had "absolutely no clue" that a woman singing in nightclubs, where she began her career, had a stigma attached to it. "I was too young to know, or too innocent to know of it. All I knew was that I was singing."
Unintentionally again, she was instrumental in removing the stigma too. "Ignorance is bliss, I guess," she laughs.
Her forthcoming album is called 'Kashmir to Kanyakumari', which, she says, should be out by this year. Just working on one more song. If you haven't figured out by the title, the album will have songs in a whole lot of languages in India.
It seems as if singing never really let Didi grow up. Retirement is nowhere in sight for this 57-year-old 'kid'.
"Noooo..." she replies to the question, with a sulking face. "I want to laugh till I cry, and sing till I die."