Opinion The Third Edit: Remembering Nightingale of Bihar, Sharda Sinha

Just before the celebrated folk singer Sharda Sinha died on November 5, at 72, a day before Chhath puja, with which her music is synonymous, she sang a tranquil thumri. Wrapped in a white sheet, while on oxygen support at Delhi’s AIIMS, Sinha sang Kabir’s lament — Sayiyaan nikas gaye, main na ladi thi/ Na jaane kaunsi khidki khuli thi (My beloved left, and I didn’t put up a fight/ One doesn’t know which window was ajar), in Bhairavi — the raga of separation. In Kabir’s world of nirgun bhakti, these words are not for the beloved but a reference to the soul leaving the body. It is as if Sinha, who had been battling cancer since 2017, was aware that the end was near. But what leaves one jolted is not just the remarkable quality of Sinha’s voice in this video, but also the integrity in every note she sings, even as physical aches take over.

Even as music in Bihar took a bawdy direction in recent years, Sinha propped up the region’s folk music on the national stage. Born in Hulas in Bihar, she was fond of singing since childhood. Her father, a State Education Department employee, decided to hone his daughter’s singing skills and hired a music teacher. Sinha trained in classical music under the aegis of Pt Sitaram Hari Dandekar followed by training in thumri from Panna Devi. A meeting with Begum Akhtar, who complimented Sinha’s voice, while she was auditioning for an HMV talent competition in Lucknow, changed the course of her career. Armed with confidence and her husband’s support, Sinha recorded folk songs that are still sung at births and weddings.

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Sinha had a stint in Bollywood with songs in Sooraj Barjatya’s Maine Pyar Kiya (1989) and Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994). But it was ‘Taar bijli se patle hamare piya’ —a satire on Bihar and its politics — in Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur 2 (2012) that left an indelible mark. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 1991 and Padma Bhushan in 2018 for her extraordinary service to folk music.