Singer-songwriter and now award winning broadcaster is one of the most remarkable artists acv has ever met, overcoming many difficulties and challenges to be the success that she is…
INDIRAA BATRA is one of a kind – a person you don’t forget easily – because her life is the stuff you read about in novels or watch on the big screen and marvel.
Born in Bombay, and growing up in Juhu, a posh part of Mumbai, she had a short spell in the UK with her family, aged 7-11, in the late 1960s, before returning to the UK with a husband, building a successful career in the highly competitive music business, and becoming an award-winning broadcaster more recently.
The youngest of four girls in her family and now in her 60s, she has overcome alcoholism, bereavement (the two are closely linked in her case), obesity; has a couple of (platinum) dance hit records to her name, runs a working farm with several dogs, cats and horses – and she used to keep rescue goats.
She was also a champion tennis player, (ranked no5 in India in her early 20s) and it’s how she met her husband, Rajiv, of 42 years and eloped with him, knowing it wasn’t the thing to do aged 24.
Her family were on the lookout for a suitable boy for the Maths and Psychology graduate, who enrolled at law school in Bombay and came from ‘a good family’ (an ever important consideration for those who fix marriages).
Father wasn’t best happy, he had always wanted a son who would follow in his own footsteps. He was an airline pilot for Air India and finished up as director of operations.
Aged 40, Batra acquired a pilot’s licence (here) and fulfilled that dream her father had.
After a brief spell in Chennai (then Madras) to marry, the couple returned to meet the collective wrath of their respective parents. Her family are originally from Bengaluru and Kannada speakers; while Rajiv has Punjabi roots.
She was forced to return home to live in Bombay and apart from Rajiv – the families came round, being of a similar social standing – her in laws lived in Malabar Hill, a place often associated with old money (still) in today’s Mumbai.
“Dad kind of accepted it,” Batra said to www.asianculturevulture.com, speaking at her home. “He never reconciled it within himself but for all practical purposes – two of his daughters married two of the most eligible bachelors in Bombay,” she chuckled. Her husband’s brother married her sister and they met through them.
After seven years of marriage, Rajiv suggested they go to the UK.
“We didn’t have children. And he said ‘we have these opportunities to go abroad’ and he just decided, ‘we’re going to England’.”
Initially, she was horrified.
1960s Britain was a difficult place for anyone of colour – often unrelentingly so, if you were at school in a place like leafy Twickenham, where her father had settled the family the first time. Overweight and anxious as a teen, she had to go back to a place of not so great memories.
Fast forward, it was 1992 and you feel that it was the love of her husband that brought her back.
“I had to build up my life all over again, I went into severe depression,” she admitted. She takes medication and has had psychiatric support through much of her life – even from her young days – her overweight teen period triggered by anxiety and high family expectations.
Today, along with her musician colleague and her ‘surrogate son’ (as she likes to call him) Tom, they make the podcast, ‘Musicians Against Depression’.
She had no ambitions or pretensions to go into music – it was just that she enjoyed keeping fit and working out – the old tennis player in her, resurfaced in her 40s and she started to do kickboxing at her local gym, a short distance into the country from Barnet in North London.
The couple moved to their current farm home – Rajiv’s clothing business had started to make serious money and it’s probably fair to say they didn’t need to be frugal.
“Tom first came here to do landscape gardening, he was young and he wanted to earn (more) money doing the fencing (and other such handyman things). He is a drummer in a band and he brought round all these musicians.”
Now, you won’t quite understand this on paper – because you have to appreciate the kind of household Indiraa runs – it’s a kind of open house, on my visit not only am I greeted enthusiastically by the dogs, indifferently by the cat, but her house help Agatha and Tom and another family friend are all milling round, fixing themselves lunch and just carrying on as normal.
Indiraa makes me home made dosa and it feels a little bit like the home my late mother (and grandmother back in Kerala) once ran – an open house especially at meal times. I am not in an interview any more – I feel at home and like and recognise the ambiance.
Indiraa took up the story again: “They’re (the musicians) eating here, staying here in the flat next door and then they asked me can you do some backing vocals?”
That’s literally how her musical journey began. She had some vocal training back in Bombay and they were impressed.
She started playing locally live and word got around – eventually she wrote her first album, ‘Never Too Late’ and it was professionally supported and produced by people who knew the industry well.
She became Lady Indiraa (her actual name is Prahtima) and her music started to become a feature in nightclubs and did well in the dance charts. Her tracks were remixed by iconic groups such as Block and Crown.
She found she had a natural facility for songwriting, working with an experienced musician-composer who would play her a riff, and she would compose.
Incredulously, he asked, where and when did you learn songwriting?
She laughed: “Just now”, she told him.
She has a small well-equipped studio where she does the Mad podcast and her radio shows (more of which in a moment).
Her way into radio broadcasting came through her music and a track called ‘Bollywood Queen’ and its promotion; she had done bits and pieces before and was on Soho Radio before the pandemic and met broadcaster and public relations supremo Pedro Carvalho – anyone who works in the Asian media will know who he is – that’s how she got onto Nusound Radio 92FM.
Late last year, she was awarded the Silver prize for her ‘In Conversation with Indiraa’ shows in the National Community Radio Awards, run by Radio Today. (She turned the tables on acv – see link below).
She continues to write music and make her radio show and has just released a new track entitled, ‘Addiction’.
She has such a personality – she says explaining that she started drinking alcohol shortly after her mother’s passing in 2013.
“Everything I do, I overdo. I can’t cook one dish, have to make six, have to run 10k (and she does routinely) and if I stop at 9.7K, I’ll be uncomfortable all day.”
Even though she attended Alcoholics Anonymous for a time, she explained that she wasn’t really an alcoholic – an important distinction.
“I was alcohol dependent and it was triggered by stress (brought on by her mother’s demise) – I am not actually an alcoholic, I don’t like it and don’t need it.”
She can reach into her troubled past and draw it on in a positive way now – guided by Buddhist meditational practice and yoga.
Serotonin is an important chemical in the body – people with low levels are susceptible to a range of conditions, both physical and mental.
“I keep the serotonin levels up with the medication and yoga,” she told acv.
“Music became my escape.” And how…
You can hear Indiraa Batra’s interview with Sailesh Ram on Nusound 92FM this Sunday (March 30) 12pm – https://www.radio-uk.co.uk/nusound-radio-92fm
