Im passionate about classical music: Rajashree Birla

The very private Rajashree Birla for the first time reveals her secret passion, how she keeps her cool and why money will always come.

Armed with her characteristic smile, the board director of almost all of the companies of the Aditya Birla Group, gently asks at the start of the interview, “So you want to know what I am passionate about?”

The first Birla bahu to get a college degree, Rajashree Birla then continues, “You need to find a passion and start nurturing it. If you have a passion that you can always fall back on, you will be happy. Like, I am passionate about classical music.”

So how does one stay ‘happy’, especially at a time when you come to office not knowing whether there’s a pink slip waiting for you? “It’s not just you and me.
Everybody is complaining. I think it’s just a matter of some more time and a little more wait. You just have to hold on a little more, times are going to change soon,” says the wife of late industrial magnet Aditya Birla.

People close to her vouch for the fact that they have never seen Rajashree lose her cool. But doesn’t she ever get stressed out? “Of course I do! But I have my music to fall back on and take my stress away. I have a habit of putting on soft music wherever I am. I like music playing in the background. Even when I go to sleep, I put on soft music. It soothes me.”

She adds, “I was born in Madurai and I was exposed to a lot of Karnatic music when I was young. While I moved on (she went to Kolkata to study at Loretto College) I also discovered my love for Hindustani classical music. I still want to encourage more young people to learn classical music,” says the president of Sangeet Kala Kendra and one of the last few patrons of Hindustani classical music.

But where is the money if somebody takes up classical music as a vocation? “It is true. But at the same time, you must love and practice music because you are passionate about it and not because you want to earn money. If you reach a particular standard, money will always come. You just need to convince them (the younger generation) and once they understand that it is a really good vocation for them, more people will start taking it up.”  

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