Sushma Shrestha

Poornima Shrestha (born 6 September 1960 as Sushma Shrestha), is an Indian playback singer. Starting as a child singer, she later reinvented into a leading playback singer in Bollywood during the 1990s.

She started her career as a child singer in '' Andaz'' (1971) under music director duo Shankar Jaikishan for the hit song "Hai Na Bolo Bolo" alongside Mohammed Rafi and Suman Kalyanpur. Throughout her childhood, she then worked with music composers of the golden era including Naushad, Madan Mohan, C. Ramchandra, Anil Biswas, S.D. Burman, Kalyanji-Anandji and Laxmikant–Pyarelal. Poornima formed a successful collaboration with R.D. Burman with such popular numbers, "Tera Mujhse Hai Pehle" from '' Aa Gale Lag Jaa'' (1973) and "Kya Hua Tera Vada" from ''Hum Kisise Kum Naheen'' (1977); both earned her nominations for the Filmfare Best Female Playback Award becoming the youngest nominee in the category at the age of 11.

She made a comeback as an adult singer when music director duo Anand–Milind collaborated with her for the superhit song "Tu Tu Tara" in ''Bol Radha Bol'' (1992). Their collaboration throughout the 1990s gave her a string of hits. She has also collaborated with many music directors in her four decades long singing career including Bappi Lahiri, Rajesh Roshan, M. S. Vishwanathan, Ravindra Jain, Anu Malik, Jatin–Lalit, Raamlaxman, Nadeem-Shravan, M.M.Kreem, Viju Shah, Anand Raj Anand, Nikhil-Vinay, Vishal–Shekhar and Aadesh Shrivastava.

Apart from Hindi songs, Poornima has sung in many languages including Bengali, Nepali, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Rajasthani, Assamese, Haryanvi, Garhwali and Arabic. Apart from films, she has sung numerous non-film songs in various genres like ''Baal Geet'' (children's songs), ''Bhavgeet'', Bhajan, Ghazal, Chutney and Indipop.

Personal life

Hailing from the Nepali Newar community, Poornima was born in Mumbai. Her father was music composer Bholanath Shrestha, who worked primarily with Hindi film music directors. He was from Kathmandu, Nepal before settling in Kolkata and eventually in Mumbai. She lost her father on 12 April 1971 when she was barely 11 years old.
In an interaction with a YouTube channel, she has admitted to “almost giving up on her career for family”. She has a son Nishadh Chandra who is a music composer.

Career

She sang the hit "Hai Na Bolo Bolo" when she was just nine. She got her first break accidentally when Chandrakant Bhosle, a family friend and an assistant to Shankar–Jaikishan recommended her name to Shankar. In spite of the prevailing custom of women playback singers singing for children, Shankar took upon him the challenge of taking an unknown child to sing "Hai Na Bolo Bolo" for the film '' Andaz''. Sushama recorded her first song on 11 November 1969 with Mohammed Rafi and Suman Kalyanpur. Rafi was very impressed by her singing.

Considered as first successful child singer in Hindi films Sushma did a children's album called ''Bal Geet'', which had the legendary S.Khale composing the songs and Shanta Shelke penning them. She sang four songs in it. The album proved as huge hit and gave immense exposure to Poornima who surprised everybody by singing Marathi songs with ease. Her career was planned to be launched at a function organised by the Punjab Association organised by Raj Kapoor, Pran and others. Slated to perform on 12 April 1971, tragedy struck on 11 April when her father suffered a cardiac arrest and died. She was undaunted and was encouraged by family and friends. She gave a performance, which impressed many and enabled her to get a scholarship of Rs. 250 to study music. She has sung many super hit songs in her childhood: "Tera Mujhse Hai Nata Koi", "Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na", "Yaadon Ki Baarat" are a few. Poornima is the oldest singer in terms of experience in the industry who can boast of having worked with Naushad, Madan Mohan, C. Ramchandra