Meera’s desire to bury her family’s devadasi past and maintain an honourable life completely different from her ancestry, and her fear of being labelled a coquette were always at odds with her craving for being an acclaimed performer. Whether it was the evening she opened for Pandit Bhairo or the day she got a call from Sahil Malik, she was torn between an ambition to showcase her talent in front of the world and the anxiety that becoming a public figure would spur close scrutiny and tabloid gossip about her family history. This was especially true if she entered playback singing for films, which was looked down upon by the artistic and classical community as a downright vulgar and debased version of the art, lacking social and cultural legitimacy. How could a form, all of sixty years of age, even begin to emulate the refined traditions of painting, music and theater that had existed for centuries?

All of Meera’s trepidations disappeared once it became clear to her that she would have to start earning to support the family. She finally gave in, signing up for Sahil’s film. Working with the eccentric composer was a trial by fire. If Malik had waited that long just to get the singer he wanted, he could by all means wait longer to train that singer to perfection. Meera’s native Marathi accent crept into the Urdu words, as first noticed by Abhimanyu, and this was unacceptable to Sahil. He immediately packed her off to a maulana who trained her till her diction was perfect. Later, Meera would have only Sahil to thank for her ability to sing in over twenty languages throughout her career. Qaasid, Joubanchanchalyo, Paingili – every single word coming out of her mouth had a story to tell, a story Meera mastered in a way that transcended borders. Sahil made her read books by authors she had never heard of. ‘A singer, first and foremost, has to feel. Be present in the stories, feel their pain, their joy, as if you live them. Only then attempt to project it in words. Words, sounds, alfaaz and awaaz are but a medium that will ring hollow if one has no feelings,’ he would repeatedly say to her.

He decided that Meera should stay close to his recording studio. So, Meera rented a room nearby and would spend nearly eighteen hours a day at the studio, meeting people – musicians, known and unknown actors and actresses, fellow playback singers – and familiarizing herself with the world of cinema and technology that made magic happen on the silver screen. It would take two years before she realized in the dying months of 1951 that she had done everything but actual singing. But at least it was progress, compared to what was transpiring in Ranakpour.

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