00:00It was like somebody, people were connecting me to that I saw as a mentor and he was literally like a father figure to me.
00:07This is the same woman who people thought was linked to A.R. Rahman's divorce. Who is she?
00:14This is Mohini Deh, an international bass player who once performed in A.R. Rahman's troupe,
00:20one of the most celebrated basses of her time.
00:22The only woman on Music Radar's top 10 basses of this century and a Forbes India musician under 30 success story.
00:30Mohini started playing at the age of three, not in a classroom but at home watching her father play.
00:37I had a pretty strict schedule growing up, going to school in the first half of the day from 5am to 12pm and then doing my school homework.
00:47My private tutor would come home doing her homework, you know, meal breaks here and there and then my dad would give me music lessons.
00:54By the time she was a teenager, she was already on stage with artists like Shankar Aysan Loy, Louis Bank, Ranjit Barot, holding her own and learning fast.
01:02I started performing at the age of nine and I'm 29 now so it's been 20 years I've been doing this professionally.
01:11Two decades into playing, Mohini made a move.
01:14She shifted bass to the US chasing bigger rooms, bolder sounds and total creative autonomy.
01:18So what changed?
01:22So everything is very like professional, you know, contract based, agreement based.
01:27And I guess in India, people are still working through word of mouth and people are still not very confident enough to send out contracts.
01:39But no matter the country, one thing rarely changes.
01:41The music industry, especially in her genre, is still a boys club.
01:44Honestly, there was a lot of support.
01:49They were like, you know, all my colleagues, all the people that worked with me, they knew what I deserved and they were very much pro me and they said, no, you're too overqualified.
01:59For years, Mohini Dey was known as AR Rahman's prodigy.
02:03But when Rahman's personal life became tabloid fodder, Mohini's team was dragged into headlines she had no place being in.
02:10Suddenly, the mentor became a scandal and the student became the scapegoat.
02:13How can people be so insensitive, you know, but like I said, people just get entertained by drama and, you know, when people have nothing to do, they want gossip.
02:27So they create one when there is nothing to talk about.
02:30And I guess that was like the perfect incident in the very wrong timing.
02:35She's been called a prodigy, a pioneer and a controversial figure, but Mohini Dey just plays.
02:40After two decades with the bass, she still says music is the only thing that matters.
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