She goes on, “We hated living there. Then one day mom came to visit us and saw how unhappy we were. And that day, my brother and I just ran away with her!”
Taran’s narration of her life is very vivid and much more detailed than the printed word. She laughs when we mention that she would make a great scriptwriter. “Why don’t you direct the film on my life?” she asks.
But even in Ludhiana, things were far from hunky-dory. “Mom was a single parent and had to shoulder our responsibilities. She also had to look after her parents since my maternal uncles were not taking good care of them. That’s why when a divorcee from Birmingham offered to marry her and accept us all as his family, we moved to England in 1991. Birmingham was a horribly grey, miserable, cold and boring place. As a kid, I recall thinking, ‘Main kidhar aa gayi?’”

While Taran’s mom simultaneously worked and studied there so that she could open her own parlour, the young girl enrolled in school and faced racism in huge measure, especially since she was a naturally great dancer and was chosen for a play by her teacher over a local student, who then beat up Taran. So her mother hastily changed her school.
“I was the sweetest, dumbest, most vulnerable and straight girl, brought up on mom’s staple advice of ‘Ladaai nahin karte’.” Taran laughs. “In the second school, however, things began to change.”
A major influence here was Taran’s alignment with the blacks rather than with the Indian group there. “In those days, the blacks were the lords of the Underground music scene, with hip-hop, R & B and Reggae. There was a situation where I finally blew my top and beat up a black girl, and her gang offered me her chair in the college café that day!”

Slowly, Taran’s confidence began to surge and she discovered a singer and writer within her. Says Taran, “One day, I just told mom, ‘Mom, I want to be a rapper!’ Asked mom, ‘Rap? Woh kaalo wala music?’ and I nodded. Within the next few months, I was waking up usual at 3 a.m. to help mom who had started a small parlour, attend college and perform as a musician and write my songs.”
Adds Taran proudly, “And I was good and successful! I became the first female Indian rapper in the U.K. though most of our community there was convinced that I was nothing more than a prostitute! But I did not care. Mom supported me for a long while financially and accepted that my lyrics had a rare depth for someone of my age. All she said was, ‘Darling, this is England. Make sure that you are successful, so that people will not ridicule us.’”
Soon Taran, who had begun with open nights and gigs, moved on to big-ticket shows and recordings with the likes of Simon Cole. “Whatever I earned I was putting back into music,” she recalls. “In 2004, I did 275 shows. Apart from the Asian Underground and Indians, the mainstream had started loving me and my music,” says the singer. The big names in her resume kept adding up and she was working with DJ Westwood on the “Asian Special”, on BBC’s Asian Network, on radio, with NRI musicians like Raghav and Jay Sean and others.

“I shall now tell you how my name came about!” says the singer grandly. “I was at Punjabi MC’s studio when a guy there condescendingly asked me to sing after him if I was not confident - after all, I was a nameless rapper. When I belted out the song with him, he was so completely outclassed that Punjabi MC came out laughing and bellowed, ‘Tu to ekdum hardcore nikli!’ I liked the sound of the name, which sounded like the joke about a Punjabi woman (“Kaur”) terrorist, so I guess I stuck to the name and the name too stuck to me!”
By 2004, Hard Kaur was already 70-80 recordings old. Her song Ek galasi do galasi became the No.1 anthem on Universal Music across UK, USA and India and she came to India to do gigs. Universal then offered her an album, Supawoman - and the single Look for me was a chartbuster too.
“It was when I was having business meetings with music labels that I happened to meet Vishal of the Vishal-Shekhar team and they put me on to Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and I did a song on their HIV project. Shankar said that they had heard my songs, wanted me for a song in a film but had not known where to look for me!”
And Hard Kaur was on. After Johnny Gaddaar, in which they gave her a completely free hand at writing the lyrics that she sang, Hard Kaur’s popularity has soared. Out in the market now are her songs for Pritam in Haal-e-dil, Singh Is Kinng and Kismat Connection, Anu Malik’s Ugly Aur Pagli (she has also recorded for his Toonpur Ka Superhero) and Vishal-Shekhar’s Bachna Ae Haseeno.

Is she allowed to write her lines every time? And she bellows, “Yes, of course. And I lay great importance on originality!”
“I have had enough turbulence in my life to last a lifetime,” sums up the singer, without the slightest hint of self-pity in her voice. “I am back in India kyonki maine India ke peeche itni maar khayi hai! I love the weather here in Mumbai, and I am going to stay here, because it’s like being on a holiday for ever!”