Time was when you couldn’t switch on the television without bumping into a rotund and turbaned image in a bandhgala, hands held high in a dance step that became the leitmotif at weddings and discs. But that was when Daler Mehndi ruled. The moment he sang Bolo ta ra ra, thousands of youngsters raised their hands, wagged their index fingers and shook their legs.

Today few recognise the singer when he walks into the lobby of a five star hotel in Delhi — our venue for an interview. We exchange pleasantries and enter the coffee shop. “Please do have a glass of juice,” says the pop singer courteously and asks for a sugarless watermelon juice for himself. Then he puts his cell phone on mute, punctiliously ignoring all the calls that flash through our hour-long conversation.

After a spell in the wilderness, the king of bling is in the news again. The Punjabi pop star has reinvented himself with his spiritual album Mere Ram. “There is a huge demand for spiritual music and all record companies want to sign singers for this genre,” says Mehndi. For the singer whose father was a hazuri ragi — a religious shabad singer — the music is close to his heart. Yet, he can’t forget the genre that gave him instant stardom.

After all these years, he still remembers how the phone rang one day — and how proud he was when he heard the voice on the other end. After all, it wasn’t every day that the Shahenshah of Bollywood — Amitabh Bachchan — personally called an upcoming musician. Bachchan asked him to not just compose a song, but sing it along with the actor in a film. Daler was then just one song-old in the industry, though the debut was a super success. The singer — who sang mostly in Punjabi — was yet to learn the tricks of stardom, but he knew he had arrived.

And he wasn’t mistaken. By the time the two performed Na na na na na rey for the film Mrityudaata in 1997 he had already become a household name. His two previous albums — Bolo ta ra ra and Dardi rab rab released in 1995 and 1996 respectively — had made him an overnight celebrity across the subcontinent.

Half a million copies of Bolo ta ra ra were sold within just four months of its release and it was recorded as the best-selling non-soundtrack album in Indian chart history. Fans queued up outside his house to see him. Music companies were eager to sign him and there were reports of some multi-million dollar deals.

But that was then. Today Mehndi — after a controversy in 2003 — is a subdued man, reflecting the change in his choice of music. He stresses that spirituality keeps him rooted during tough times. “I always begin every performance with a rendition to the Almighty,” he says. “Moreover, the first musical notes taught by my parents were dedicated to the Lord,” he adds.

He speaks softly, and is sometimes barely audible. Clearly, the new Daler Mehndi is a pale shadow of the old singer. There is little evidence of the showy performer who was mostly seen in flamboyant silk robes, garish jackets and bejeweled turbans in fluorescent colours.

Now, dressed in blue denims, a lime-coloured Hugo Boss T-shirt and an ink-blue turban, he looks less of a pop star and more like the California emigrant that he once was. The only bit that grabs eyeballs is the ring with an over-sized turquoise stone that adorns a finger. “This is a gift from a fan whom I met at an airport last month,” he says, as I look at it enquiringly.

But Mehndi believes that his unique sartorial style helped him become the star of satellite television. “I had no stylist. My look made me stand out among other musicians,” he says.

The style, indeed, was in-your-face, more so given his simple background. Mehndi grew up in Patna, listening to his parents sing shabad and bhajans at the Haramandir Saheb gurdwara, the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh. “Music was our food for soul,” he says.

He started learning music when he was five and took lessons from Ustad Rahat Ali Khan of Gorakhpur from the age of 14, specialising in the Patiala gharana of Hindustani classical music.

In school, he learnt the ghazals of Begum Akhtar, and at home, bhajans. He heard Bade Ghulam Ali and Ravi Shankar, and earned a degree in music — the Sangeet Prabhakar.

His family moved to Delhi in the early 80s, and young Daler started singing ghazals in hotels and at private parties. But one of nine siblings, the going wasn’t easy. So like many others before him, he shifted base to California to earn a living as a taxi driver.

“There too I carried my music with me,” he says, adding that he started learning Persian music from other immigrants. “Wherever I went music was part of my existence.”

He came back to India in 1988, hoping to make his mark as a musician. He started making the rounds of music companies and even sang a couple of odd songs for other musicians. But his biggest break came when Magnasound signed a contract with him — and Daler Mehndi became another name for bhangra pop.

“The words of Bolo ta ra ra were penned by my mother and since then I haven’t looked back,” he says. Few would know that actress Priyanka Chopra — now a mega star — got her first break in his album Ek Dana. “Five albums in a row were hits and I was at the peak of my career,” he reminisces fondly.

Then came the downfall in 2003 which was as dramatic as the rise. Booked under a human trafficking case — charged with taking money to ship people out of the country by masquerading them as his troupe members — he went into hiding for a month.

Mehndi is now ready to talk about it. “People in power levied false allegations on me. The media, politicians and my rivals all pulled strings to bring me down,” he says. He stresses that he was wrongfully charged. The case in a Patiala court, as it stands today, is based on the complaints of two people who said they were charged Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh respectively in the immigration racket.

“The only saving grace was that I never went to jail even for a single day,” he adds with a hand gesture thanking God. “There were people who used to tell me that they would provide me with a separate cell in the jail with modern amenities,” he adds with a chuckle. “I am sure I will be vindicated soon.”

His fingers drum the table while he speaks of the ordeal that he went through. “It’s been seven years and my music career just nosedived after the controversy,” he says, his eyes suddenly moist. As a fallout, his endorsements, including those for a cola giant, collapsed. “I had to sell my property at a dirt cheap rate to survive as Daler Mehndi.”

But he made a comeback of sorts — and this time with Bollywood. He has sung hit numbers for several films — including Maqbool, Lakeer, Rang de Basanti and Halla Bol. He also made a foray into South India and had several hit songs in Tamil and Telugu. “It’s a cliché, but it’s true — music has only one language,” he says when I ask him how he conquered his Punjabi accent while singing in the South.

But despite his renewed tryst with music, 42-year-old Mehndi knows the magic of the Nineties has passed him by. He is now waiting to pass on the baton to his children — the eldest, now in college, and the two younger ones, still in school, have already begun their musical journeys.

Mehndi is busy with other activities too. Soon he will be a judge in a music talent hunt on television. He promises to release a new pop-rock album by September. “Also, I am re-launching my music company to provide newcomers with a platform for their dreams.”

Then there is his philanthropic work, which he doesn’t really want to elaborate on. He built houses for Gujarat earthquake victims. He feeds almost 1,000 people every day at a gurdwara in Delhi. “It’s my duty to help fellow human beings with my own money rather than do a fundraising during tragic times,” he says.

The man who likes to read books on subjects ranging from medical practices and spirituality to scientific discoveries is an ecologist at heart. He planted eight lakh trees in Delhi as part of a drive and opened a page on a social networking site recently urging the young to earmark 50 houses in their colony where they could plant trees. “My team members will visit those places and plant the saplings,” he says.

And like the saplings, Mehndi is waiting to sprout new leaves.