If you speak Malayalam, then Dasettan (Yesudas) among Lalettan (Mohanlal) are people who seem like family. You probably grew up listening to Yesudas, whether it was his home production Tarangini, or Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi film songs or his devotional Krishna songs. As a kid I always wanted to listen to him live or meet him. With the Carnatic music lessons that I have been taking, it has been a dream to render one of Yesudas’s songs from Bharatam or His Highness Abdullah. 

So with the maestro in town, there was no way I could miss his concert. He rendered us speechless with his awe-inspiring, beautiful voice. I was close to tears when I first heard him sing. Legend has it that old age has had its effect on his beautiful voice. None of that seemed true when he rendered composition after composition for two hours non-stop. With his humor, he had us all laughing loud nd asking for more. Nodding heads, tapping fingers and enchanted smiles were the little gifts he offered us.

With almost an hour of traveling to do to get home, we decided to leave at 10:30 pm. As we walked out, he rendered Krishna nI bEganE bArO, we rushed back and stood listening to him in the aisle. Though we had to leave, his music still lingers and reminds me to do sadagam.

So here’s to Sa re sa, sa sa re sa, ni ni ni ni, Indradhanush ……. Rama

Was just listening to Piyu Bole from Parineeta, and I have to report with disappointment that the first few bits of music have been shamelessly lifted from “Wonderful Tonight”. A little disappointed but the song is still beautiful. Shreya Ghoshal sounds amazing.