the man who makes me cry...

I don't remember how I got introduced to him. It could be that I loved his jhuki jhukisi nazar from arth and did some research to find that he could blow mind away. Or that song tumko dekha tho yeh khayaal aaya (I forget the movie name shux) was so soul stirring that I was hooked to his voice, Jagjit Singh's voice (BTW that song was written by Javed Akhtar, WOW).

I get so distracted that I can't talk about one subject without bringing in ten other topics. PHEW

Coming back to JJ. First thing I did when I started getting big fat salary (I won't tell how much because that's an embarrassment compared to what a 20 year old earns now) was to buy his cassettes, no CDs plain old Audio cassettes and play it on my brand new videocon two-in-one. I could listen for dayyyyyyyyyyyyys non-stop. I still do.

I do not know enough adjectives to describe the quality of his voice and what it does to those words. Every singer worth his name has sung the hazaaron khwahishen aisi written by Mirza Ghalib but JJ renders it sooooo beautifully that tears just won't stop. Over the years I have bought every single cassette I could lay my hands on and heard everyone of them a zillion times (yeah yeah I drove my mother crazy with it but she was glad at least I wasn't mad about rock).

My all time favourite, the one song I can listen to all day and get emotional about, every single time is Woh Kaagaz ki kashti woh baarish ka paani. You hear it from him once, and anyone else who attempts to sing it will only be booed, however good he or she is.

Why all this peetike...well that is because I heard him live in Bangalore last Saturday! I was so thrilled to be listening to him live that I had goosebumps for the first one hour and tears of joy for the next. He is simply out of the world. He creates such a wonderful chemistry with the audience, we went mad (all excpet the ones busy with their cell phones!). He has come to Bangalore, I think three times before and I missed the concert every single time. Once I got to know about it too late. Second time I couldn't afford the tickets and third time I was not in town. But it was worth the wait.

At the concert I knew 90% of the ghazals he sang (a far cry from the carnatic concerts I've been to where I feel like an idiot while the rest of the audience lets out collective wah wah for they know the song/s). V also had a blast (nothing like me because his level excitement would be "yeah it was good" compared to the 600 word ramble of mine)

I have to thank three people here. 1) Worldspace radio for letting me know about the concert 2) Sav for getting me the tickets 3) that anonymous gal who couldn't make it to the concert despite having two tickets - you have granted one of my dying wishes (no I am not dying now but you get the drift right)

Ah what an evening it was......................

I am writing about it full four days after because if I had attempted this then all I would've managed to write "Ooohlala", "beautiful", "my god" and sobbed all over the post :-)