When the Building Came Alive

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Kasturi Dhama Apartments — the play area where many evenings came alive. The lights would go out without warning. For a brief second, the entire building would fall silent. Then, from somewhere in Kasturi Dhama Apartments, a chorus would erupt. “Yayyy!” It is difficult to imagine children celebrating a power failure today. But in the Bangalore of the nineties and early 2000s, a power cut did not always feel like an inconvenience. Especially in the late evenings, it felt like permission. Permission to stop whatever we were doing, leave the darkness inside our homes, and step into the building outside. Before Kasturi Dhama became home, we had moved through a few different parts of Bangalore. My family had begun in Srirampuram and Vyalikaval before gradually cementing ourselves in Malleswaram for the next few decades. My earliest memory is of living in a vatara —a Kannada word loosely used for a building or a cluster of homes—on 15th Cross, near Karur Vy...

Why does she still sing?

Listening to the song Tere bina zindagi se koi shikhwa from the movie Aandhi, one gets transported to an ethereal world. This song is rendered to perfection by the melody perfectionists Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar. The song has that enchanting appeal and one can compare the contrast in the songs of today's cinema. I have listened to this song innumerable times, and each time, the song renders a new meaning and neatly fills my heart with solace. This album has awesome tracks sung by the duo. The track Tum aa gaye ho is another piece that can take the listener to dizzy heights. Gulzaar's lyrics makes it a perfect combination of a great musical.

Fast forward to today's cinema. Lata Mangeshkar renders her voice to some meaningless movies like Dil to pagal hai, veer zaara, mohabbatein and other terrible movies. Lata's hoarse voice makes us wonder where has she lost that wonderful voice? Obviously she can't render the same perfection in today's musical. What beats me is why should she continue singing today? She definitely has lost that charismatic appeal in that voice. In any field one should always bow out with dignity, and I certainly don't want to relive my days listening to the latest crap of music from Lata's voice.

Let's see how much more of nauseating music is in store for us from Lata Mangeshkar!!

Comments

  1. I think not only Lata, most of the old artists in any vernaculor, should stop singing after a certain period.. when they themselves know that they are underperforming.. they should not spoil the image thats there in our mind. Well written man...

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