had yet not decided the song and there I was…on the bed for the whole day…too tired to get out of it. But humming this song…”aaoge jab tum”…from the movie “Jab We Met”. I’d not have dared to go ahead with it, had I not known the simpler rendition of the song. After recording the song, I figured out how pathetic I was doing. And then it was a search on you tube. You tube rocks and so does Nikita Daharwal, a progeny in music and painting. I chanced upon her video for this song and her clear rendition lend me the confidence to go ahead. At the same time, it was challenge that I took up, to live up-to my own expectations.
Then began the grueling session of recording, figuring out notes, getting them into rhythm … .The next problem I faced was how to remember the sargam at the end of the song, that was critical for the song to have some influence. There were 4 short sargams on teen-taal and 2 long ones. I kept on revising them…umpteen times to rote them.
Now I had got both of them. But the next confusion was how much of the difficult portions of song I want to sing, given the short time before performance. The Alaap looked difficult enough to not let any confusion on that front, and I chose simpler of the two sargam pieces; the later one. With my colleague’s fairly good experience on tabla, I chucked the karaoke and used tabla and electronic tanpura to keep from following the strict structure of the actual song. Thus keeping things simple and working hard worked.
The first recording with tabla and tanpura didn’t sound great but my voice clarity, precision of notes and pitch-impact improved with time. So, for the three days I was living the song day in and day out.
Now the d-day arrived and we did few practice session in the morning…I still had doubts which had surfaced earlier, And that was whether the song suited the audience and occasion. But what the heck…with so much effort into it…I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t have any expectation in terms of audience response and targeted to do the best. And there I was, erred in between when I sung some lines at the wrong place…but didn’t get perturbed…the song was not that popular for audience to notice that. And it finished smoothly, with some styling in the end that i had given to make it sound good. And yes, it was lauded performance, self-lauded I mean. I had al the satisfaction in the world to have done that. Not a great feat but a personal achievement that has high recognition in my own eyes.
It was out of luck and some good choices, that I gave myself and few others a reason to be happy….yup….I did it … 
4 Comments
June 24, 2009 at 10:42 am
Presentation of thoughts and feelings in a very well woven manner…..all of it ending with self-satisfaction, the most important thing for any artist….I’m sure your performance must be equally good as your blog….btw, thanks for praising my youtube channel in the write up
June 27, 2009 at 2:58 am
Bhai, I surely do not understand all these ragas and taals, but I too am a big fan of this song.. And even I find myself humming this song all the time.
Waise, how abt uploading ur recording here.. Would love to hear u sing after a long time.
June 27, 2009 at 3:00 am
As an aside, I find JWM and “Life in a metro” as two of the best movie albums to have come out of bollywood in last 2-3 years.. Amazing collections of songs of different moods..
September 20, 2009 at 5:40 am
Hey Buddy..this is song have always been one of my favourites..you are lucky that you got a chance to sing this song..wish u all the very very best and keep up the good work always..