I hesitate to pen down my thoughts on the party that Shankar Mahadevan hosted for us :). Partly because I left half way. Partly because it was astounding and I have an eternal regret of leaving it half way :(

Manu (an infrequent comment-author) had already shown me visions of how good Shankar was, but what I experienced was much more than that! The concert started with his standard “breathless” song followed by an oldie by Kishore (eminently forgettable one at that!). Meanwhile, Mahalaxmi also chipped in with a few soulful numbers without much effect on the audience.

The best part of the show were the audience. There were spontaneous team leaders erupting and encouraging people to dance while Shankar urged the same over the mike. What was beautiful was the camaraderie that the crowd developed. An interesting phenomenon is the mobile phone “swing” if I can call that. Everyone sways their mobile phones which looked like stars dotting a black sky. Beautiful.

SEY’s “Pretty Woman” performance was amazing too! Shankar invited a few girls on stage and the girls shrieked their hearts out! I did feel that the “Take it Easy Policy” performance was quite slow but Shankar was quick to detect it and stopped the music and asked the audience to sing “Take it Easy Policy” and started again. But it just became slightly faster but not as fast as the original song. But, the saving grace, was the “jugalbandhi” between the drummer and the tabla player. And the finale of the jugalbandhi where Ehsaan joined them for getting back to the song was mind blowing.

And then came the frenzy-causing song “Naach Baliye”, and everyone danced their hearts out (including me and Manu!). A few oldies were caught in between, but they did respectably stand and watch :)

There were quite a few profs from IIT to watch the show (Manu pointed a few), and I couldn’t keep track of their “dancing skills” as the crowd effectively cut me off from everything except the view of the stage.

And yes, I left an hour and a half after the show began missing out the second half which was even better, the newspapers say. And the reason was safety. Even though I fear no road nor man in Singapore, Uma’s posts and the recent BPO employee’s murder did not give me confidence in getting back alone without company. And, so, with eternal regret, I left the concert early.