Ruk Jana Nahin, Tu Kahin Haar Ke

Five women, all of them vintage Hindi film music enthusiasts braved the breeze and evening chill to warm up the atmosphere at Nritya - Forum for Performing Arts, White Fields, Gachibowli on Sunday evening.

They were there to showcase their singing prowess as also their love for the iconic Kishore Kumar in whose 90th birth anniversary celebrations, a musical evening had been organised.

Titled ' Kishoreathon', this event, organised by Dakshin Dhwani was a programme in which 16 singers gathered together to sing 100 songs at a stretch between 4 – 10 pm.

The five lady singers were part of this music lovers group which had put together 53 such programmes till then, since its beginning in October 2016.

The event, as planned, came to a grand finish by the appointed time, as the organisers had kept to a tight time management schedule and picked up songs which were shorter than four minutes of running time.

' The fact that we were encouraged to sing the hit songs of Kishore Kumar rather than making us take up the female part of his duets was very motivating' said Sushma Saha, who had to rush to the venue from the Old city after completing her academic commitments.

Along with her, the other four – Anjna Puri, Pujaaz, Prabita and Purnima, accompanied by her nine-year-old son – were also ready to belt out songs.

As one of them said: 'We counted that we were singing 15 solo numbers between the five of us and were pairing with our male members for 17 songs. It's clear that we are 33 per cent of the entire programme'.

The organizer of the show, Devarajan, admitting to the number said that it was indeed fortunate that women were part of the group in such an event where it was both a relief and variety to have them take up the popular songs of the demi-god, Kishore Kumar, who had stormed the film industry and earned his spurs all through his four decades of singing career.

Taking up the evergreen songs of the Burman clan – father S D Burman and that of his talented maverick son, R D Burman – the group kept the momentum steadily during the show as the ladies took up songs from a variety of films, from that of Dev Anand to Rishi Kapoor to Rajesh Khanna to Amitabh Bachchan.

It was also interesting to note that their choice coincided overwhelmingly with that of the men in the group (who had picked 56 out of a total of 100 songs from the duo) and this synergy made things all the more comfortable for the audience, who were subjected to six hours of non-stop nostalgia.