If you cannot be the real you with even those whom you consider to be close to you, then, with whom can you be the real you? When your mind is burdened with all these thoughts and more, what can pull you out of all those feelings and transport you to a state of indescribable bliss in a jiffy? What else but, Rahman’s music! 🙂 It happened, thanks to Benny Dayal’s concert in Saarang. I didn’t even know till a couple of days before the concert that Benny Dayal was also going to perform on the same night as Sonu Niigaam. And little did I expect that I would enjoy his concert more than Sonu Niigaam’s!

Right from the day I came to know that Sonu Niigaam (I keep forgetting that he has added an extra ‘i’ and extra ‘a’ to his name) was going to perform in Saarang, I was excited and was eagerly waiting for the D-day to come soon. The day did come but only I wasn’t in the mood to enjoy it.

But I knew the moment the concert starts, I would start enjoying it. But alas, it was not to be, thanks to Sonu Niigaam’s choice of songs. His singing was, needless to say, awesome and the versatile singer that he is, he sang each and every song with perfect feel needed for it. But, I found most of the songs the he sang to be boring ones. I didn’t know a lot of songs that he sang and even those I knew I now, don’t remember what those were. Mere Rang De Basanti from ‘The Legend of Bhagat Singh’ was the only Rahman’s song that he sang in the concert. Just Chill Chill, few lines of Suraj Hua Maddham and Deedar De? are the other songs that I remember he sang. Now don’t say I would have enjoyed it had he sung more Rahman’s songs. Because, there are lots of non-ARR songs sung by him that are my favourites!

Anyway, by the time Sonu Niigaam’s concert which started at about 7:20 pm, ended by 9:30 or so, I was so bored and tired. A wait for about half an hour for the mike testing, sound checking etc. by Benny’s musicians only added to it. But, from the moment Benny entered the stage, I forgot everything and the next one hour turned out to be the best part of the day!

Except for a couple of songs from Vaaranam Aayiram, it was just ARR’s songs throughout! Standing in the OAT packed to its full capacity and the thousands of people out there joining Benny in congratulating and celebrating Rahman winning Golden Globe award and 3 Oscar nominations by screaming their hearts out in joy, jubilation and pride (at least that’s all what I felt 😉 ), there couldn’t have been a better way to celebrate Rahman’s success! 🙂 Similar applauding happened when Sonu Niigaam mentioned about ARR too, before singing Mere Rang De Basanti. 🙂

Benny started the concert with sandhosha kaNNeerey /Dil Se Re (it was a mixture of both Hindi and Tamil lyrics). When you listen to a song like Dil Se Re, one of your most favourite songs which you feel you know inside out, when you are going through all those feelings mentioned in the opening lines of this post, I can’t tell you how great it feels! Makes you forget everything and lose yourself in the magic of ARR’s music!

Dil Se Re was followed by Maduraikku Pogadha Dee (the female singer, whose name I forgot, sang so badly!), Adiye Kolludhe from Vaaranam Aayiram, Tu Meri Dost Hai, Yetti Yetti (from Vaaranam Aayiram again) halfway through which Benny switched to Urvasi Urvasi 😀 , Nee Marilyn Monroe, Andha Arabic Kadaloram (again a mixture of both Hindi and Tamil lyrics), Pappu Can’t Dance Saala and finally, Taxi Taxi! Everybody out there was screaming Taxi Taxi from the beginning and when he finally sang it, there was a huge applause!

I don’t even know how good Benny’s singing was, since I was myself happily singing all the songs (except the Vaarnam Aayiram ones) forgetting everything. 🙂 At the end of the day, I was so happy that I ended up saying a big thanks to Rahman yet again, for making my day! 🙂 His music is and will always be the one thing that means the most to me. It cheered me up so much that at the end of the day, I didn’t even care about the events preceding the show that made me feel sort of gloomy in the first place. Thank you, Rahman and thanks to Benny too!