Tere khusboo mein basse khatt

Growing up listening to Ghazals, thanks to my dad's collection of Gulam Ali, Jagjit Singh - Chitra, Rajendra - Nina, Bhupendra, Mehndi Hasan, Farida Khannum and Pankaj Udhas,  I developed a love for this genre of music. One of my wishes was to see and hear Jagjit Singh live. But that never happened. The closest I could get to attending a Ghazal night was when Pankaj Udhas came to Trivandrum for a performance, but the venue was on the outskirts and by the time we reached, the program was almost over, and this was almost a decade ago.

So when Anil mentioned a ghazal night at Tagore Theatre on Jan 3rd, without thinking twice, I agreed. The hall had a decent number of audience, and at 7:30 pm performers were settling on the stage. The next 1.5 hours were a run-down memory lane . Deepanwita Chakravorty started the evening with Jagjit Singh's "Tere khusboo mein likhe khatt" and I know this is going to be a nostalgic evening. "Pyar ka phela Khatt" "Ranjish he sahi" "Chupke Chupke raat din" "Jab deep jale""kash aisa bhi koi manzar" "aaj jaane ki zidd" few more very popular, well-known songs, Ghazals and 2 of her own compositions. It was an absolutely beautiful musical evening, and the accompanying musicians on Tabla, Guitar, Flute and Keyboard were equally brilliant. 

It was also an eye opener for me that even though most of the popular Ghazal Singers are Men, but women Ghazal singers are also brilliant !