Aarzoo
That was the name of the Jagjit Singh concert organized by Smile Foundation last night at the Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi. For anyone who likes listening to ghazals or nazms, attending a Jagjit Singh concert is a must. The man is absolutely magical and mesmerizing. The accompanying team of musicians is equally talented with the violin player in the team a first rate artist in his own right.
He began with some of his lesser known numbers and slowly progressed to to the popular ones such as hum to hain pardes mein, chithi na koi sandesh, main nashe mein hoon, hosh walon ko khabar kya, kiska chehra, hazaron khwahishen aisi etc. A medley of tera chehra kitna suhana, woh kagaz ki kashti etc came up in the middle. The entire audience joined him in singing along on tumko dekha toh yeh khayal aaya. Towards the later part of the concert, he sang aahista aahista and the entire auditorium came alive at this moment.
People arriving late could be seen seated on the stairs or standing at the back of the auditorium inspite of having valid tickets which led Jagjit Singh to comment that Delhi is a ‘sarkari‘ city, so genuine ticket holders end up standing to accomodate the government officials who are seated in the front rows. He added that the situation stays the same whenever he performs at the Siri Fort Auditorium; government officials present at the concert always inconvenience the genuine audience.
Over the years Jagjit Singh has developed a distinct style of performing on stage – interspersing his ghazals with very brief explanation of difficult urdu words, or having the audience applauding with his wisecracks.
In all, he performed for a close to two hours and had the audience wanting for more by the time he concluded the concert.
Losing My Religion 
I have been a fan since a decade – with my first JS concert at Thapar University when I was just 12 or 13 years old. The performance is mesmerizing especially with his unique composition and singing of “chullay agg naa khathay they wich paani”. The sarcasm and taunting is a JS signature which he never gives up on 😉 (but is pretty limited if we were to believe the rumors that JS sir needs half a bottle of JWalker before he can get on the stage to perform).
Glad you got a chance to go for it.
Cheers!
yeah… the wit and sarcasm is quite restrained, probably in good measure, else it wouldn’t have the kind of impact it does on the audience.
It was a wonderful concert but totally unorganised .i have been a fan of JAGJIT SINGH for mor than 6 years so it was like a dream for me to be a part of audience of live concert . for that only i travelled from bareilly to delhi. i was not expecting so bad seating arrangement .but later i enjoyed the concert very much when JS sir himself asked us to be seated on stage . i hope i ll get opportunities in future also…..