On Sunday evening, the Gramophone Company of India carried the whole business to a crescendo at the Siri Fort Auditorium with the release of yet another cassette of the Prime Minister's poetry called Nayi Disha(New Direction).

The company which seems earnest in trying to prove itself to be `His Prime Minister's Voice' seems to have made an all out effort to summon the best and most popular talent to make this cassette which was released on Sunday by Vajpayee himself.

The voices for the cassette are those of celebrated ghazal singer Jagjit Singh and popular vocalists Shankar Mahadevan and Alka Yagnik. And they were present to sing the poems to a packed auditorium.

The mood ofthe evening was in keeping with the tempo set by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) election rallies with videos showing blasting mines, air raids and marching soldiers. Of course, that was part of the cassette of patriotic songs called Kar Chale Ham Fida brought out specially for Kargil.

A cheque of Rs 10 lakhs, proceeds from the sale of the cassette, was presented to the Prime Minister for the National Defence Fund. R P Goenka of the Gramophone Company of India, while paying tributes to the Prime Minister, quoted a line of his, ``Vartman ke moh-jaal mein aane waale kal ko na bhulana (Lost in the magic of the moment, lose not the sight of the morrow that's to come)''.

The company had earlier brought out a cassette of the Prime Minister's verses called Main Geet Naya Gaata Hoon.

What could make Vajpayee's election campaign a little different this time is the playing of these cassettes with some patriotic songs thrown in. This is the only new direction which this cassette calledNayi Disha can take.

Of course, Vajpayee did play the embarrassed poet, apologising for the fact that his poems were not meant for music. That the verses were never meant for music was evident from the way singers had to painfully set the heavy words to some kind of rhythm. Even the magical voice of Jagjit Singh could not work the miracle of stirring some emotional response to Vajpayee's Kya khoya kya paya jag mein (What was lost and what was won in this world).

Vajpayee went on to recite some of his verses with an accent on a poem which he wrote when he was very ill and face-to-face with death. ``But I defeated death and came out a victor.'' Were these words signifying thoughts of other victories in the times to come?