Music World on Park Street is abuzz with a flurry of activities. Cursing camera men, harried shop attendants, and mobile phone-happy aunties crane their necks, fall over each other to catch a glimpse of the miniscule dais at one corner of the shop. While you wonder what’s going on, you spot a man sporting dark blue shades, a matching buttoned down shirt and gold chains signing autographs and obliging shutterbugs. If you are a nineties music person, you wouldn’t need to wrack your brains to recognize Kumar Sanu. In city for the launch of his latest album, ‘Phire Elam’, the singer seemed to have kicked up quite a storm, even if for a little while. However, as self-important music company employees etc escort him out in a hurry, you wonder where the nineties Bollywood music sensations are, at present.

Sanu, who gave us chart toppers throughout the nineties – Baazigar, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Deewana, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai – the list is exhaustive, nearly disappeared with the turn of the century. Except a private album that didn’t create many ripples we didn’t hear about him in Bollywood ever since. Udit Narayan lasted a little longer, but there’s no news of him in a long time now. Similar is the case with, Alka Yagnik or the supremely talented Kavita Krishnamurty. We wonder what happened to them, given that the songs in their repertoire are still favourites with several of us.

“These days, do we at all recognize the songs for their singers? At times we don’t even know who the music director is for a popular song… all we know is the film they belong to,” says Sreemanti Ghosh, a 27-year-old analyst with a consulting firm in the city.

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