The other day, surfing channels, I came across a programme called K For Kishore. It was another of those music talent contests that are the rage nowadays, except that here, the contestants were singing only songs originally sung by the late Kishore Kumar. And it was fascinating to see the reverence and love with which people still remembered this man, who has been dead for 20 years and two months now.

Each contestant was a Kishore fanatic, even though some of them would have been infants or children when he called it a day. There was one young man who actually prays to Kishore Kumar’s spirit every day; there was another who starts his day by standing at his bungalow’s gates with folded hands. These are people who have built their lives around this man they had never seen or met, but whose songs appear to have tided them through their lives. And this is not Elvis madness: the King is not dead, he was just abducted by aliens and will return one day to reclaim his dominion and kiss the world tender, sweet. This is not about mad junkies hanging around at Jim Morrison’s Paris grave and hoping for the resurrection of the Lizard King. These are men who know Kishore Kumar is dead and gone, and who have dedicated every idle hour they have to listening to his songs and trying to sound like him. The monetary returns for this lonely pursuit must be meagre (till K For Kishore came along). But it would be an obsession that would also be fun. A joyful junoon.

... contd.