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A Thousand Desires - Glimpse of the Margazhi-Kutcheri Season

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Life is an ever-growing collection of unfulfilled desires; each alike Ghalib’s thousands, worth dying for: हज़ारों ख़्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख़्वाहिश पे दम निकले   Last month I gratified an old longing - For three days I witnessed the annual festival of music in Chennai, The Margazhi Kutcheri. Utter solitude of the unit where I was posted after internship, more than three decades ago, had forced me to look for means to while away the idle hours. As I wrote sometime back, I discovered Kishori Amonkar in these fumbling efforts. Then, a young officer from Kerala often saw me sprawled on a lawn chair, reading, and listening to music, as he walked across the corridor facing my room. He suggested that I listen to Yesudas’s Carnatic albums, which he said were popular in Kerala. A few weeks later he brought me two cassettes of Yesudas’s music, seeing I had not heeded his advice. I liked the music: the fast pace and the fascinating drums.  India Today had launched Music Today then, a presti