Ami aar Godo

I spent the entire day in anticipation of this show and when I finally got to Gyan Manch and managed to park my car and got to the gate, I noticed a long snake like queue leading up to the auditorium. I was a bit surprised that so many people would buy tickets and queue up to watch Anjan Dutta perform. The branding seemed to me as though it was a 91.9 Friends FM show.

Anyway, finally after about half an hour out in the humid Kolkata Street, there seemed to be some movement and the winding queue disappeared into the auditorium. Once inside and thanks to VIP tickets from Anjan himself, we got seated in the first row; something I wasn’t too keen on, considering the size of speakers staring us in the face. But once the curtain went up and the silhouettes of the instruments on stage against the green screen, I knew this was going to be a well orchestrated show.

Sure enough, the lights went out and Anjan came on stage highlighted by the spotlight from the ceiling reading out from a sheet, the reason he had embarked on a show such as this. He followed that up with a couple of solos on stage; he was joined by his son Neel. They took the show forward and were soon joined by guitarist Rajkumar and later by drummer Saurav.

The show was interspersed with dialogue, mostly in the form of a narrative about his life and experience and also through a letter written to him by a Fan.

The music, essentially Bengali songs from his early days, like Ranjana and 2441139 among other hits got the full house into applause every time they heard one of the oldies. He even gave space to his talented musicians to go into some blues jams and solos on their instruments. His signature rendition of 100 Miles got the crowding singing along too.

He finally wound up the show by a father-son duet and then handed over the mantle to his son who wound up the show with two touching solos.

I just loved the classy lighting throughout the show and captured as many pictures of the transitions and moods.