Musical night with Anup Jalota

It was a musical night Bhubaneswar hasn’t witnessed for a long time. Bhajan maestro Anup Jalota’s melodious performance kept the audience glued to their seats for the entire Thursday evening. When he sang bhajans like 'Ram sita ram/Jag me sundar hain do naam', 'Itna to karna swami', 'Prabhuji tum chandan hum pani', 'Maiya mori main ne hi makhan khayo', 'Aisi lagi lagan' and 'Payoji maine ram ratan dhan payo', requests of encore kept on coming.
What entertained music-lovers more were the jugalbandi between Anup and flautist Abhiram Nanda and later, with tabla player Pradeep Ghosh. He also performed some romantic Hindi songs to change the sombre mood of the event. Everybody laughed aloud when he suddenly started playing the tunes of 'Kolaveri D' and 'Pardesi Pardesi' during the concert.
The highlight of the evening was when Anup paid a tribute to the late ghazal legends, Jagjit Singh and Mehdi Hassan by singing some of their immortal songs like — 'Aaj jaane ki zid na karo', 'Mera geet amar kar do', 'Ye daulat bhi de do, yeh shohrat bhi de do' and 'Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho'. Anup was satisfied with his performance when Times of India caught up with him. “It was very interesting to perform in Bhubneswar since the audience was very enthusiastic. What made me happy is that they also started singing with me,” said the ever-smiling singer.