We delivered the theme song for "Kasturi" and felt really good. It has so many sections to it, Karnatik, Hindustani, folk, and a childrens' choir with Deepak (remember our "Kanna Thumba Banna) conducting again.

The best part of this project was meeting a 76 year old lady, Daroji Eeramma. She is what the world calls "illiterate". Somebody please explain how she can be that and yet translate 1500 pages worth of folklore from Telugu into Kannada without the aid of a single written syllable! Her voice is strong, her eyes full of humour and she sang for almost 5 hours. As she unveiled the story line of the folk myths, I found myself agreeing on whoever said it first, that peoples of the world, have common imagery, common myths and tales. She sang of a curse. The previous night I had been reading up something about a Celtic curse...
After the recording she chatted, her lively wit and humour taking gentle digs at our overweight, city bred, refined ways. At the end of that brilliant day, I felt she was really blessed. She has left absolutely minimal ecological footprint on the world. She has lived in a tent so many years, till the government of Karnataki recognized her art and bestowed upon her the Nadoji award and built a small house for her in her hometown. She sings, she is not worried about her next meal, ill health, fitness schedules, petrol prices, housing, or false teeth! She refuses to get new teeth "cemented" into her betel leaf stained mouth!

The monsoon rains are upon us and we sit with laptops and worry about flooding! Unbalanced state of "progress". The studio's upgradation is done, we' ve been busy with work for various radio stations, foremost among them being Mirchi, followed by City and Indigo. Our promos play all day long on Mirchi and it's great fun to ideate and come up with "Mirchi" promos.
The theme song for Kasturi is also on our minds. Ram has worked out the contacts and starting tomorrow, we shall be busy recording the various segments of the song.
I met Sivanand Hegde yesterday at Vivek Shanbhag's book reading. He is the famous Yakshagana artist Shambhu Hegde's son and he is bringing in his troupe for the Yakshagana recording tomorrow. More of the book reading- it's been very many years since I met Vivek or Dr U R Ananthamoorthy, the whole family actually. Also bumped into Jayant Kaikini, Vivek Dhareshwar, Sarvamangala, Mukund Rao, Girish Kasaravalli and Vaishali. After being mainly into the music world for sometime now, it was a snatch of another world at the book release and reading. Some critics and fans read out from Vivek's book "Ondu badi kadalu".
On Wednesday we have Darojee Eeramma, acclaimed folk artist coming in from Raichur with her troupe.
R K Padmanabh and Nandakumar too will be working on this project with us. That's the week ahead.