Silk Route to Bollywood

“Dooba Dooba Rahta Hoon Aankhon mein teri”… were the lines Mohit Chauhan sang in a soft, sleepy, romantic voice, for his debut album "Boondhein" as a lead singer of the band Silk Route. The band did a couple of albums before dissolution. People then, were not much bothered about Mohit’s individual identity.

Years later, came the song "Tum Se Hi" from the movie Jab we Met. A boffo at the box office, crafted and enacted to perfection, the movie's music smashed top charts and Mohit rode on the success vehicle with the rest of the team. “Who sang Tum se Hi?” “Very beautifully sung in a soothing voice, the singer has sung it with his heart and soul”. Compliments poured in and it came to the forefront that Mohit Chauhan was no novice to the industry, he had already rendered "Khoon Chala" of Rang de Basanti fame.

In film playback industry which is a frenzied melee, millions of singers, professionally trained and non trained, from different age groups, backgrounds, regions/mother tongue - fight for a bigger piece of pie. Making heads turn, winning critical and popular acclaim is a Herculean task. Mohit Chauhan did just that by singing “Masakali” in Delhi 6 movie, a song, I must say, Rahman would have felt proud composing. There are some special, never-heard-before elements of music in it. As Mohit starts humming ... "Hey he heey hey hey nana nnaanana naa", one sails seamlessly with the melody.

The recent movie Love Aaj Kal turned out to be a huge disappointment in all aspects - story, cast, direction and screenplay. It did not live up to the standards of an auteur like Imtiaz Ali. The only vantage point in it was the song “Yeh Dooriyan” sung by Mohit. The song scored a perfect ten for its soulful lyrics and flawless rendition.

Mohit did not fail to deliver again! With his latest romantic ballad “Pehli Baar Mohabbat ki Hai” in movie Kaminey, he is definitely making people sway to his mellifluous voice. 

The launch pad for success is in place for this talented singer. He may only possess countable songs in his kitty but each song has received phenomenal recognition from audience. Mohit’s journey from Silk Route to Bollywood has been a commendable one, but if it was smooth like silk is a question, he alone can answer. After all, fame cannot be earned easily. A free lunch is only found in mousetraps.

Quotable Quotes

• Harsha Bhogle, the veteran cricket commentator in his book - "Out of the Box" said,
  "Since T20 is the next big thing, the one thing I would go for is longer boundaries. The quicker the boundaries come in, the shorter it will become and the quicker it will die out because at the heart of cricket is a contest between bat and ball. The day you make one of them irrelevant, it's not cricket any more. So for T20 cricket make the boundaries distant."
  
  
  SRK on being detained at Newark airport, US for 2 hours, said it was not a drama and he needed no publicity stunt. In his interview to TOI, he was quoted saying the lines below. Quoting German pastor Martin Niemoller, Khan said, ‘‘They came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.’’

• From May 10th 2010, we get a new term, better said, an alternate expression for a very common idiom. Foot in mouth - is an idiom, all of us are familiar with, we might have done it/witnessed others doing it many a times. To put foot in mouth means - to say something that you regret, something embarrassing, something hurtful/silly/stupid. Well, from now on, we can even say - I did a "Tharoor". When one says something ridiculous, makes a preposterous remark, even a sensible remark at a wrong time to a wrong audience in a wrong forum/venue , we claim the person has done a "Tharoor". The derivation is from record of many such foot in mouth events by Mr.Shashi Tharoor, ex Union Minister of UPA cabinet who was forced to resign after the brouhaha surrounding sweat equity, office of profit and his more than mentor like involvement with the Kochi IPL franchise. Jairam Ramesh, another Union Minister of the UPA government, follows Tharoor as an ardent disciple in this context. Feel free to use this new term :)