Shreya Ghoshal and Saina Nehwal
“Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Saina Nehwal:
In less than a year since I wrote this post on India’s performance in Olympics, I had to eat my words. More than the three medals we got this time, it was the individual brilliance and the fight put up by our athletes that amazed me. One such athlete who went right up to the quarterfinals of the Olympics in the Badminton event was Saina Nehwal. In fact, she won her World Badminton Junior’s title shortly after the Olympics – meaning, she was still qualified to play for the junior’s event when she achieved this feat in the Olympics!
Her semi-final appearance in the recently concluded Super Series Finals in Malaysia, where only top eight players in the world compete for the crown, is great news for Indian badminton and also her coach Gopichand, who has himself won the All England Badminton tournament for India.
Her journey to the top, as expected, was not an easy one. Her father drove 50 KM daily for three months in a scooter to reach the coaching institute at 6 AM in the morning, when she was barely 8 years old. After that, her family moved closer to the stadium but she still had to commute 7 KM daily – morning and evening for the practice.
Keep smashing hard Saina, a whole nation is proud of you!
Shreya Ghoshal:
If brilliance, ever had a voice, this was it!
I was among a handful of people in an empty theatre watching the movie ‘Banaras’, just to listen to this song – Om Namah Shivaya sung by Shreya Ghoshal, in theatre effect. I liked the voice so much that I should have listened to it hundred’s of times, afterwards.
After listening to the Kannada(Telugu) and Malayalam(Tamil) versions of the climax song of the movie – ‘Chandramukhi’, I thought it couldn’t get better than the Tamil (Telugu) version – Ra ra…. But that was till, I heard Shreya Ghosal sing ‘Mere Dholna sun’ in Bhool Bhulaiya.
It seems her career in Bollywood started with the finals of Zee Sa Re Ga Ma TV show when her voice was spotted by Sanjai Leela Bhansali. She started her career by singing five songs in the movie Devdas and received a lot of accolades for singing ‘Bairi Piya’ in Devdas. I don’t think any one else could have recorded this song in the first attempt itself!
No doubt, ‘Jadoo hai Nasha hai’ song from Jism was one of her very best. Still, I think her voice in the ‘Cheeni Kum’ title song was equally good. It seems she started her sojourn in stage performances with this Rajasthani Classical – ‘Suniyo jee’. To understand the spirit of her voice, listen to this song she sung in a concert – ‘Yeh Ishq Aaye’ (Jab We Met).
She has also sung some beautiful songs in Tamil – My favorite one is the slow and soulful ‘Ninaithu Ninaithu parthen’ from 7G Rainbow Colony (Listen to this in a slightly higher volume – you’ll love it).
I didn’t previously know that the song ‘Munbe vaa yen anbe vaa’ was sung by Shreya Ghoshal. I should have guessed it! Another song that caught my attention was ‘Aiyaiyo’ song from the movie Paruthiveeran. This one is a pure village folk song with a highly local accent, which proves her skill to sing songs which are diverse and difficult.
Also do listen to this nice Kannada song – ‘Araluthiru Jeevada’ from the movie Mungaru Male, also sung by her.
Destination Infinity
You could visit the People Places and Culture section of this blog for similar articles.
Shreya also sang the 'Tazhuvudu Nazhuvudu' song from Aa..Aah.. and the intimate 'Pani Tuli Pani Tuli' from Kanda Naal Mudal and 'Unna Vida' from Virumaadi and lot more.
While it is no news that Shreya is an amazing singer, it is all news and very bad at that – this blog is not anymore what it promised to be – Destination Infinity. This blog, once boasted of content that talked abstract-ism.
But, all I could see these days is bunch of quotes usurped from the web and some random posts on Aurangzeb, Tibet, Shreya Ghoshal, Kalashnikov, Aryabhatta, etc. And it's been consistently thankless to its sources (Wikipedia?).
🙂 nice post,its good to see an Indian do well in a sport other than cricket…
@MSR: The random quotes which you are talking about, was usurped from e-mail forwards. But only the best one are. And the ones that I publish will say something that is completely different. The quotes contain a lot of wisdom, if you look at the best of them. I share only such quotes.
The consistently thankless part is right though, I will try to link the sources from where the information is taken, in future. It's not always Wiki… About the theme of the blog and the various forms it had to take, I am writing a separate post, which you could expect within a week.
@Vishesh: Yes. Tennis, badminton, chess and billiards. But very few. The post I wrote on Saina Nehwal was mainly inspired by the minuscule column that she received in the news papers when compared to the test match analysis and commentary.
I agree with MSR. I have read some of your previous articles like The Unique School and some others. Why is the theme of the content changing? You were unique. Don't try to copy anyone else. It doesn't suit you. 🙂 No offense meant. 🙂
@Anniyan: Just before one day I published this article, I wrote one called "Participative Democracy" in Youth Unite. That, according to me at least, was abstract, as the content does not communicate the message directly. The whole message is in the title. But, it was a post more suitable for Youth Unite, and hence I posted it there. It is really hard to post articles like that frequently as formulating the concept takes time. There are only two articles on this website that was totally taken from a book. But again, it was my own gist of what went on for 25-30 pages. I just take the portions that are required to convey the message. And I post them because I feel that everyone ought to know about them.
It is good to receive frank inputs in wordpress. I hope to have more debates and feedback in my wordpress site like this comment. Blogspot users speak their mind more easily, without worrying about the niceties. Object, debate and fight people. I thought it will happen in AK-47 post, which was meant to be an equally abstract and provocative post. I received better opinions and have replied to such opinions eloborately in my blogspot site.
Destination Infinity
Shreya Ghoshal has the voice with the perfect pitch. Its neither too extra sweet like Alka Yagnik's nor it becomes shrilly on high scales like Lata mangeshkar's. Its just perfect.
Share the same thoughts with Amit 🙂
@Amit and Kiran: I have not heard much of Lata Mangeshkar's songs. I was introduced to bollywood music only from around 1993. Now, I will listen to some of her songs to see if she sang as well as Shreya 🙂
Destination Infinity
Surely Saina Nehwal was a great player and she will be the star in Badmiton.. I didn't wachted her playing until now.. 🙁
Shreya Ghosal was a class act.. perfect voice.. There are few voices I love to hear without caring about music.. her's is one among the list of Harish Raghavendra, K.J.Yesudas, and Illayaraja. I love the song 'Enaku piditha padal' from Juli Ganapathy and 'Main Agar Kahoon' from Om Shanti Om.. really sweet
Merry Christmas to you 🙂
It feels too good while listening to Shreya's songs. One thing is that the voice is sweet. Another is that, her voice contains freedom of a singer who sings by freewill and not as a professional. So, I feel she puts her whole being into the song she's singing pretty effortlessly.
Lets all be proud that some other sport than cricket is improving another time! 😉
@Kanagu: Same to you… I think you can search for the videos and watch it in youtube. My favorite singers are Shreya Ghosal, Unnikrishnan, Kavita Krishnamoorthy and Sadhana Sargam. I have not heard that song from Juli Ganapathy which you mentioned… will listen to it soon.
@Su: Yeah, she makes perfection look easy. Who knows how many years of training got into it. Did you notice one more thing? I deliberately left hockey out of that list.
Destination Infinity
Healthy criticism is dying down nowadays. But I had commented on that post. Did you not see?
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