Six and half years down the line, we were all together, some of us college friends, actually for the Aero Show (which I skipped) in Bangalore but also planning to go for the Bryan Adams concert while I got to know from one of the friends that Lucky Ali would also be playing the same night, at UB City. Now, this YD guy and I were decided that we were going for the Lucky Ali show even thought we had got passes for Bryan Adams concert. Eventually, we all went to Lucky Ali and though we couldn’t get to hear Summer of 69, we got lucky with Lucky Ali, and also, Sachin Tendulkar.

Well, let me come to the concert first. When we reached there, there was a band called Junkyard Groove playing there. While I remember not taking the band seriously when they came to VIT when I was there, this time I liked a few of their songs, including a Twinkle Twinkle little star, how much I love you just the way you are. And after JYG were gone, there was Lucky Ali.

I remembered the last photo of Lucky Ali from his Facebook profile where he sported a beard. But when he came up on the stage, he was simply shining in his shades and red sweater.

He started with a small speech thanking all and saying he’d be singing some of his new album’s songs and started with one song that sounded like a variation of Kaho naa pyaar hai’s ik pal ka jeena and that’s when I was all afraid if this was how the show was going to be. But then I got that Lucky had some other plans, when he suddenly burst into a-aa-a-aa-o-aa-a-aa and the whole original song. As you can easily guess, public response was phenomenal.

And then, lucky went on to sing his old hits like o sanam, sunoh, mausam, nahi rakhta dil mein, tere mere sath, kitni haseen zindagi, tu kaun hai, anjaani rahon mein, aa bhi ja, jaane kya dhoondhta hai, some of his new songs from Xsuie, dil gaaye ja and o raahi. He also sang his hits from new movies, that is hairat from Anjaana Anjaani and bekaraar from Paathshala. Also, once on request of fans sitting there, he suddenly broke into Gori teri aankhen kahen, and while he could not sing all the lines himself, he asked people to fill in and later told that he had not rehearsed the song for the gig. But the most interesting part was the last song he sang, Aao Twist Karen, from his father Mehmood’s movie Bhoot Bangla.

The concert, being held in the UB City amphitheater, had quite a personal feel to it, since the amphitheater is not too large and while almost everyone could see him without any screens being used, the sound was also not much of humdrum but in more of an acoustic setting and the songs were flowing in smoothly. Also, I’d like to mention the musicians there who were just wonderful, especially the guy on Violin (If I remember the name right, it was Manoj) who made the songs of Sur a delight to listen to.

Lucky Ali’s daughter Tasmia sang O Rahi and a few more songs with him while his younger kids Saara and Raiyan were cheering from the audiences.

* All images except first courtesy Vaidyanathan (ydntn photography) who is the greatest fan I know of Lucky Ali and also a wonderful photographer. He has also written the Photography section on this blog earlier. You can watch all his pics from Lucky Ali concert at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=330399&id=690056514&l=c29f3c8845

When Harshit asked me if I was interested in writing a small series of posts about something I really like from the bottom of my heart, I took sometime before I said yes.

I had my own questions about my abilities, but then sometimes it’s just dil-logical (straight from the heart).

In this series of posts starting shortly, I will try to cover many aspects of photography, starting from the basics to slightly more advanced topics. Most of them will be from my personal experiences and I may get in some posts from my fellow photographers in flickr.com.

The whole point of this series of posts will be to “promote photography” as an effective way to lead a happier life!

That’s right… we are after all happysing.com.