NILADRI KUMAR
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Twenty years ago I sat in a concert hall and heard Pt Niladri Kumar play.
Last weekend I sat in a concert hall and heard Pt Niladri Kumar play again.
Same artist. Different man in the audience.
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The RSAOI Officers Institute in Bangalore was electric last night.
Veterans. Serving officers. Families. Some, who knew and adored music. Some people who admitted freely — laughing — that they don't really understand ragas and taals.
But they had come anyway. Because some things don't need to be understood to be felt.
The anticipation in the room was something I haven't experienced in a long time.
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Before he played a single note, Niladri Kumar spoke.
He said he had wanted to join the defence services ever since he was in Class 8.
When the time finally came, he was declared unfit. Flat feet.
And so music became his life instead.
He looked at that room full of officers and veterans and said — with a smile that carried thirty years of mastery in it — the grass is always greener on the other side.
I couldn't speak.
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Because I was sitting there thinking about a boy in a school choir.
A boy whose teacher was a Presidential awardee — a teacher, who believed in his voice, more than he did.
A boy who featured in twelve National Integration songs on Doordarshan — then the only television channel in India.
A boy who had playback offers in hand.
And then a letter arrived from AFMC — Armed Forces Medical College, Pune.
And the boy became a doctor.
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Thirty one years later — sitting in that hall, listening to a Sitar maestro describe the road he didn't take — I felt something shift.
The grass is always greener.
But sometimes — if you're patient enough — life gives you both fields.
More on that soon.
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