Starry night to bring cheer

PICTURE THIS:

One of the happening icons of Bollywood (we are not saying who because that will be killing the surprise, but what we can say is: ``College junta, you wouldn't want to miss him for anything in this world'') would pop on to the stage to belt out a chartbuster of a song that he had sung himself. You coming?

A. R. Rahman, in flesh and blood, for the first time in Chennai, cutting a curt cameo. A special LIVE appearance.

A lil' bit of Maddy on the mike. And Simran, swinging to the sixties' `Yaaraadi Nee Mohini'.

Abbas, twisting to the seventies' `Viswanathan, Velai Vennum'.

Ramya Krishnan, `hip-hopping' to the nineties hit `Uppu Karuvadu' and Simran shaking a leg to Rahman's `En Uyire'.

Yes, it's all happening in Chennai this weekend. Saturday night at the Indian Airlines ground, to be precise: `Netru Indru Nalai', will be a tribute to the different eras of Tamil cinema - ``from MGR to Madhavan, Savitri to Simran'' as the promos go.

Madhavan will be there apart from our mystery Bollywood boy. Revathy and Kushboo (in spite of her recent accident) will be there to host the show.

Then there's Superstar's superstar-in-the-making daughter Aishwarya Rajnikant who will perform a 15 minute long classical dance, choreographed by National award winner Kala and Brinda of Kala's Kalalaya.

We aren't done with name-dropping yet. Director Vasant would be scripting the show. P. C. Sreeram and Jayendra with an eight- camera set-up would frame it for the small screen (a Tamil New Year's release on Sun TV).

S. Janaki, Chitra, Shankar Mahadevan, Unni Menon, Srinivas, Sujatha, Shuba, Anupama, Palghat Sriram, Harini... all of them will sing with an 60 member orchestra by Rahman's regular conductor Srinivasa Moorthy.

Simran's designer Anees, who will do the costumes for the show, informs us: ``We have worked on three basic looks for the show: one for the 60s and 70s, one for the 80s and one for the 90s and the early 2000s.''

``The idea is to capture the flavour of each era, it's a celebration of music, dance and fashion in Tamil cinema,'' as Harsh Bhandari, who has conceived the entire show, puts it.

The show with tickets priced Rs. 150 apiece, is in aid of The Banyan. ``The stars have been very excited, they have been so much in touch with us, than us being in touch with them,'' says Vaishnavi of The Banyan.

``Everybody has been rehearsing in the last eight days, an hour a day at least, in spite of their hectic shooting schedules. We are enjoying what we are doing,'' say dance-choreographers of the show, Brinda and Kala.

It was sometime around nine on Tuesday night, Vaishnavi calls up Madhavan to ask if he can drop in the next afternoon. The very next afternoon, in spite of a scorching sun and dehydrating humidity, Madhavan, Revathy, Brinda, Kala, Srinivasa Moorthy and Anees are all there at the Banyan, spending time with the residents, and chatting with mediapersons.The whole affair was organised overnight. And what a turnout!

Ask him about the time he's spending for the show and Maddy's modest enough to say: ``You can say, `shamelessly less'. I have put in very little effort compared to the others.''

Is he dancing? Now, that's a surprise. ``It's still in the pipe- line. But I'm compering for sure,'' says the jittery jitterbug.

Maddy will be there. So will our tapori Bollywood hero. You coming?

By Sudhish Kamath

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