Back in 2013, when playback singer Jyotsna was asked to do a show for Kappa TV, among her choice was a Hindi film song she grew up listening to: Humhein tumse pyaar kitna … ( Kudrat ). Strange things have happened since.
A man from Portugal wrote to her how much he enjoyed listening to it, though he did not know Hindi. Some people invited her to Jaipur and made her sing it at a show.
Two-year-old video
That all happened because some unknown person put the song on YouTube. The two-year-old video has been watched more than 1.25 crore times already. That is a huge number for a singer who has sung predominantly in Malayalam and is little known outside southern India. “The popularity of the song has been a pleasant shock to me,” Jyotsna told The Hindu on Thursday. “I still continue to get words of appreciation from music fans from different parts of the world.”
She has no idea who uploaded the video. “I became aware of the video only when Ralfin, who played the piano for the song, told me about it,” she says.
“Even then, it had more than 50 lakh views.” The video continues to attract new viewers now; the comments posted on YouTube show most of them are impressed by her singing and the splendid piece of guitar, with which the song opens, by Santhosh Chandran.
“It is nice to find that my singing is appreciated by people who do not know that I have rendered hundreds of original songs for films,” says Jyotsna.
“I never could have imagined that the song could become so popular when I shot for Kappa TV.”
But, the feedback she received initially, after the programme was aired on television, wasn’t all that positive from the Malayali audience. “Many criticised that it looked as I was performing in a classical concert,” she recalls. “That was because most people here were used to listening to the Kishore Kumar version of the song, while I had attempted a cover of Abida Parveen’s version.”
In spite of the astonishing success of the song, Jyotsna, whose hits in Malayalam include Sukhamanee nilaavu… ( Nammal ) and Karuppinazhakku … ( Swapnakkoodu ), hasn’t yet attempted cover version of another Hindi song.
“Maybe I should; many new singers do that rather well these days,” she says. “And YouTube offers you such a big platform.”
P.K. Ajith Kumar
