Meeting Murali at Melbourne

It was mid 2000- when me, the kid just out of high school was beginning to explore the internet more vigourously than before, especially for music related stuff. The most fortunate discovery was TFMpage.com - where, in addition to a lot of informative articles, there were discussion forums galore. The one that instantly caught my attention was "Raga of Songs" (fondly dubbed "ROS"). Little did I know then that that was going to be like home for me for the next few years. There I came across some really intellectually stimulating discussions on ragas in film music and it looked like it had a lot of interesting people. There were the bosses, there were amateurs. Overall it looked like a lot of fun! By early 2001 I started posting there too and getting involved in the discussions. And that proved to be the beginning of my association with some of the best musical friends I have today - "MS" or Murali Sankar Venkatraman being one of them.

Murali has been a great friend, inspiration and a mentor for me ever since. A keen critic of my singing, he has helped me fine tune my skills over the years. I finally got to see him in flesh and blood a few days back at Melbourne while I was there on a vacation with my parents :) Unfortunately, time was short and it could not be a musical rendezvous. Nevertheless, we had a good time.
Its such an irony that all these years, we could never meet- neither when I was in US some years back on a visit, nor when he was in India last year, and finally to meet in the Land Down Under!