BY KAVITA CHHIBBER

Ruma Hawkins had promised singer Shreya Ghoshal that she would do a show for her and kept her promise as Ruma and Shaandar entertainment joined hands and brought the show A Tribute to Legends featuring Ghoshal, singer par excellence Parthiv Gohil and Ayub Patel to entertain music lovers in Atlanta on 21st October at the Robert Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech.

Shreya started the evening with "Silsila Yeh Chahat Ka", her hit from the magnum opus Devdas, and then greeted the audience very warmly adding that from their enthusiastic applause she knew the night would be full of fun and excitement. Shreya was having some trouble with her throat and while her performance was not as good as the one last October, one has to give the charming singer a lot of credit as she very sportingly continued singing in spite of going off key from time to time due to the problem with her throat. She sang all her popular numbers including vada raha pyar se pyar ka, agar tum mil jao from Zaher and songs from Paheli and Parineeta to rasik balma and bedardi baalma, by Lata Mangehskar to jalte hain jiske liye by Talat Mehmood who she said she likes a lot.

Parthiv Gohil comes from a small town in Gujarat called Bhavnagar which has now churned out so many artists and musicians that it is being referred to as Kala Nagri. Gohil hit the limelight when he won the mega finals of Saregama, singing very difficult classical numbers originally sung by Ghulam Ali Khan and Amir Khan the classical music legends of yesteryears, and so effortlessly that he floored Pandit Jasraj who was one of the judges. Parthiv hasn’t looked back since then. The first Pratham concert had featured Parthiv and was a huge success, and while he wasn’t the featured artist, the long Bandish he performed to western orchestration in raag Ahir Bhairav, stunned the crowd. His voice soared to amazing heights and every note was crystal clear - a very difficult thing to do through such a prolonged period of time. Mercifully unlike last time Parthiv came back for more than one song and did an excellent job-his madhuban mein radhika nache re and some of the duets with Shreya were mind-blowing. Ayub Patel was as good as last time with his smooth and velvety rendition of kal ho na ho and the duet pihu bole with Shreya.

Pratham USA’s President Yogi Patel who is based in Houston, came forward and highlighted his own journey. He was born to an illiterate father who understood the significance of education and encouraged his children to study, came to USA with the help of well wishers with very little money and became a successful engineer and entrepreneur. Patel said his own life story gave him the inspiration to get involved with Pratham and he asked people to donate generously to help eradicate illiteracy in the slums of India.

Shreya Ghoshal then came back on stage and sang some numbers including duets from Main Hoon Na as well as her hit number "Jadoo hai nasha hai" from Jism. As the grand finale, Shreya sang the rather tough song "Dola re" which she originally sang with Kavita Krishnamurthy as a duet. The song had netted her the Filmfare award for best female singer jointly with Kavita.

Ruma and Guiden Hawkins of Ruma Entertainment worked extremely hard to pull off a great concert. Mustafa Ajmeri, Nitin Shah, Kris Bhatia and other Pratham Georgia volunteers helped in the execution of the show, said Yogi Patel and added that in spite of the heavy rains and traffic, the turn out was about 550, and Pratham raised $34,319 from the show.