collecting memories --Aruni speaks about her 'Real' experience in the Voice of India reality show

Watching musical reality shows has always been my passion. I have dreamt of standing and performing on such a stage and have visualized the thunderous applause of the audience for my performance. Little did I know that one day my dreams would come true. After sweating it out during the audition, the lengthy delay for the result was most killing! Finally, I did get selected and left for India with my husband with high hopes and dreams of Bollywood dazzle.



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However, even though I knew that it was not going to be all smooth sailing, I did not envision so many obstacles. We arrived in Mumbai late in the evening and were scheduled to go for the rehearsal the next day around 11am. Shooting for the episode was supposed to take place on the following day. We, the Singapore, Hong Kong participants and I, arrived at the audition studio on time only to find no one there except for the studio boy. Luckily we had two STAR TV personnel, Mr. Sanjeet Saha and Ms. Rashmi Sawhney, co-ordinating our program and they were most helpful throughout our stay there.

We waited and waited till late in the evening and finally we were able to rehearse. Due to poor co-ordination between the parties involved, we were not informed beforehand the title of the song they had chosen for us to sing. As the shooting was scheduled for "A Tribute to R.D.Burman " episode; all of us had to sing one of his songs. Much to our shocked surprise, the three of us had to squeeze two lines each into one medley song due to time constraints. Furthermore, we were informed that there would not be enough time to shoot our solo songs. All my dreams and aspirations came crashing down to earth.

I had to fight my way into being given a chance to do our solo performances and thanks to our STAR TV friends, after a lot of hassle and warfare; we did finally get approval for shooting our solo songs. Even then, we were all given hardly any time to practice with the musicians; all the time was allotted to VOI contestants who sang every week. We were just the supporting cast for the main people.

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On the day of the shooting, we arrived at the studio by noon and had to wait till late in the evening because the afternoon session was reserved for the shooting of the Friday episode. By God's grace, we finally got on stage by 9 pm {only because the Singapore participant had to catch her return flight around after midnight } After a brief practice, we recorded our medley followed by our individual performances. I was the last of the individual performers.

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Before going to India, my nephews and nieces had challenged me to get a standing ovation from Sukhwinder Singh. I put my whole effort and concentration into my performance, oblivious of everyone around me. Finally, when I opened my eyes, I saw Sukhwinder Singh standing and applauding. I HAD DONE IT!!!

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It felt good as there was a lot of interaction between me and the judges. Sukhwinder Singh commented that living overseas and being able to sing a classical based song was in itself worthy of a tribute. He even asked me to say a few words in Thai. Ismail Darbar and Monty Sharma also gave positive comments about my performance. Their appreciation was sincere and I stood there proud... I was on a high and was delighted that I could make Bangkok 's name stand out. I felt that I had justified the judges' choice and I had lived up to the expectation of my family and friends.

( Tara and Bobby Rishi were the judges!)

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Unfortunately, everything that was recorded could not be included for the general program due to time constraints; so they made a special promo out of our singing. The recording finished quite late in the night but the high that I experienced from my participation and singing stayed with me for a number of days. Eventually, after all the hard work was done, it was now time for sleepless nights eagerly waiting to be actually seen on Voice of India show on TV.

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As I had mentioned earlier, I was not expecting my trip to be a bed of roses. However, I was not expecting such a tough task. I would have not been able to finally sing surmounting all these obstacles without my husband's great support. His physical presence and his motivation kept me fighting through the whole saga and I truly appreciate his constant support. Watching myself on TV; I would not have imagined it even in my wildest dreams, was like being on seventh heaven and my family was ecstatic. Finally, my dream had come true!!! .

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Happy also were many of her friends and well wishers and the trio; Tara, Viji and Gayathri had organised a tribute to Aruni. You can read about it at this link.

http://taranidhi.blogspot.com/2009/03/collecting-memories-felicitating-aruna.html

Thanks Aruni for a very well written story about your VOI experience and also thanks to VOI for the wonderful pictures.

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We are also very proud of Aruni for her gutsy and determined performance in persuading the VOI organisation to keep up to their promises and to have given a thrilling performance in spite of all the hardship. She deserves a standing ovation from us as well! We also applaud her husband Rajpal Singh to have given her such a tremendous support in what was really a testing time for an young artist.

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