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Lata award ceremony causes heartburn among Goans

The two-day festival in Panjim, where India's nightingale Lata Mangeshkar was felicitated, has become a major point of discord among Goans as they were not made to feel part of the event by Chaturang, the Maharashtra-based organisers of the event.

Lata, while receiving the Jeevan Gaurav Puraskar from Union Home Minister L K Advani, had described the award as the greatest ever honour in her life. "It is most valuable because it has been accorded to me in my own land on the day my father Master Dinanath was born 100 years ago," she had said.

But hardly anybody from the Mangeshkar family or the other celebrities present at the two-day festival were aware that not even five per cent of the audience was from Goa.

In fact, a few tickets in the last rows of the Kala Academy auditorium were made available for sale in Panjim at the last minute, after selling the major part in Maharashtra.

Opposition parties and local cultural bodies accuse the Bharatiya Janata Party government of giving a grant of Rs 400,000 to the festival though locals could not even buy the costly tickets to the historical event.

Angry Youth Congress activists gheraoed the academy officials while local artists protested at the venue itself for not allowing them entry when tabla maestro Zakir Hussain was performing before the award giving ceremony.

"In fact, Chaturang generously used the name of the Mangeshkar family, which the state of Goa respects, to make the event a commercial success," alleged Jitendra Deshprabhu, a local Congress leader.

He wants Goan cultural bodies to come together and felicitate the melody queen once again.

Justifying the grant, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar went a step ahead and disclosed his plan to formulate a policy to extend financial assistance to cultural bodies who get artists to Goa.

"It will help the state in terms of increasing the tourist inflow," said Parrikar, while denying that Chaturang was helped because of its RSS links.

"But why help such organisers who take funds from the state and then charge exorbitant rates for tickets," asked Yadneshwar Nigley, a music lover.

Several organisations are also unhappy over Chaturang's failure to include local cultural bodies in the two-day festival in spite of assurances to the contrary. Only two Goan singers figured in the event.

Two thirds of the audience travelled down to Goa from Bombay and Pune. Among those present were several writers and artists from Maharashtra, including Nana Patekar, Bhakti Barve Inamdar, Sukanya Kulkarni, Mohan Joshi, Atul Parchure and Mohan Wagh.

The Mangeshkar family was represented by Asha Bhosale, Usha Mangeshkar, Meena Khadilkar and Hridaynath Mangeshkar.

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