Her treasure goes for a song

Shouldering her way through the thick of pilgrims, sadhus and tourists along the ghats of Benaras, she had finally managed to locate that he...

Shouldering her way through the thick of pilgrims, sadhus and tourists along the ghats of Benaras, she had finally managed to locate that hermit, renowned for his soulful Hori-geet (Holi festival songs on Radha-Krishna).

That was around 3,000 rarely sung, long-forgotten, never-recorded songs which singer Mridula Desai had collected from the nooks and corners of rural North India over the past 15 years.

Desai had recorded them in six diaries in text marked with notations to set the tune. On October 27, all the songs got lost at Mumbai airport when she took a London-Dubai-Mumbai Emirates flight after her two-month stay for charity shows in London.

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Fifteen days later, Desai still makes rounds to Emirates office at Andheri to check on her complaint of missing baggage. ‘‘The airline employees have been treating this case like a regular one. They told me if I don’t get my suitcase, I’ll have to make do with a compensation. They told me to bear in mind that it may be stolen, might have even gone to places like Karachi or Colombo,’’ says the singer, who has cancelled six shows till now.

‘‘How can I sing? I was known for folk songs. Though some of them have been recorded in tapes, the full collection was contained in those diaries.’’