One of his biggest contributions to music has been the Sawai Gandharva music festival, which he founded in 1952 in the memory of his guru and personally managed till 2002. Panditji was a tireless innovator and experimenter. Though a prominent and popular performer, his forays into playback singing have been few and far between. Blessed with a full-throated voice that could effortlessly traverse three octaves, he held his listeners captive wherever he performed. Few, not even fellow musicians, could grudge him the accolades including the Tansen Samman, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and the ultimate civilian honour, Bharat Ratna, that came his way. His death in Pune on Monday, just short of his 89th birthday next month, may seem to mark the end of an era, but he would remain a shiningexample for a long time to come. A journey spanning decades of unswerving devotion to ‘saat swar’, Bhimsen Joshi’s was a life that musical history is made of. As in life, so in death, he will continue to inspire generations of classical musicians. In the present divisive scenario will the Indian society and the political parties harping on different tunes pay heed to his song “mile sure mera tumhara, to sur bane hamara”?

DILBAG RAI, Chandigarh

No spent force

R.K.Kapoor’s letter “Young brigade rules T20 format”(Jan 17)  not only supports the humiliation meted to the “spent force” Sourav Ganguly by the franchisees, he is also of the opinion that young blood has the ability to fire and score maximum runs in T20 cricket! But the irony lies in the fact that Sourav not only emerged as the fourth-highest scorer in IPL 2010 by aggregating 493 runs at a brilliant average of 37.92, he also simply dwarfed the reigning young superstars Dhoni, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Gambhir and scores of others.

Among the young blood, only Suresh Raina fared marginally better than Sourav, that too because he played a couple of more matches. Mr Kapoor should get his facts right.

KAJAL CHATTERJEE, Kolkata

Language bias

The editorial “Festival of literature” (Jan 28) has rightly highlighted the poor position of the Hindi writers, in comparison to the writers in the English language. This, despite the fact that Hindi writers attracted more heads at the Jaipur Literary Festival sessions than their English counterparts, and “the copies printed in Hindi outnumber the English print many times over”.

The editorial rightly attributed the reasons for the lower gradation of Hindi writers to the “lack of jingle of coins”.

However, this monetary bias is not the sole preserve of the book publishing industry. It prevails in the media also. A comparison between what English newspapers pay to its contributors and what the Hindi/Punjabi contributors get would explain the point.

BALVINDER, Chandigarh

Foreign lure

The news report “Destitute Punjabis dot London streets”(Jan 28) by Shyam Bhatia is an eye-opener and has portrayed the pathetic condition of Punjabis (including Sikhs) on the streets of London. For a state like Punjab where everyone is obsessed with going to foreign shores, this report should serve as a good lesson. Punjabis were (or maybe are) known for their valour and hard work but today they are ready to go to any extent just to get a visa. No matter what a person does in Punjab he or she wants to go abroad and is even ready to do all kind of menial jobs on foreign shores.

Numerous Punjabis are trapped in Gulf countries; many are transported like animals across borders. But still we do not want to learn from these incidents. To make matters worse we have a large number of unscrupulous agents who mislead gullible Punjabis in the garb of a secure future abroad.

It is easy to blame the government, lack of jobs and mis-governance. But where is the Punjabi spirit of fighting back, hard work and valour? I hope these qualities have not migrated to Canada