I was excited and fascinated when I received a handful of invitations from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and delegation of the European Commission for 17 major cultural events as part of " EU cultural weeks" in New Delhi and five other cities of India. It was prelude to the Fourth EU-India Summit, which was held on 20th November in New Delhi. The participants included Italy, Poland, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Finland, Germany, United Kingdom, Hungry, Ireland, Luxemburg, Netherlands, France and Slovenia. It was literally a festival of "Unity in Diversity" with a feast of unique string of musical concerts, opera, dances, films and lecture by Gellan Roruke from Ireland on "The Irish Sadhu experience on the edge of early medieval Europe: exploring the great monastery of Michael (World Heritage site)".

There was so much to enjoy and write about this unique European fest in India, which of course I shall do in future. But in this issue, I want to present a French singer of popular Hindi songs, Pascal Heni. His performance is dated for December I at the Kamani Theatre in New Delhi. It was concert of his "Bollywood songs"

As the blurb to his concert said, it was not often that you meet a Frenchman singing Itna Na Mujhse Tu Pyar Badha Ke Main Ik Badak Awara. Heni’s Bollywood songs included Zindagi ik safar hai suahana, which he first heard while on tourist trip to Malaysia, 15 years ago and simply fell in love with it. The song was a Kishore Kumar hit. And then began Heni’s passionate romance with Bollywood music. He began to love compositions of Laxmikant Pyarelal, Shankar-Jaikishen, Salil Chaudhari and Naushad and among Tamil film songs composer his favourite became Ilaayaraja. The voice of the singing Bollywood which fascinated him included those of Kishore Kumar, Mukesh , Mohammad Rafi, Hemat Kumar, S. P. Balsubramaniam and Sadhna Sargam. And soon many in France began to hear with fascination, the songs of this Bollywooder in Paris. One moment he would be singing the Madhumati song Suhan Safar Aur Yeh Mausam Haseen and next moment the popular Tamil film song Oh Rasikkum Simane.

At present this French-Hindi singer is working on production of CD and has taken Hindi lessons from Usha Shastri, a professor at the Sorbonne and Tamil lessons from Raj de Condappa in Pondicherry. He would like to share a secret. He says, "For two-three years now, Bollywood in France is going up, up and up. We are in a beautiful époque now, when I can mix these beautiful melodies with new rhythms.

He has very carefully selected just 20 Bollywood songs out of 2000 for his CD. The criteria is their melodic quality and his personal taste. He makes it clear that " My songs will be adopted versions, where I shall use a modern sound without tampering the soul of the originals."