RESEARCH

_______________ Surajit Dasgupta _______________ Can Challenge 2009 find the missing notes? N a jAnE koI kaisI hai yeh zindagAnI ,’ sang Debojit Dutta from Kolkata so marvellously — albeit he was out of breath once, a point conveniently ignored by the judges — last night that the audience, going a step ahead of whistling hysterically, gave him a standing ovation to mark the end of the first episode of “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa – Challenge 2009”. The rendition of the rock song from the film, Gangster , was so enthralling that, much as I conceived this article last night when the programme was being aired, I can’t recall the names of other singers now. That does not mean, however, that the other contestants did not sing well. They did. And the judges — Himesh Reshammiya, Aadesh Srivastava, Shankar Mahadevan and Preetam — boasted ad nauseam , though not unjustifiably, how the contest was many notches above the competing, me-too programmes on other channels. That was the happy part. The causes