CHENNAI: Vasanth Raghuvir’s mobile phone wouldn’t stop ringing and each time it buzzed the music from U Srinivas’s noted album Samjanitha filled the room. Vasanth’s Shakti Foundation began its association with the artists one afternoon in 2000. Since then, the NGO, which funds organisations working for the cause of the differently abled and hospitals, had only one brand ambassador -- the mandolin maestro.
“It is like losing a son again,” said Vasanth, speaking through her tears. She had lost her son to Duchenne muscular dystrophy in 1998, a few years before she met Srinivas. Recalling her first meeting, she says, “It was a short meeting. But he agreed right then to associate with us. Since then for all these years he has been by us every time, however tight his schedule was,” she says.
The organisation’s annual concert to raise funds for hospital equipment was completely under the management of U Srinivas. “The work on the concert would begin 6 to 8 months prior to the event. And, every bit of it, from the composition for the two-hour programme to getting artists from across the world for the performance, would be in his hands. If there weren’t prominent artists we would not be able to sell enough tickets to fund the equipments, so he would ensure we always got the best. He would even send people to us to make sure that all the tickets are sold out,” she said. Over the years, the concert, which was organised every year, has seen stalwarts from Zakir Hussain to Michael Brooke and Pete Lockett participate.
Vasanth vividly remembers the charity concert in August 2003 that was organised in Bangalore. “On the day before the concert I came to know that he was running high fever. When he called up I told him that we could shift the date. But he never agreed; he said the cause was important. When we went to receive him at the airport I found him with his sister, covered up with blankets and his face red. He was running a temperature of 102 degrees. Even the other artists told him that they could manage but he never agreed. When his turn came he was on the stage. That day he performed so well, and he later told me: ‘I don’t know where my fever went’. That was the kind of commitment he had to the cause of disability and for music,” she says. “We will never have anyone like him. He has left an irreparable void. That good, compassionate boy was truly a god child. He touched our souls with his music.”