Vh1 Handpicked presents Anoushka Shankar Traveller concert at Siri Fort Auditorium in Delhi

Anoushka Shankar gave her first public performance at the age of 13 in Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium. On Sunday, the Grammy award winner revisited history. Now 30, a wife and a mother, Anoushka performed live for the Vh1 Handpicked Presents Anoushka Shankar Traveller concert, with her her proud parents and husband Joe Wright in attendance, and kept the audiences enthralled throughout her two-hour long concert.
THE PROUD FATHER: A round of applause greeted the musician as she walked on the stage in a pink and blue lehenga, with her curly hair gathered in a messy ponytail, and squatted near the instruments. She started off with a namaste to her father and said, “I am thankful to my father for coming to the show. It is the first time he is coming to this show of mine.” Ninety one-year-old Ravi Shankar sat in the front row and looked up at his daughter, occasionally glancing away or raising his hand in blessing as passers-by touched his feet. Sukanya Shankar, Anoushka’s mother, said during a break in the the concert, “It is superb, I am loving it. It is the first time I have come for “Traveller”.” For the concert, Anoushka deviated a little from her usual style, and mixed modern Flamenco with Indian classical. Thus, knuckle rapping, cante singing, sitar chords, the tabla and a few other instruments came together that evening.
AGE DOESN’T MATTER: Even 17-year-old Kevin Gonsalvez enjoyed the performance. “One would think that youngsters like me would avoid an Anoushka Shankar concert. Why would I? I saw today how beautifully Flamenco and the sitar merged. I was listening with rapt attention throughout. There was never a dull moment,” he said. Another youngster, Delhi University student Apoorva Kukreja, said, “I loved it. It was so beautiful and the part where she mixed Flamenco with the sitar and strummed really quickly was amazing.”