Agra is suddenly acquiring a nightlife, and the locals are gaining new respect for the monument in their backyard

Suparn Verma in Agra

"Is this a concert or what?" commented an amused Yanni, as he rehearsed on Wednesday night before a packed audience, supposedly composed only of press photographers. For, everybody who was somebody in Agra, the bureaucracy, even the army, was there.

The Agra district magistrate had generously doled out 300 passes to various people of Agra. Bureaucrats found their own way to bag passes while select personnel from three army units were invited because they built pontoon bridges for the concert.

At 7 pm, Yanni ran up the stage to face the curious audience. "I want to know who this man is. After all, he is playing in our city," said an elderly bureaucrat from Delhi. "But he has given me a good idea," he said, before turning to his wife: "This will make a nice setting for Sunita’s wedding pandal." May be a good idea once they get Yanni off the stage.

Meanwhile, Agra is suddenly acquiring a nightlife, and the locals are gaining new respect for the monument in their backyard. Every night nearly a thousand people throng the pontoon bridges built across the Yamuna and watch the lighted Taj Mahal. Officials of Yanni's group and people with entry passes are taunted, "Woh dekho, Yanni ka pilla, aa gaya laga ke lilla (There goes Yanni’s pup wearing his tag)." It could, of course, be put down to sour grapes.

"For the people of Agra, this whole show is a mela. All their lives nothing has happened," says Aslam, a rickshaw-puller. Till Yanni came along, he implies.

The composer had a great time at the rehearsal and the audience was generous with their applause. When the spotlights didn’t fall on a member of Yanni’s troupe when he named them, the audience still clapped. When he tried again, the gathering again slapped hands together ecstatically. "You don’t have to work now," Yanni said, chuckling into the audience, which set off another delirious round of clapping.

UP Governor Romesh Bhandari, in Agra to relax after all those anxious weeks, told Rediff On The NeT, "I am a big fan of Yanni… This show should have happened a long time ago. It will be good for tourism in Agra," he added.

Thursday’s show will include eight new songs -- Deliverance, Tribute, Adagio in C minor, Nightingale, Renegade, Love is All, Waltz in 7/8 and Nostalgia. The song Love is All, which will be sung by Van Johnson, is the first full-length song in any Yanni show.