It all began three years ago, when a video appeared on Youtube. And we understand, in that moment, why she is such a sensation, why millions of people around the world refer to her with so much reverence. The first strains of the Ganesha Pancharathnam fill the air and Soorya Gayathri begins to sing.
Silence falls quickly as the shruti box begins to hum and a diminutive figure, clad in orange, her hair tightly braided and coiled with flowers, scampers onto the stage, sitting cross legged in the center. The audience begins to shuffle, even though famed danseuse Vani Ganapathi had just exited the stage, to thunderous applause, but then, they have been waiting for a long time. and Soorya, the star attraction, has been saved for last. The musicians set up quietly in the background, taking the better part of an hour to set up. In this, her first interview, Soorya lapses back into the child that she is, a pre-teen grappling with fame she still does not understand, as she tells Darshana Ramdev about her teachers, her school, her friends and her meteoric rise as a singer. But Soorya, as she is affectionately known, is a star in her own right, with her powerful, astonishingly mature voice. 12-years-old and seemingly oblivious to her sea of reverent fans, Soorya Gayathri is already touted, even in the rigid Carnatic music circles, as being the next M.S. “Soorya Gayathri is here.” “Did you know, Soorya Gayathri is singing?” “Will she sing the Hanuman Chalisa?” Whispers ripple through the crowd at Chowdiah Memorial Hall on October 4.