The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Whistling all the way

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 24, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Whistling all the way

Deepa Kurup

BANGALORE: The legend Johnny Cash once sang about that ‘lonesome whistle which could blow his blues away’; but this group of “whistle blowers” (er, not really!) mean serious business.

The Indian Whistlers’ Association (IWA), a 300-member body of whistlers, may sound like Oscar Wilde when they say they whistle for whistling’s sake, but they believe they can break the negative stereotype around whistling.

These melodious souls promise to blow your mind away in a performance scheduled to start at 7 p.m. on November 24 at J.F.S Auditorium here.

This organisation was started by Rigved Deshpande (22) of Pune in 2004 when he came across such groups on the internet.

He has conducted seminars on whistling during Mood Indigo, the annual fest of IIT-Bombay, and wants people to take this art seriously.

While he has to still negotiate with his parents to be allowed to travel for concerts across the country, he says that he hopes that it will become viable to take this up as a profession.

The group attracts members from different walks of life, from marine engineers to flight attendants, and the numbers are growing by the day, he says.

Being threatened by his landlord for whistling too much made Vasanth Babu K., a software engineer from Bangalore, more determined to soldier on.

He says that he practises for the concert during the long journey to his office, and that the hostile stares do not matter anymore.

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