When Leslie Lewis and Hariharan rose to fame and fortune as an unlikely pair ofbilingual and consanguineous colonials they held much promise as the voices of sanity andartistic cojones amid a growing crop of brain-dead, copycat and band-manager-drivenIndipoppers. But, as the preface under the jacket admits, "much has happened"since they last made sense and music. For example Hariharan has reverted to his lucrativesolo career and Lewis to singing paeans to consumer durables. The obvious casualty of thiseating off "so many pies" is their latest album Aatmaa, soul, named so perhapsto conjure images of spontaneous transcendence. What’s stranger is the video of theirworst limerick, Kai Zhala. With lyrics like "I’m the one that’s crazy aboutyou, I’m the one that’s hazy about you" and visions of fishing villagebonhomie, this is either a popularity contest or a perverse attempt to erase fondmemories. We agree that artistes have a right to be soppy, revolting and blind to theiradmirers but to do so through an album is stretching it a bit too far.
