Goswami: On song

Guwahati, Nov. 28: Multitasking, management gurus opine, is the key to corporate success.

Ask Chitralee Goswami, chief manager of Corporate Communications at the ONGC, and she will tell you the mantra works like magic both in and out of office.

Juggling her high-profile job and burgeoning musical career, Goswami is redefining the term “versatility” with a bit of “multitasking”.

Breaking into the music scene after a 15-year hiatus, Goswami recently cut an Assamese album with top Bollywood playback singers Sonu Nigam and Vinod Rathode.

The album, titled Aasol, will be released shortly. It comprises eight songs, with a solo and a duet by Nigam, a solo by Rathode and three solos and a duet by Goswami. Apart from this, a ghazal album — Lal Kile Ka Mushayara, an album on Vedic mantra called Om and a Hindi album, Oh Pawan, are also due for release.

Goswami vanished from the music industry soon after her album Radha, released in 1991, only to return after a 15-year break with an album of Bengali modern songs, Jodi Hoy Dekha.

A native of Guwahati, Goswami is, in fact, a singer with a difference — she can sing in 28 Indian languages and eight foreign languages, including Japanese and German. So, when she is not brainstorming on corporate strategies, she is hitting high notes at a recording studio.

Right now, she is particularly excited about her ghazal album, in which she hums Urdu poetry by Aamir Khusru, Ustad Daag and Momin Khan Momin.

“All these albums will be released soon,” she told The Telegraph. “I am also mulling an album of bhajans by the end of 2007,” she added.

In the past few years, Goswami could devote little time to record albums as she was mostly occupied with archival projects for the Centre. Nevertheless, she continued performing on stage.

She has performed in almost all the major cities of the country and abroad, all the while juggling extremely demanding jobs.

The talented singer has served as the deputy registrar and was the head of finance and internal audit of IIT Guwahati before managing the corporate communication department at ONGC.

Besides lending her voice to various albums, Goswami has also written lyrics in Hindi, Assamese, Bengali and English and is a music composer herself. The lyrics of a lullaby she had composed to a tune by Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt were hugely appreciated.