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It began to rain and the energetic bellowing only grew louder. Tamang was bundled across the road to the stadium at lightning speed by his minders and an exuberant bunch of police officers, as eager crowds chased him. A deafening roar went up in the air as he made his entry. A ceremonial white silk scarf was wrapped around his shoulders, a Nepali hat propped on his head and the chief minister personally welcomed him. Together they released his thank you album, Dhanyavad.
Tamang quickly launched into a Nepali song. The surging, ecstatic crowd of about 20,000 went hysterical with glee. Tamang has a very folksy, lilting voice. You can almost visualise the countryside -- green fields, tea gardens and mountains of Darjeeling -- in the happy Nepali song he croons.
Hot cups of coffee were passed around. Bikas, minding the coffee machine, a Bengali hailing from Sikkim, said, "I must have voted for him on SMS at least 1,000 times! I wanted him to win because he is from here." Bikas is very happy to be here and hear his hero sing.
Young Kuber, a local restaurant owner, explained that he had minded an SMS-stall during the Indian Idol campaign. "I manned about 15 cellphones. I must have voted myself over 50 times! Every one from 5-year-old children and up voted for him. We had booths set up in 200 places in Gangtok alone, and then in every village. Grass-root people as well as the wealthy all turned out to vote for him. A poor man even sold his cow so he could vote!"
Tamang, who shared the stage with Charu, a fellow Indian Idol contestant who had accompanied him to Gangtok, sang for 3 hours through bouts of cold rain, cheerfully, playing to the crowd and belting out top Hindi numbers as well as local songs. The crowd lapped it up the cheers, never diminishing till the end. The evening was probably Gangtok's proudest moment since footballer Bhaichung Bhutia returned home
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