His redemption song

Prashant Tamang's path to the Indian Idol title has been long, eventful and nerve-wracking.

In one episode of reality show Indian Idol, contestant Prashant Tamang had tears rolling down his cheeks after he sang a song. Audiences were cheering him on while the show's judges simply stared at him.

It was then that music director Anu Malik, one of the judges, said, "We are proud to have you here. It was the best performance of the day."

As Mini Mathur, the host of the show, mentions, "He was waiting for some kind of feedback, some sort of positive response from the judges and, finally, when he got it, he couldn't fight back his tears."

It's been quite a journey for this Indian Idol contestant who is now the proud winner of the contest's third season.

Till a few months ago, Tamang was a sepoy with the Kolkata Police. Having joined the force in 2002, he was with the reserve forces for three years and also trained as a commando.

Encouraged by friends and colleagues, Tamang joined the police orchestra in Kolkata. And while he stood in a long queue and waited to clear the audition round, Tamang, a shy and reserved boy from the north-east, says he was surprised when he kept clearing one round after another.

But there were times when he realised that his background might have just been a deterrent, especially for some of the other contestants on the show. While Chang (a contestant from Dhanbad whose grandparents had moved from China to India) still managed to floor audiences and contestants alike with his charming looks and impeccable talk, Amit Paul, another young contestant from Shillong, managed to retain his fan base too.

Prashant, on the other hand, found himself in trouble when one of the contestants from Amritsar refused to sing with him in the duet rounds simply because she had "problems singing with him".

And though no other reasons were given by the girl, the harsh truth was more than obvious. Prashant's north-eastern looks, his very roots, the very place from which he belonged, everything was going against him.

Even the judges were sometimes left unimpressed. Though everyone complimented him on the throw of his voice, he never left the stage before some criticism came his way. From the choice of songs to the way he dressed, to the way he performed on stage, Prashant was under the scanner almost every week on the show.

Sometimes not without reason. There were times when one felt that Prashant was losing out to Amit Paul, the perennial favourite contestant of the show. Especially towards the end, when Bipasha Basu and John Abraham made their special appearance in one of the episodes, Prashant's voice definitely sounded weak as compared to that of Amit.

Judging by those rounds (and many other rounds, including the times when Amit sang songs like Rabbi's "Bulla Ki Jaana" and Euphoria's "Maeri" flawlessly), the winner was clear "" Amit Paul had to be the nation's third Indian Idol.

He had the voice texture, tonal quality and a fantastic throw of voice. He was considered the overall package "" something that the contest has stressed on right from the beginning. Prashant, on the other hand, had a strong voice with a good throw. But that's all.

What made this sepoy different from the rest of the contestants was that he continued to improve with every passing week.

And while the judges were looking at other potential winners (Parleen, Emon Chaterjee, Amit, Chang) and even having segments in the show promoting them by showcasing, sometimes, their talent for mimicing judges (in the case of Emon) or their flair for singing in different languages (in the case of Amit), no one quite paid attention to Prashant who, despite not winning the hearts of those on the sets, was fast becoming a favourite of the public.

It was evident from the fact that Prashant hardly ever made it to the contest's "danger zone" (a place where the four weakest contestants were lined up every week and which finally saw the elimination of the contestant who got the least number of votes).

And it's precisely here that Prashant was scoring. The grand finale clocked 70 million votes in all with a majority grabbed for the winner while stories of how frenetically people were voting continued to spill on the streets of north-east India, finally reaching the rest of India.

According to one report, 13 inmates at Darjeeling Correctional Home were contributing their daily wage of Rs 18 to send SMSes for their boy. Prashant's popularity also reached Nepal where their own local talent hunt show Nepal Tara's timing was changed as audiences preferred watcing Indian Idol.

To them, Prashant's winning mattered a lot. The boy from Darjeeling who speaks in Nepalese at home has been the favourite of the neighbouring country ever since the show began featuring him. Some even hope that through his coveted title, Prashant will help build back the country's ailing tourism industry!

Niret Alva, whose company Miditech has been behind Indian Idol, along with Freemantle and Sony Television, and who has watched Prashant grow from episode to episode, feels that Prashant's biggest strength was that he never believed he could stay on in the show. But even he feels that SMS and public voting sometimes may not let the best person win.

"The format is that of public voting. It's good and it's bad. Good because it connects the participants directly to the audience, bad because eventually they decide. We don't," says Alva.

"News channels were asking audiences to SMS their channel and tell them whether audiences should indulge in SMS voting culture for talent hunt shows. Now isn't that an irony," he quips.

"Trying to win the Indian Idol crown can be like a double-edged sword. You cannot separate the talent of a person from his real-life story and background," reasons Alva.

He's in touch with the previous Indian Idols, Abhijeet Sawant and Sandeep Acharya. "I recently told Abhijeet not to get too complacent and keep himself fit. For Sandeep, I feel protective. He seems to have gotten a little lost but he's going to be back in the reckoning. I'm sure of that."

According to him, this year, he consciously "de-hyped" the programme while the contestants were participating in the show.

"I hate to see them believing that this contest can offer them everything. It offers them recognition, but beyond a point the journey is their own." Prashant will find that out eventually.