In shock by ‘personal loss’, fans join singer KK on his last journey

KOLKATA: The sudden death of singer Krishnakumar Kunnath, popularly known as KK, on Tuesday night evoked an instantaneous outpouring of grief on social media by his fans with many sharing his hit numbers accompanied by a personal memory associated with that song.
After hearing the news break on TV late on Tuesday night, many fans turned up at the hospital. On Wednesday morning, fans — many of them are youngsters — gathered at SSKM Hospital and then moved to Rabindra Sadan where the numbers swelled to pay homage to the artist many have grown up listening.
Reactions and flurry of tributes on social media after a celebrity’s death are not unusual but what stood out in KK’s case was the adoration and personal attachment.
In the past couple of years, several celebrity deaths have evoked reactions from people — Shane Warne in March, Bappi Lahiri and Lata Mangeshkar in February, actor Irrfan and football legend Diego Maradona in 2020 and TV personality Sidharth Shukla in 2021. “We form a personal attachment with certain celebrities whom we don’t even know personally. This is because we visualize them as an extension of ourselves only much bigger, beautiful and brave. Sometimes, we create an important memory of our life around a song sung by them or a personal sporting achievement after being inspired by them or a role essayed by them, which made us work on ourselves. The news of their death pitchforks that memory in our conscience,” said Mitali Ghosh, a city-based psychologist.
A KK fan said how he and his girlfriend (now wife) would hum and listen to some of the romantic numbers by the singer when they were dating. “The news of his sudden death made me so nostalgic. The memories of those days, when we were dating, flooded my mind. It felt I have lost something very precious with the passing away of KK,” said Abhishek Dutta, a resident of Salt Lake.
Belghoria resident and a final-year college student Sohini Dasgupta was everywhere on Wednesday — be it at SSKM Hospital where the singer underwent a post-mortem or at Rabindra Sadan where the state honoured him with a gun salute — holding a handwritten placard, “A true artist never dies.”
“I have literally grown up hearing his songs. My parents are his fans too. I have also been to many of his concerts. I don’t believe he is dead. He will stay immortal with his music,” said Dasgupta. At CMRI, young music director and an ardent KK fan Sayan Ghosh was seen wiping tears with the end of his shirt and consoling his weeping wife Madhurima as they watched KK being wheeled out of the CMRI Hospital morgue on Wednesday.
“I had a pass for the Tuesday concert but skipped it at the last moment because of some work. Now I will never be able to forgive myself for missing the opportunity of seeing him perform live for the last time,” said Ghosh.