KK’s passing stirs row over over-crowded, stuffy venues

KOLKATA: The first among several tell-tale signs of Bollywood singer KK’s unease in his last stage performance at south Kolkata’s Nazrul Mancha on Tuesday was something uncharacteristic—he hurried offstage without singing ‘Pal’, his signature show-ender. But no one caught the signals.
KK died of a massive cardiac arrest an hour after the concert, where the crowd count was nearly three times the auditorium’s capacity. His death triggered a debate Wednesday on the level of physical stress performers suffer in over-crowded, stifling venues. The 53-year-old did not finish his 20-song set with ‘Pal’, leaving in a hurry after the 19th.
Second among the signs was that he was sweating profusely and requested for a drone camera to fly over his head, so that he could get some air from its rotors. Third, he kept asking the organisers to switch off the spotlights trained on him, probably because he could not bear the heat. Fourth—and this came to light only on Wednesday—was cops finding several sachets of antacid in his hotel room, an indicator that the singer had felt some uneasiness in his chest.