Treating me like Amitabh Bachchan...

Calcutta, Feb. 11: "Sir, they were treating me like Amitabh Bachchan." Disbelief was etched on Debojit Saha's face as the 29-year-old singer hugged mentor Ismail Darbar at a hotel in Calcutta, a day after his historic reception on home turf Guwahati.Debojit has not won anything yet. But Assam, or rather the whole of the Northeast, is rallying behind him as he approaches the finishing line of the Hero Honda Saregamapa Challenge 2005, a nationwide hunt for the "voice of India" on Zee TV.What happened at Guwahati was truly Bachchanesque. "Bonya, bonya (a flood). Nothing like people have seen in our history," is how he described his homecoming.It was raining fans even at the City Centre show today. There were thousands chanting his name and holding aloft banners in his support. Every time the Silchar singer would utter something in Bengali ("Aami jodi bhalo gayi taholei amay vote deben…"), the roar from the crowd echoed the one in Guwahati."Elderly people hung around for hours to greet me. Kids flung themselves on the bonnet of the jeep to garland me. We had to stop for public receptions at every quarter of a kilometre. people came in hired vehicles from Karimgunj, Dhubri, Tinsukia, even Tripura… What I saw on Thursday is worth much more than the votes," said Debojit.But the volume of votes in his favour has been raising eyebrows for weeks ahead of the finale against Lucknow's Vinit Singh. "We poll an average of 75 lakh votes every week," says Gajendra Singh, show director on Zee TV. The figure reached 1.3 crore in end-January. In an earlier round, Debojit was trailing three others but once the votes from the east were pooled, he surged ahead. Eighty per cent of his votes were from Assam.Anchor Shaan summed up the mania. "The people of the Northeast want to identify with a national hero. They ha ve not had anyone since Bhupen Hazarika. They want to see Debojit win." And so does Calcutta, it seems.