Thanks to Guri, Gargi and Arushi for hosting the meet. Thanks to Nishant and Nishant's mother for having me over.
taaron ki zubaan par hai muhabbat ki kahani
ai chaand mubarak ho tujhe raat suhani
It was well into the night by the time I reached Denver. The sky was clear and the celestial stars were shining. The cyber stars weren't far behind as they started trickling into Guri's residence. By the time Nishant and yours truly arrived, the bases were fully loaded. From Vijay with 'Ghanti bajii to hamne socha Ganti aa gayaa" to Nitin
Sharma giving me a hug and saying "milke bahut saal hogaya yaar" everyone greeted us and the feeling was surreal. Home run or not, it felt like a homecoming.
I could also spot Ashok, Balaji, Bhagwant, Deepak, Guri, Irfan, Narsingh, Pragya, Sajiv Anand, Saroj kalra, Vish on Saturday. Dr.Kapoor had already left for Waqar Khan's house. Casual conversations ruled while we were having dinner. The topics ranged from "Daughters Stalking Mom's" to "Complaints about Verizon
Wireless". Sajiv Anand, Guri's former classmate, took the center stage. He started with a string of Kishore songs and switched to Rafi with "ajahoon naa aaye baalamaa" and "tuu kahaan ye bataa". Mukesh's songs
soon followed. "yaad aayi aadhi raat ko, kal raat ki taubaa" started we quipped "thoDa der se yaad aaya...aadhi raat ke baad".
Dam Dam Diga Diga prompted Balaji to comment .." 1960's, shankar- jaikishen, raj kapoor, mukesh, kalyanji-anandji, Manoj kumar - they all sound the same to me." As a L-P - Mukesh song ensued, I interjected "lets add L-P to the list and added that Husnlal - Bhagatram are the odd ones out and pointed that Mukesh sang for them
in Afsana". Balaji commented 'qismat bidagi, duniya badli' is such long that H-B finished their full Mukesh quota with it. I retorted " uske baad duniya badal gaii" promting a few laughs.The laughter wasn't reserved for the witty comments alone. Guri's background catcalls got their share too. They picked up tempo as the night passed and were accompanied with his self-choreographed gyrations. These are better left to the reader’s imagination :)
'yaad aa gaii vo nashili nigaahen' and 'na tum hamen jaano' were the next items. As 'na tum hamen jaano' started a voice from behind said 'baat ek raat ki' and I retored - ek baat nahiin do baaten - "kal raat ki tauba" aur "nashili nigaahen" referring to the songs that we just sung. By now it was past 3 am and Nishant and myself called it a day.
Saturday's events: It was approaching noon when we came back. Nishant's mother also joined us. After exchanging pleasantries with Dr.Kapoor and Vinay Jain, I went to the recording room to make copies of the commemorative cd. I could spot Balaji enquiring about his missing luggageand Ashok joined us. Ashok turned to me "How do you know Nishant? ". I told him that we met in Denver at the 2008 meet and have been in constant touch since then. I also mentioned to him about our Hyderabadi connection and to press home the point remarked "Nishant was named after the Shyam Benegal Movie" ( The next day Nishant told me about his Nok Jhok with Ashok. Ashok enquired a few things about Nishant and when he came to know that Nisant has a sister commented "Is her name Bhumika ?". That's Vintage Ashok for you!)
The meet was formally kicked off with Sajiv Anand's renedition of namo namo'.
Introductions: Vijay introduced each of us and asked us to tell a little more. His antics resembled a talk show host. I wasn't sure if these were extemporaneous, but were laced with wit. While introducing Vish, Vijay said "Even if he doesn't attend a meet, he is always present in spirit. If he is not there we will say - Wish he was here " Vijay introduced Dr. ML Kapoor by saying " we celebrate MLK Jr's day, here's MLK Sr." Arushi then did a piano performance that thrilled the audience. Sitar player, Roshan Jamal Bhartiya, soon joined us and talked about
his music and his assocciation with L-P. Bhagwant Sagoo talked about his introduction to RMIM and Satish Kalra's role in that. He also talked about his visits to Kalraji's place and their long association. Dr. Kapoor turned to to Bhagwant "zaraa zor se boliye, hamaare kaan kuchh kam sunte hain" prompting Ashok to fire his first
salvo of the day "Agar kaan thiik hote to naushad ke fan nahin hote".
Bhagwant continued by saying "In my 20's I had the audacity to propose ...an idea to BBC". Guri remarked "I thought you were going to tell how you proposed to your wife" and the ever vigilant Vijay pounced "BBC ho ya BBG (Bibi Ji)". Bhagwant appealed to Vish and Guri to make time and share their knowledge with the world. He also talked about Copyright laws, making songs from saregama's archives available, and the compilations he had released on Saregama label. Irfan Anwar read out a letter he had written to EMI Pakistan regarding copyright
enforcement of his father's works and the lack of response to it.
Dr Kapur's quiz: Several video clues were played and the actor on whom the song was pictures, movie and composer had to be identified. The songs included MS Subbulakshmi from Meera, Pankaj Mullick from Mukti,
Jayashree from Shakuntala, Kanan Devi from Street Singer, KC Dey from Dhop Chaaon. Dr. Kapur also distributed cd's of Rani Ki Jhansi in color, Noorjehan in Pakistan and the inauguration of Rafi Academy.
Commemorative CD: Vish asked us to try and figure out what the theme of the commemorative this year. We were asked to make guesses and Vish would reply with a yes or no or possibly etc leading us toward the
right answer. The theme was "MDs who did not get their day in the sun in the Hindi film domain". Vish pointed out that this could have been due to various reasons like they being too busy with other assignments
(as assistants or in regional films), or more likely not fortunate to have their day in the sun.
Ashok talked about a remark by Vish to one of his earlier Quiz "RJGK 28: Jaane Anjaane: Great Songs by Obscure Music Directors". In that Vish registered a a feeble complaint by mentioning that there were no
GS Kohli compositions in the quiz. 15 years later, Ashok did a tit for tat. Vish then mentioned why no GS Kohli compositions made it to the commemorative. Vish also added that he had only 1 song for each
composed, with one expection. The songs from the commemorative were being played as we broke for tea and snacks.
I caught up with Irfan Saheb talking to Vish about how SDB recycled "dil pukaare aa re aa re" from 'balma ne maana" (Jeeva Jyoti). I sometimes wonder if Irfan Saheb likes SDB's music more than even his
fathers ! Vijay made a comment that the Suseela & PB Sreenivas duet in the commeorative "naina jo nainon se" (Daku Bhat) is similar to "nain so nain nahii milao". I mentioned that Daku Bhupatwas dubbed version
of Telugu movie Rajanandini (1958) and the tunes were taken from there.
(Those interested can check the Telugu song 'andalu chindu seemalo"
http://www.hummaa.com/music/
Of course the Telugu song has similarity to "nain so nain".
Guri's quiz: After the break we resumed with Guri's video quiz. The 1st video clip showed a man blindfolded on a chair...prompting Ashok to ask Guri "your first patient?" As Guri had to run an errand I was
asked to go ahead with my quiz.
Quiz by Yours Truly: This was an audio quiz in which clips from antaras were played. Teams had to get mukhda and lyricist. Scoring was on lines of golf. Both correct answers got a Birdie (-1), one correct answer got a Par and '0' correct answers got a bogery (+1). There were bonus songs as well. Scores were announced before each bonus song so that teams can choose their strategy. The bonus songs are like a drivable par 4 on a golf course where you can go for a green and try for an eagle (-2). But you also stand a chance of getting a double
bogey (+2). Alternately a conservative approach can be used by opting for a clue. Team 1 was called "Guptas" and Team 2 was called 'Mauryas". When I announced the teams AShok had us in splits with "So, I am chandragupta maurya". I looked at the first team and said "samudra gupta".
The teams were evenly macthed and struggling to break par in the beginning. A string of birdies followed, with Mauryas making full use of the clue "His most famous songs are for Khayyam and Jaidev" and identifying the lyricist as Naqsh Lyallpuri. They also cracked "tadap tap ke kaTii umr aashiyaane men" as well its lyricist Hasrat. The Guptas missed on both oppurtunities and infact had a bogey on "tadap tadap ke". That gave a 3 shot lead for Guptas. Although they scored a "double bogey" on the bonus song "pyaar ki rut do rangi saajan", the
Mauryas retuned the favor on the same clue. Guptas maintained their 3 shot lead till the last song "jab chaaye kabhii saawan ki ghata". Mauryas hit back with an eagle by identifying lyricist as Raja Mehdi Ali Khan and were now behind by just 1 shot. The Gupta's escaped with a par and won by 1 shot. Final scores: Guptas -6 ; Mauryas -5
Guri's quiz resumes: There were several video clues whose audios were mismatched. The audios were the prelude music of songs.We had to identify the number of clues, the correct audio and video sequence and
the theme. It was quite tough and Vish was able to crack a few. "do din ke liye mehmaan yahaan", "yaad rakhna chaand taaro" were among the songs.
Nishant and I left briefly to buy a connecting cable. When we were at radio shack, the phone rang. It was Samik Dasgupta "jaani main meet pahunch gayaa huun.” I was like, atleast he showed up ;)
Nishant's quiz: This was another video quiz and was tited 'allah jaane kyaa ho aage" A dialogue from a movie is shown and the immediately following scene had to be guessed. In most of the cases this was a song. This was a tough quiz as well. Some songs included 'kyaa ho jo din phir rangeela ho", "kuve.n me.n kuud ke mar jaanaa, yaar tum shaadii mat karanaa", Janam Liyo Lalna. Vish was able to guess the Parivaar song after Nishant gave a hint that it was picturized on Kishore although and it was a guest appearance for him. Balaji was able to guess the Ferry clip where Dev Anand and Geeta Bali have a Sarod / Sitar duel.The sone Ke chidiya verse "aaj ki raat bahut garam hawaa chalti hai" was another clue.
Bhagwant's quiz: Bhagwants links quiz was fascinating but with our limited knowledge of Hollywood / British movies we had to resort to google searches. The clues were like Lee Van cleef - Abhijeet. That pointed to the theme music of "Good bad and ugly"
Next clue was Clint East Wood - V Shantaram and we finally zeroed in on the song from 'jal bin machli".
"ye dil na hota bechara" was the answer for another series of clues.
By the time the quizzes ended, it was past midnight and Nishant and yours truly left as we had a very long day ahead. (Unfortunately we missed the singing session but the songs sung have already been posted by Nita on facebook.) We were driving to aspen the next day. Saroj ji decided to join us and postponed her return tickets. Nishant's mother also joined us. We went to Guri's house Sunday morning to pick up Saroj Kalra and got a chance to meet some RMIMers again.
On Monday morning, Nishant was to drop me at the airport. As flights of few other RMIMer's were also on Monday, we picked up Ashok, Saroj Kalra and Narsingh from Guri's place. There is no shortage of action
when Ashok is around and he started enquiring as usual. Nishant dropped all of us at the airport and I realized that my flight was delayed. I was thinking of calling Ashok but didn't have his cell handy. The gates for the flight changed and when I went to the new gate and relaxed in front of TV. I heard a familiar voice "what are u
doing here". It was Ashok ! In his usual style he started probing and threw a few googlies. We said goodbyes with the hope that we will meet in Bangalore.
Till the cyber stars gather again to create magic, so long..
taaron ki zubaan par hai muhabbat ki kahani
ai chaand mubarak ho tujhe raat suhani
It was well into the night by the time I reached Denver. The sky was clear and the celestial stars were shining. The cyber stars weren't far behind as they started trickling into Guri's residence. By the time Nishant and yours truly arrived, the bases were fully loaded. From Vijay with 'Ghanti bajii to hamne socha Ganti aa gayaa" to Nitin
Sharma giving me a hug and saying "milke bahut saal hogaya yaar" everyone greeted us and the feeling was surreal. Home run or not, it felt like a homecoming.
I could also spot Ashok, Balaji, Bhagwant, Deepak, Guri, Irfan, Narsingh, Pragya, Sajiv Anand, Saroj kalra, Vish on Saturday. Dr.Kapoor had already left for Waqar Khan's house. Casual conversations ruled while we were having dinner. The topics ranged from "Daughters Stalking Mom's" to "Complaints about Verizon
Wireless". Sajiv Anand, Guri's former classmate, took the center stage. He started with a string of Kishore songs and switched to Rafi with "ajahoon naa aaye baalamaa" and "tuu kahaan ye bataa". Mukesh's songs
soon followed. "yaad aayi aadhi raat ko, kal raat ki taubaa" started we quipped "thoDa der se yaad aaya...aadhi raat ke baad".
Dam Dam Diga Diga prompted Balaji to comment .." 1960's, shankar- jaikishen, raj kapoor, mukesh, kalyanji-anandji, Manoj kumar - they all sound the same to me." As a L-P - Mukesh song ensued, I interjected "lets add L-P to the list and added that Husnlal - Bhagatram are the odd ones out and pointed that Mukesh sang for them
in Afsana". Balaji commented 'qismat bidagi, duniya badli' is such long that H-B finished their full Mukesh quota with it. I retorted " uske baad duniya badal gaii" promting a few laughs.The laughter wasn't reserved for the witty comments alone. Guri's background catcalls got their share too. They picked up tempo as the night passed and were accompanied with his self-choreographed gyrations. These are better left to the reader’s imagination :)
'yaad aa gaii vo nashili nigaahen' and 'na tum hamen jaano' were the next items. As 'na tum hamen jaano' started a voice from behind said 'baat ek raat ki' and I retored - ek baat nahiin do baaten - "kal raat ki tauba" aur "nashili nigaahen" referring to the songs that we just sung. By now it was past 3 am and Nishant and myself called it a day.
Saturday's events: It was approaching noon when we came back. Nishant's mother also joined us. After exchanging pleasantries with Dr.Kapoor and Vinay Jain, I went to the recording room to make copies of the commemorative cd. I could spot Balaji enquiring about his missing luggageand Ashok joined us. Ashok turned to me "How do you know Nishant? ". I told him that we met in Denver at the 2008 meet and have been in constant touch since then. I also mentioned to him about our Hyderabadi connection and to press home the point remarked "Nishant was named after the Shyam Benegal Movie" ( The next day Nishant told me about his Nok Jhok with Ashok. Ashok enquired a few things about Nishant and when he came to know that Nisant has a sister commented "Is her name Bhumika ?". That's Vintage Ashok for you!)
The meet was formally kicked off with Sajiv Anand's renedition of namo namo'.
Introductions: Vijay introduced each of us and asked us to tell a little more. His antics resembled a talk show host. I wasn't sure if these were extemporaneous, but were laced with wit. While introducing Vish, Vijay said "Even if he doesn't attend a meet, he is always present in spirit. If he is not there we will say - Wish he was here " Vijay introduced Dr. ML Kapoor by saying " we celebrate MLK Jr's day, here's MLK Sr." Arushi then did a piano performance that thrilled the audience. Sitar player, Roshan Jamal Bhartiya, soon joined us and talked about
his music and his assocciation with L-P. Bhagwant Sagoo talked about his introduction to RMIM and Satish Kalra's role in that. He also talked about his visits to Kalraji's place and their long association. Dr. Kapoor turned to to Bhagwant "zaraa zor se boliye, hamaare kaan kuchh kam sunte hain" prompting Ashok to fire his first
salvo of the day "Agar kaan thiik hote to naushad ke fan nahin hote".
Bhagwant continued by saying "In my 20's I had the audacity to propose ...an idea to BBC". Guri remarked "I thought you were going to tell how you proposed to your wife" and the ever vigilant Vijay pounced "BBC ho ya BBG (Bibi Ji)". Bhagwant appealed to Vish and Guri to make time and share their knowledge with the world. He also talked about Copyright laws, making songs from saregama's archives available, and the compilations he had released on Saregama label. Irfan Anwar read out a letter he had written to EMI Pakistan regarding copyright
enforcement of his father's works and the lack of response to it.
Dr Kapur's quiz: Several video clues were played and the actor on whom the song was pictures, movie and composer had to be identified. The songs included MS Subbulakshmi from Meera, Pankaj Mullick from Mukti,
Jayashree from Shakuntala, Kanan Devi from Street Singer, KC Dey from Dhop Chaaon. Dr. Kapur also distributed cd's of Rani Ki Jhansi in color, Noorjehan in Pakistan and the inauguration of Rafi Academy.
Commemorative CD: Vish asked us to try and figure out what the theme of the commemorative this year. We were asked to make guesses and Vish would reply with a yes or no or possibly etc leading us toward the
right answer. The theme was "MDs who did not get their day in the sun in the Hindi film domain". Vish pointed out that this could have been due to various reasons like they being too busy with other assignments
(as assistants or in regional films), or more likely not fortunate to have their day in the sun.
Ashok talked about a remark by Vish to one of his earlier Quiz "RJGK 28: Jaane Anjaane: Great Songs by Obscure Music Directors". In that Vish registered a a feeble complaint by mentioning that there were no
GS Kohli compositions in the quiz. 15 years later, Ashok did a tit for tat. Vish then mentioned why no GS Kohli compositions made it to the commemorative. Vish also added that he had only 1 song for each
composed, with one expection. The songs from the commemorative were being played as we broke for tea and snacks.
I caught up with Irfan Saheb talking to Vish about how SDB recycled "dil pukaare aa re aa re" from 'balma ne maana" (Jeeva Jyoti). I sometimes wonder if Irfan Saheb likes SDB's music more than even his
fathers ! Vijay made a comment that the Suseela & PB Sreenivas duet in the commeorative "naina jo nainon se" (Daku Bhat) is similar to "nain so nain nahii milao". I mentioned that Daku Bhupatwas dubbed version
of Telugu movie Rajanandini (1958) and the tunes were taken from there.
(Those interested can check the Telugu song 'andalu chindu seemalo"
http://www.hummaa.com/music/
Of course the Telugu song has similarity to "nain so nain".
Guri's quiz: After the break we resumed with Guri's video quiz. The 1st video clip showed a man blindfolded on a chair...prompting Ashok to ask Guri "your first patient?" As Guri had to run an errand I was
asked to go ahead with my quiz.
Quiz by Yours Truly: This was an audio quiz in which clips from antaras were played. Teams had to get mukhda and lyricist. Scoring was on lines of golf. Both correct answers got a Birdie (-1), one correct answer got a Par and '0' correct answers got a bogery (+1). There were bonus songs as well. Scores were announced before each bonus song so that teams can choose their strategy. The bonus songs are like a drivable par 4 on a golf course where you can go for a green and try for an eagle (-2). But you also stand a chance of getting a double
bogey (+2). Alternately a conservative approach can be used by opting for a clue. Team 1 was called "Guptas" and Team 2 was called 'Mauryas". When I announced the teams AShok had us in splits with "So, I am chandragupta maurya". I looked at the first team and said "samudra gupta".
The teams were evenly macthed and struggling to break par in the beginning. A string of birdies followed, with Mauryas making full use of the clue "His most famous songs are for Khayyam and Jaidev" and identifying the lyricist as Naqsh Lyallpuri. They also cracked "tadap tap ke kaTii umr aashiyaane men" as well its lyricist Hasrat. The Guptas missed on both oppurtunities and infact had a bogey on "tadap tadap ke". That gave a 3 shot lead for Guptas. Although they scored a "double bogey" on the bonus song "pyaar ki rut do rangi saajan", the
Mauryas retuned the favor on the same clue. Guptas maintained their 3 shot lead till the last song "jab chaaye kabhii saawan ki ghata". Mauryas hit back with an eagle by identifying lyricist as Raja Mehdi Ali Khan and were now behind by just 1 shot. The Gupta's escaped with a par and won by 1 shot. Final scores: Guptas -6 ; Mauryas -5
Guri's quiz resumes: There were several video clues whose audios were mismatched. The audios were the prelude music of songs.We had to identify the number of clues, the correct audio and video sequence and
the theme. It was quite tough and Vish was able to crack a few. "do din ke liye mehmaan yahaan", "yaad rakhna chaand taaro" were among the songs.
Nishant and I left briefly to buy a connecting cable. When we were at radio shack, the phone rang. It was Samik Dasgupta "jaani main meet pahunch gayaa huun.” I was like, atleast he showed up ;)
Nishant's quiz: This was another video quiz and was tited 'allah jaane kyaa ho aage" A dialogue from a movie is shown and the immediately following scene had to be guessed. In most of the cases this was a song. This was a tough quiz as well. Some songs included 'kyaa ho jo din phir rangeela ho", "kuve.n me.n kuud ke mar jaanaa, yaar tum shaadii mat karanaa", Janam Liyo Lalna. Vish was able to guess the Parivaar song after Nishant gave a hint that it was picturized on Kishore although and it was a guest appearance for him. Balaji was able to guess the Ferry clip where Dev Anand and Geeta Bali have a Sarod / Sitar duel.The sone Ke chidiya verse "aaj ki raat bahut garam hawaa chalti hai" was another clue.
Bhagwant's quiz: Bhagwants links quiz was fascinating but with our limited knowledge of Hollywood / British movies we had to resort to google searches. The clues were like Lee Van cleef - Abhijeet. That pointed to the theme music of "Good bad and ugly"
Next clue was Clint East Wood - V Shantaram and we finally zeroed in on the song from 'jal bin machli".
"ye dil na hota bechara" was the answer for another series of clues.
By the time the quizzes ended, it was past midnight and Nishant and yours truly left as we had a very long day ahead. (Unfortunately we missed the singing session but the songs sung have already been posted by Nita on facebook.) We were driving to aspen the next day. Saroj ji decided to join us and postponed her return tickets. Nishant's mother also joined us. We went to Guri's house Sunday morning to pick up Saroj Kalra and got a chance to meet some RMIMers again.
On Monday morning, Nishant was to drop me at the airport. As flights of few other RMIMer's were also on Monday, we picked up Ashok, Saroj Kalra and Narsingh from Guri's place. There is no shortage of action
when Ashok is around and he started enquiring as usual. Nishant dropped all of us at the airport and I realized that my flight was delayed. I was thinking of calling Ashok but didn't have his cell handy. The gates for the flight changed and when I went to the new gate and relaxed in front of TV. I heard a familiar voice "what are u
doing here". It was Ashok ! In his usual style he started probing and threw a few googlies. We said goodbyes with the hope that we will meet in Bangalore.
Till the cyber stars gather again to create magic, so long..
