We all have heard the term "baptism by fire" but how many have experienced it ?Hrushikesh Paranjape just did that having walked in to a lush green Kandivili pitch.
He was tested with a barrage of bouncers by Archisman Mazumdar in the form of quiz questions, starting with a 1937 Bengali song "Janitey jodi go tumi".Hrushi had to identify the singer and Archie gave the hint that this was the first ever song of this singer. It wasn't very straight forward as the early voice of the singer was different from what we are familar with. Archie followed with more songs including the heavenly "Rajanigandha ghumao ghumao" and it took a few more deliveries before Hrushi opened his account.
By the time Hrushi arrived to the crease with his friend Piyush, several familiar faces; Anand Juvekar, Nishant Shah, Archisman, Sandhya Ramesh and the curator Shankar Iyer; had made their mark. I asked my friend Prakash Jha, who has been keenly following the mehfils, to get a taste of them.
The thoughts of having a match of this nature first came up last Sunday and within a few hours, Shankar zeroed in on the track and started preparing it. The track was watered, bacardi'ed and old monk'ed. By Wednesday there was enough buzz in the air and enough fizz on the pitch for ten people to play and party.
Shankar delivered the first ball with an Illayaraja duet "Pon oviyam" fromKazhugu sung beautifully by Janaki and Yesudas ?
Shankar and Archisman alternately picked up the compering duties and treated us to a seriesof regional songs. Illayaraja's Tamil compostions were followed with Hemant Kumar's early Bengali works.After warming up with Hemant Kumar, Archisman then moved to Sachin Karta's Bangla works and played 'phirey gechhi baare baare'and asked us to identify its similarity with a Hindi number. Anand instantly came up with "bichDe sabhi baari baari". A few other songs followed including "ghuum bhulechi".
Anil Hingorani was next to arrive and Hrushi was very keen that Anil be given the same kind of bouncy welcome that he experienced. Anil drew all his experience and scored of the very first ball by correctly identifying the singer as Hemant Kumar with the very first clue. As Anil was introduced to Archisman he exclaimed "So you are the expert". Archisman tried to downplay it and dodge the question but Anil retorted "That wasn't a question but a statement".
We continued the Bengali numbers with 'aami nei, aami nei' composed by Lata for Kishore. With so many classical aficionado's around conversations were like "Have you heard the reverse - Kishore's bihag based composition for Lata" and half the crowd would just buzz back with the right song; 'bhaalobashar aagun jele keno choley jaao' being the one in question.
We then moved onto Sali Chowdhury and alternated between his Bangla and Hindi numbers.The Hindi number from Aawaaz "jhun jhun jhuna" was followed by Dhananjay Bhattacharya's Kalavati based "jhanana jhananna".
Hrushi and Piyush got "namkeen" that went quite well with the assortment of drinks Shankar had assembled. Its debatable if the ocassional kicks Shankar got were due to the drinks. I would just blame that on the electric atmoshphere that let him drop one line quizzes on an unsuspecting audience. Shankar started with his stock outswinger - "Father or Son. Pick your favorite". He was expecting a straight forward reply but people had other ideas.
Nishant replied "Fun", Anand Juvekar said "Shall we toss a coin to decide the outcome" and added"Lets hope its not the coin that was used in Sholay" which got drowned in laughter.
Hrushi shared his experineces of learning music from Shrinivas Khale among other things. Anand then played couple of Khale's composions including Lata's Tukaram Abhang'kaamodini kamodini kaay jaane' We also discussed how this song was based on raag Aarbhi & played Abdul Karim's 'chandrika hi' & a marathi natyageet in the same raag by Hirabai & Suhasini Moolgaonkar - 'paandu nrupati. Anand also played an audio interview of Hridaynath Mangeshkar and we talked about a few songs like "sanvarare sanvarare".
When a song from Hridaynath - Lata Ghalib album was played and it was pointed out that the album was Ghost composed by Sultan Khan. We also discussed Hridaynath-Lata Meera bhajans.
We then turned to HFM and several Lata favorites were played. "o aasmaan ke vaasi" by Roshan; "jal ke dil khaak hua" by Shailesh; "tuu kyuun mujhko pukaare" by S-J just to name a few started a debate on Lata's best songs and Archie referred to an earlier meet when we listed movies with 4 or more outstanding songs by a particular singer. Archisman also mentioned that in his opinion the most complete classical number in HFM is "jaa main tose nahin bolun" composed by Anil Biswas and Shankar enjoyed that number so much thathe commented; "that's like Viv Richards hitting a front foot boundary to a thompson delivery".
It was time for a Shankar Yorker and he asked "1,2,3 name your three favorite composers". Although this is very subjective, the responses still led to a heated debate.We then played several OPN numbers including an Asha number from Mangu where she sounds very much like Geeta. A controversial topic of whether Asha sang better than Rafi in some of the duets didn't lead to any consensus.
A mostly quiet Prakash then requested a few Mukesh songs and was obliged with a few including the song from the unlrelease movie "Chand Grahan".That reminds me of an interesting discussion about another song which was included in different movies as seperate versions but never saw the light of the day. I can't place the words of the song.
Shankar also played some Saxophone pieces by Manohari Singh and were asked to guess the numbers. These included "mujhko is raat ki tanhai men"and "gaa mere man gaa".
Although Sandhya Ramesh as well as Shankar's wife didn't take part in the heated debates, they showed their musical knowledge by cracking some of the Sax based quiz questions.
Shankar then ordered dinner and we enjoyed a delicious meal and folks started leaving. Anand, Nishant and myself stayed till 11:00 pm and duringthis time some of Shankar's non-music friends also joined us whichlead to some amusing conversations. As we were about to leave I askedShankar to play " jaa re chandr" and we left on a high.
Its interesting to note that Hrushi was "not out" at the end of the day and has been calling up people to narrate his experience. Prakash has also warmed up and has been asked to come to the crease with a list of his favorite Mukesh songs with reasons for liking them. We are all just waiting for the next "pitch" to be prepared :)
