The Denver bash was a blast. Many thanks to Gargi, Guri, Arushi and Baba. Having missed the last two Denver meets as well as this years Ottawa meet, I was keen not to meet this one. Samik Dasgupta (who lives in Boulder) invited me to his place and graciously offerred to show me the rockies. I reached Denver on Wednesday evening and we explored the rockies on Thursday and Friday. We had lots of filmi style conversations on the way.
Samik: Boulder men pahaadon ke alaawaa ladkiyaan bhii sundar hai.n.
Yours truly: Jaani, bachke rehna. kahii.n "patthar ke sanam" na mil jaaye.
chalo dil daar chalo, Guri ke dwaar chalo
On Friday evening we began our journey to Guri's house. I call it a journey because the half an hour drive seemed to like "chaand ke paar chalo". Here is a filmi conversation during the drive.
yours truly: boulder ka baadshah hote hue exit kaise miss kiyaa ?
Samik: "jaani, sahii raaste pe chalke koii bhii manzil pahunch saktaa hai. Lekin galat raaste pe jaake makaam pahunchna bachchon ka khel nahiin. Ye sirf baadshah kar saktaa hai".
Finally we arrived at Guri's house. We were greeted with delicious food. The singing session followed. Guri kicked it off with "diyaa jalaao jagmag jagmag". Soon Vish took over and sang some lovely numbers like "dheere se jaana bagiyan men" and "mujse pehli si muhabbat mere mehboob na maang". Dinesh Krishnajois sang some Kannada and Malayalam songs composed by Salil
Chowdhury.(Salilda's daughter Aloka was among the guests. Her son and his fiancee were also present). These included "harusha duurada" by P.Suseela from Samsayaphala. This song is the Kannada version of "madbharii ye hawaayen" from Anokha Daan. He also pointed out the movie had the Kannada version of "naam meraa nimmo" from Sapne Suhane. The Kannada version is by
L.R Eshwari and goes "dooradinda bandanta". Pragya (Vijay_ji's wife) took center stage and sang some rare Lata songs including "jaa re chandr aur kahiin jaa re", and "jaa re jaa re merii chhoD
chunariyaa". Balaji enquired if the latter was composed by Roshan.I cudn't hear that properly and said, "No. Its Zindagi Aur Ham, Roshan". Later when a Roshan song was sung, Guri commented "the composer is Zindagi Aur Hum Roshan".
Vish pointed out that "jaa re jaa re merii chhoD chunariyaa" is based on Raag Gara and also mentioned a couple more Roshan songs including "kaahe banoji anjaan jaadu Daalke" (Madhu) also based on the Raag. When I pointed out that Vish's commentary in the Roshan commemorative on this Raag begins with "chaa gaye baadal niil gagan par", Guri was quick to comment "People surely listen to the commemoratives". Ashok, are you reading ? :) Pragya also sang "dhiire se gagari utaar re" from Zindagi Aur Hum. Portland ke Talat'wale (read Balaji Murthy) sang "shaam-e-Gam ki qasam" and "jalte hai.n jiske liye". Sushruth Vaidya sang a Marathi song by Sudhir Phadke and Asha from the movie Avagachi Sansaar.I can't recall the song but it wasn't ruupaas bhalale mi. Incidentally there wasn't a Marathi takeover. Probably the only group who could counter the Punjabi strength were Bengalis.Around 2 pm I and Samik left to his house and came back on around 12 noon on Sunday.
Here are some of the events that took place on Sunday with a brief description of each.
Vijayalaxmi's interview: An interview with 78 rpm record collector Mr.Narayan Mulani was presented by VOA announcer Vijayalaxmi. Snippets of Mr.Mulani's favorite songs were also played. These included "zamaane ka dastuur hai ye puranaa", "tumhare bulaane ko jii chaahataa hai".
Guri's video quiz: A cascade of Movie title shots were shown with accompanying music. We had to identify the movie names, themes and subthemes. As usual Vish was in one team and Satish ji was in the other. The theme was Salida movies and the subtheme was "Bimal Roy and his associates". Aloka's presentation: A slide show of rare and nostalgic photographs of Salilda. Aloka also talked about each photo and quizzed us about the personalities in some of the photos.
Tribute to Kevin Iyer: Guri, Hari Iyer, Abhay Jain and Mathew Iyer in that order spoke about Kevin, the 17 year old wonder kid, who passed way last year. Most of us were broke down while listening to the tribute.A 2 cd Mukesh commemorative was distributed in Kevin's memory.
Chitragupt commemorative: A 4 cd commemorative of Rare songs by composer
Chitagupt Shrivastava were presented.
Nita's quiz: Each clue had a set of three words that appear in the same order either in mukhda or antaraa. We had to find the song from these words Satish ji's one song quiz: "phaili huii sapnon ki baahen" by a male voice was played and we had to guess the singer. The guesses included Jaidev, RDB, Dev Anand. The correct answer turned out to be Vijay Anand. This version was
from the movie Chor Chor.
A quiz by your's truly: I will post a seperate report on this soon. Discussion anchored by Abhay Jain: What would have happenned if Noor Jehan didn't leave India. The discussion went so long that this needs a seperate post.
Guri's presentation on Noise cleaning software, Soundforge and Cool Edit Pro.
After all the events were finished we had singing session. I recall only some of the songs" Vish sang a bunch of Ghazals including "ranjish hi sahi". He also sang "jaa re badra bairi jaa", "chandaa chamke niil gagan men". Pragya sang "do nainon ne jaal bichaaya". Balaji sang "Zindagi Ki Kasam".
Then Guri took over and sang many Saigal, CH Atma and Pankaj Mullick numbers as well as the perennial meet favorite "chalat musaafir". I and Samik left around 2 am but the singing session was still going on. The meet report isn't complete without mentioning about the delicious food
including desserts like baadam halwa and Kulfi.
Samik: Boulder men pahaadon ke alaawaa ladkiyaan bhii sundar hai.n.
Yours truly: Jaani, bachke rehna. kahii.n "patthar ke sanam" na mil jaaye.
chalo dil daar chalo, Guri ke dwaar chalo
On Friday evening we began our journey to Guri's house. I call it a journey because the half an hour drive seemed to like "chaand ke paar chalo". Here is a filmi conversation during the drive.
yours truly: boulder ka baadshah hote hue exit kaise miss kiyaa ?
Samik: "jaani, sahii raaste pe chalke koii bhii manzil pahunch saktaa hai. Lekin galat raaste pe jaake makaam pahunchna bachchon ka khel nahiin. Ye sirf baadshah kar saktaa hai".
Finally we arrived at Guri's house. We were greeted with delicious food. The singing session followed. Guri kicked it off with "diyaa jalaao jagmag jagmag". Soon Vish took over and sang some lovely numbers like "dheere se jaana bagiyan men" and "mujse pehli si muhabbat mere mehboob na maang". Dinesh Krishnajois sang some Kannada and Malayalam songs composed by Salil
Chowdhury.(Salilda's daughter Aloka was among the guests. Her son and his fiancee were also present). These included "harusha duurada" by P.Suseela from Samsayaphala. This song is the Kannada version of "madbharii ye hawaayen" from Anokha Daan. He also pointed out the movie had the Kannada version of "naam meraa nimmo" from Sapne Suhane. The Kannada version is by
L.R Eshwari and goes "dooradinda bandanta". Pragya (Vijay_ji's wife) took center stage and sang some rare Lata songs including "jaa re chandr aur kahiin jaa re", and "jaa re jaa re merii chhoD
chunariyaa". Balaji enquired if the latter was composed by Roshan.I cudn't hear that properly and said, "No. Its Zindagi Aur Ham, Roshan". Later when a Roshan song was sung, Guri commented "the composer is Zindagi Aur Hum Roshan".
Vish pointed out that "jaa re jaa re merii chhoD chunariyaa" is based on Raag Gara and also mentioned a couple more Roshan songs including "kaahe banoji anjaan jaadu Daalke" (Madhu) also based on the Raag. When I pointed out that Vish's commentary in the Roshan commemorative on this Raag begins with "chaa gaye baadal niil gagan par", Guri was quick to comment "People surely listen to the commemoratives". Ashok, are you reading ? :) Pragya also sang "dhiire se gagari utaar re" from Zindagi Aur Hum. Portland ke Talat'wale (read Balaji Murthy) sang "shaam-e-Gam ki qasam" and "jalte hai.n jiske liye". Sushruth Vaidya sang a Marathi song by Sudhir Phadke and Asha from the movie Avagachi Sansaar.I can't recall the song but it wasn't ruupaas bhalale mi. Incidentally there wasn't a Marathi takeover. Probably the only group who could counter the Punjabi strength were Bengalis.Around 2 pm I and Samik left to his house and came back on around 12 noon on Sunday.
Here are some of the events that took place on Sunday with a brief description of each.
Vijayalaxmi's interview: An interview with 78 rpm record collector Mr.Narayan Mulani was presented by VOA announcer Vijayalaxmi. Snippets of Mr.Mulani's favorite songs were also played. These included "zamaane ka dastuur hai ye puranaa", "tumhare bulaane ko jii chaahataa hai".
Guri's video quiz: A cascade of Movie title shots were shown with accompanying music. We had to identify the movie names, themes and subthemes. As usual Vish was in one team and Satish ji was in the other. The theme was Salida movies and the subtheme was "Bimal Roy and his associates". Aloka's presentation: A slide show of rare and nostalgic photographs of Salilda. Aloka also talked about each photo and quizzed us about the personalities in some of the photos.
Tribute to Kevin Iyer: Guri, Hari Iyer, Abhay Jain and Mathew Iyer in that order spoke about Kevin, the 17 year old wonder kid, who passed way last year. Most of us were broke down while listening to the tribute.A 2 cd Mukesh commemorative was distributed in Kevin's memory.
Chitragupt commemorative: A 4 cd commemorative of Rare songs by composer
Chitagupt Shrivastava were presented.
Nita's quiz: Each clue had a set of three words that appear in the same order either in mukhda or antaraa. We had to find the song from these words Satish ji's one song quiz: "phaili huii sapnon ki baahen" by a male voice was played and we had to guess the singer. The guesses included Jaidev, RDB, Dev Anand. The correct answer turned out to be Vijay Anand. This version was
from the movie Chor Chor.
A quiz by your's truly: I will post a seperate report on this soon. Discussion anchored by Abhay Jain: What would have happenned if Noor Jehan didn't leave India. The discussion went so long that this needs a seperate post.
Guri's presentation on Noise cleaning software, Soundforge and Cool Edit Pro.
After all the events were finished we had singing session. I recall only some of the songs" Vish sang a bunch of Ghazals including "ranjish hi sahi". He also sang "jaa re badra bairi jaa", "chandaa chamke niil gagan men". Pragya sang "do nainon ne jaal bichaaya". Balaji sang "Zindagi Ki Kasam".
Then Guri took over and sang many Saigal, CH Atma and Pankaj Mullick numbers as well as the perennial meet favorite "chalat musaafir". I and Samik left around 2 am but the singing session was still going on. The meet report isn't complete without mentioning about the delicious food
including desserts like baadam halwa and Kulfi.
