Many thanks to Guri, Gargi and Arushi for being gracious hosts. Thanks to Samik Dasgupta for hosting me at his place. Here's the first part of the report that sets the scene for the meet,
and covers Friday's proceedings.
Guri's challenge: A couple of weeks before the meet Guri sent me a note expressing his
view that RMIM meets are taking a life of their own seperate from the online community of active posters and readers. His concern was that this may be detrimental to the health and longevity of both
entities.He asked me to get one new attendee to the meet. I have done that in the past when I used to be in touch with new posters. Meanwhile I saw Nishant's post in which he expressed interest in
attending the meet and I thought I will get in touch with him and make sure that he attends :) Isi bahane RMIM ke taur-tarikon se waakif karane ka mauka bhi mil gaya thaa !
I came to know that Nishant lives in Boulder, which was where I was headed to a day before the meet.
farishton ki nagari men aa gayaa huun main:
I caught an early morning flight from Toronto on Thursday and was in Denver airport by 10:00 am. Since Samik's drivers license had expired, he suggested that I take a bus ride to boulder (a 1 hour drive from the airport). I managed to spot the bus Island in the nick of time and waved to the
driver just before he was closing the door. I only had $ 20 bills with me and the fare was $11. The driver said that he will accumalate change along the way and then charge me. My stop came and when I was about to pay, he said with a smile, "Keep it with yourself Sir.
Have a nice day".
Samik's appartment was a few blocks away from the bus stop on a hilly terrain. We decided to meet midway, and it was a downhill walk for me. As both of us are huge fans of Rajkumar and our conversations are filled with his dialogues, I promtly said Jaani ! thoDa tum uupar chale aao, thoDa ham niiche chale aate hain The first thing that caught my eye in Samik's appartment were the
several paintings hanging on the walls. Nestled between masters like Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh were some of his own drawings. By his own admission Samik is a party freak and a regular at Casino's and I retorted Jaani ! Juaari ke parde men ek fankaar chhipa hua hai. We spent the afternoon catching up and listening to Bangla songs. I have been on a Sudhin Dasgupta phase of late and when I mentioned it to Samik, he played several of Sudhin babu's songs. We also listened to Rabindra Sangeet. After dinner we watched Zia Sarhadi's Footpath, starring Dilip Kumar and Meena Kumari. The movie is studded with Khayyam's music and has several lesser known gems of Asha Bhonsle
apart from Talat's "shaam-e-gam ki kasam". ye rituen badii suhani: On Friday morning I rented a car and once Samik finished his TA duties, we drove the rockies. The fall fauna was spectacular. I am glad that most parts of North America are blessed with 4 distinct seasons. After spending the day in the rockies we set out to Guri's place.
Maine "jaana" seekh liyaa:
During my previous denver meets, I was riding with fellow RMIMers, and we ended up getting lost on the way to Guri's house. Last time around, Samik was driving and we spent so much time finding our way that Guri ended up saying "If you dont come in the next 15 minutes, main samhajtaa huun ki bangaliyon ka zamana gayaa" :) This time around I was driving and we didn't get lost at all, and reached there by 6:00 pm. When we arrived I could spot Aloka, Gargi, Arushi, ML Kapur, Nita, and
Pragya. ML Kapur greeted me and said "Ganti saab, aap mere saath aaiye" and took me to the computer room. He wanted me to make a post on his behalf regarding the Man Ki Jeet song " ai mere himala / hi maula) that was being discussed on RMIM. Normally i avoid reading RMIM
when a live meet is going on but I cudn't say no after seeing Dr.Kapur's enthu. I came down from the computer room and enquired about the rest of the folks. Guri and Pragyapati (Vijay's new name !) had gone to the airport to pick up attendees. Guri had circulated a spread sheet with the flight timings of the attendees by email, and a printout with latest updates was floating around. On seeing the names Dr. Kapur commented; "Kisi ka surname dutt hota hai ya gupta, ye duttgupta kya chiiz hai" I noted that Bengali surnames include Dasgupta and Sengupta as well and pointed that Bengalis are currently
in majority. At that point, the non-bengalis were outnumbered 4 to 3. We were soon joined in the living room by Saroj Kalra who had arrived earlier. It took some time before the next batch of RMIMers arrived and Dr.Kapoor was wondering if they decided to hold a mini-meet at the airport itself. News came that the gang was on its way and the friday evening traffic was the culprit.
Meanwhile we feasted on a variety of snacks and the boul full of banana chips vanished within no time. Dr. Kapoor was sitting in a sofa just opposite the big window. As soon as he saw a car entering the driveway, he announced "I am in the welcome commitee " and ran to the door to greet the arrivals.Given that the SUV was packed with people, their luggage had be loaded on the top and it took some time before the unloading operation was complete.
Guri, Dinesh K., Vijay, Balaji, Pradeep, Narsingh, Narsingh's friend Dr.Kochar and a "familar face" walked in.
I missed meeting Dr. Kochar by a whisker when I visited Narsingh on Vancouver island and was glad to meet him. A few were still missing and I overheard that the "Marathi Dal" was busy renaming Denver Airport to "Chatrapati Shivaji Airport" and that Anant Rege was the VP of operations :) They were expected any time. Anant's name wasn't in the spread sheet that was being circulated and
that completely caught me off guard. Then I realised that the "familar face" was none other than Anant's friend Jayant Pandit whom I met in Ottawa when I visited Anant. I thought "3 Canadians ay ? We can form our own group and stake the claim for takeover ".
Nishant and his mother soon arrived. It turned out that Nishant came to know about RMIM from Abhay Jains Radio show and has been reading it for a couple of years. We were also jined by Waqar Khan. Focus shifted to current affairs and the recent news of Tata pulling back Nano from Bengal came up. Pradeep Dubey has the ability to convert the most serious of conversations into a laughing riot and he didn't dissapoint." mamta ki chaon men Bengal" did the trick. US elections was the next hot topic and Guri interjected "This is an RMIM meet. Lets discuss about music". Pradeep retorted "reagan ki ragini vilambit men gaayenge aur ye rmim meet banjaayegi". Music was flowing from Narsingh's ipod in the background. Anant, Yogesh and Sushrut soon joined us. Sushrut took the cake for being the farthest attendee having come all the way from Pune. It was time for dinner and we enjoyed Roti and Sabji among other things. auditorium men aadhi raat ko We settled down in the auditorium and Pradeep started playing snippets of songs from Narsingh's ipod. All we had to was guess the song. Given that the ipod had over 12000, we covered several decades and composers. Some of the clues led to trivia questions and we had a lively session. When the Jogan song "gaind khelun, gaind khelun, kaanha ke sang" was played; Balaji asked us to name the actress on whom it was picturised. It turned out to be baby Tabassum. The selections ranged from the haunting "Mere dil ke geet chup the" to the catchy "sach kehti hai duniya, ishq par zor nahin". When "tauba ye matwaali chaal" came up, the audience protested "Tauba Narsingh ji ! aap aise gaane bhi sunte hain". Narsingh said that his collection goes well into the 1970s and included title music of films as well as piano
tunes of Brian Silas.
The next item started with a chorus "o lalala" that seemed to go on for ever before the unsuspecting audience were jolted with " maine baalam se puchha miloge kahaan, kheton men aadhi raat ko". A quick reference to the geet kosh reveaeld that the song was penned by Rajinder Krishan and tuned by Hansraj Behl. Few Talat songs came up and Balaji wasnt able to nail them. Nita was ready to pounce as always " abhi Guri nahiin hai. I can throw Pillows on you" when Guri stepped in. When "jaa jaa re chanda" came up Balaji pointed that the composer was Madan Mohan. He confused Private secreatry with Bank Manager and the audience was quick to correct "Composer to Ketan Dholakia ka chacha hai" :) "Jal ke dil khaak huaa, aankhon se royaa na gayaa" was the next number and it prompted a discussion on composer Sailesh Mukherjee.
Geet Kosh browsing ruled the roost as some of the songs in the ipod were from weird sounding movies like Bambai Ki Billi. Pradeep took charge of geet kosh while Narsingh played some melodies of Madan Mohan including "saanvari soorat man bhai re piyaa", " tum chaand ke saath chale aao", "badi barbadiyaan lekar" and so on. When "chaand madham hai" (Railway Platform) played, Vijay pointed out the leisurely pace of the song. Guri interjected, "The train would have left the platform before one line of the song is complete". LOL ! Balaji noted that Sahir collaborated with Madan Mohan in only 2 movies, Railway Platform and Ghazal. Pragya was at the wrong end of an argument and Guri intervened "choDo yaar, ye to abhi bachha hai". The audience went after Guri "panjabi
men ling bhed nahiin hota hai kya" ? I could faintly hear "Guri punjabi nahiin hai, bangaliyon ke ghar men refugee hai" as a big sound came from the back of the auditorium. Guri pointed that it was Samik who was unloading boxes of tapes that were shipped by Surjit Singh and managed to wriggle out of the situation with "Samik to bangali hai aur unmen ling bhed nahiin hotaa". The discussions went past midnight when Ritu; Surjit Singh and Harmesh arrived. Samik and myself left to boulder after greeting the latest arrivals.
Saturdays events -It was noon by the time Samik and yours truly arrived at Guri's place.Most of the people were assembled in the auditorium. Apart from the friday junta, I could spot UVR and ALUPer Dinesh Shenoy.
Tribute to Satish ji: Guri talked about Satish ji, his contribution to RMIM, and his
personality that has endeared him to all of us. Narsingh talked about his association with Satish ji. He
mentioned that his quest for the songs of Bezubaan put them in touch. Sushrut and Yogesh joined us just in time. Saroj ji got a video of Satish ji talking about his childhood days.She mentioned that this was recorded when Bhagwant Sagoo visited the Kalras.The video was in the form a vcd and the DVD player wasn't able to recognise it. Anant, Guri, Nita, Nishant, Samik ensured that an alternate arrangement was made within minutes.The vcd was run on a laptop and was connected to the monitor of a desktop so that all of us could have a decent view. Great job folks ! The video shed light on partition days and the migration of the Kalra's to India. Satish ji also talked about his and his brothers childhood memories in riot torn Kolkota.Dr. Kapoor mentioned that he hailed from the same area as Satishji and that one had to cross the indus to reach India.We continued to pay tributes to Satish ji during the course of the day.
The tribute was followed by a scrumtuous lunch with Roti's, Pumpkin Sabji stuffed with coconut, Rice and dal.
Documentary on Anil Biswas: The next item began with the shot of a building and the guessing game
was on as to which city it belonged. RMIMers started speculatin gand putting forth their reasoning to
support their hypothesis when it suddenly came to me as a flash "ye to Anilda ka ghar hai". I had seen the documentary at Anant Rege's place.It was an autobiographical account of Anilda interpersed with
interviews of other artists. The 4 part documentary covered Anilda's childhood, his career highlighting his association with several production houses and personalities, and his post Bombay days. Clips of his songs were included as well.
Thanks Anant for unearthing this and sharing it with us.
Video quiz:As always, Guri's video quiz was a brain teaser. It considered a series of video clips of songs with mismatched audio. We had to identify the video clips and nail the movie name,
singer, composer, lyricist. The maximum possibe score for a clue was 200 points.There was also a common theme that had to be identified.Anant, Prof Singh, Sushrut, Balaji, UVR, Nita, Pradeep, Dr. Kapoor, Yogesh etc were in one team. The other team had Vijay, Pragya, Ritu, Samik, Nishant and his mother, Aloka, Waqar Khan, Harmesh, Narsingh and yours truly.Meet quizes have always resulted in a lot of hallagulla with mature adults behaving like kids and this was no exception. The complicated scoring system added to the bedlam. Clues like the shot of an elephant, dows eating grain, a carvaan
passing by led to hair-splitting moments. Meena Kumari picturised in a bathtub sequence in foot path raised a few eyebrows and folks wondered how such a scene was cleared in the early 50s.
Inspite of a few silly mistakes our team won handily. Neither team was able to guess the theme; 21 different composers.
tasviir banaata huun, tasviir nahiin bantii: Arushi was the cynosure of all eyes and she was climbing on people and playing with their hair. Pragya and Ritu decided to capture some "kodak moments" with her and gave the camera to Dinesh K. Dinesh K. refused and as I was sitting next to him the camera was handed to me. Inspite of my best attempts I wasnt able to take a snap. Each time the three got ready for a pose, I ended up clicking the "off" button instead of the one to take the photo. They kept posing nevertheless hoping that I will get it right but realised that I was doing it on purpose :)
The mis(s)-adventure reached its climax when Nita, unbeknownst to us, was taking snaps of my trials
and the ensuing reactions. So we were still left with a few Kodak moments !
Introductions: We were joined by Satish ji's nephew Ramakant and his family; Sushruts family (Maithili and Rewa Vaidya); and Yogesh's wife. During the introductons Dr Kapoor pointed that he
now has a new car with license plate "P. Mulick" and emphasised that Pankaj Mullick is his favorite
composer. The introductions were plain and simple for a change. Apart from name and place of resdience, the only additional question was to mention the year when they started reading RMIM. When Anant's turn came he began with " I have been an RMIM'er since ...." and Guri heard it as
" I have been an *RMI'er* since" and questioned " aap south indian kab se ban gaye".
Memories of Satish ji: An audio visual with photographs of Satish ji was next shown. It included pictures from RMIM meets, his family pictures and a snap with Prithviraj Kapoor. His larger than life pictures shown on the big screen brought back fond memories of his active presence in the
meets and I am sure he must have watched it from above.Commemorative cd of Shankar Jaikishan made in memory of Satish ji was distributed.
Identify the photographs:We had adrak chai and snacks and came back to the auditorium.Surjit Singh began by talking about his association with Satishji. Prof Singh's quiz was based on a series of photographs and the person in the photograph had to be identified. He told that these were childhood photographs of RMIMers and that he emailed several of us and got promt responses. This prompted a few protests that they weren't contacted. Common sense prevailed as if we knew the names of RMIMers who werent contacted, cracking the quiz wud be easier.Several pictures were shown but none of the guesses were correct. The biggest laughs were reserved for a baby boy creating trouble in a bathtub. Everyone turned towards Pradeep Dubey and Pradeep responded "Surjit ji, aap ko mera picture kahaan se mila". But that guess also turned to be wrong. The presence of a number of baby girls made us suspicious as we dont have so many active lady members. We realized that Surjit ji mislead us and they were pictures of film personalities. Finally I got one right when I was able to identify the childhood picture of Sridevi. Prof's idea was to stop the quiz after the first correct answer. On public demand he pointed that the troublemaking kid was Shahrukh Khan.
Songs from Naushad's first 20 movies were distributed. Surjit Singh also talked about Amarjit Singh Anand and distributed tapes from Mr. Anand's collection.
Birthday wishes for Vish Krishnan
It was disappointing not to have Vish at the meet. We did the next best thing by conferencing him on
Yahoo messenger. It was a mini-mela of sorts with everyone trying to grab their chance, and Vish identifying us one by one.Vish paused for a moment and pointed to a person, I thought he was
referring to the one next to me. I unwittingly comitted a gaffe, when I said aloud " You mean the black man, -instead of saying - the man in the black dress", prompting a few reactions, that were subdued by a loud chorus singing "happy birthday!"
We then took turns individually to talk to Vish and greet him.
It was time for dinner and we had a delicious menu that included Rajma, Aalu Sabji and I believe Gobi sabji (this was a big hit and the bowl was emptied within no time !). I then played the documentary on Roshan ( this was the same that was shown at the New Jersey meet)
Singing session: UVR took center stage with Nishant accompanying him on the tabla. He
began with a Rafi number composed by Shankar Jaikishan. ( was it "kahaan jaa rahaa hai" or "duniya na bhaaye mohe" ? ) He mentioned an anecdote from 97 Denver meet when he told Satish ji
that SJ were unfairly critisised on RMIM and his comment made Satish ji happy.
Gyarah hazaar ladkiyaan aur baarah hazaar gaane !
UVR couldn't remember of the antara of the song from Gyarah Hazaar Ladkiyan "dil ki tamanna thi masti men" and Balaji promtly wrote down the lyrics. When UVR finished the song Balaji started humming the antara from the duet version. Meanwhile Narsingh's 12000 + songs were being transferred onto the external hardrives of some of the attendees. Singing sessions aren't complete without Guri's histrionics and he joined UVR in "ehsaan teraa hogaa mujhpar" Pragya was also called upon the stage, Pradeep joined with his Guitar, and soon we had a chorus singing "phaili huii hai sapnon ki baahen".
Chat with Malini:
We took a break in the singing session and meanwhie Malini joined us on the web cam. We took turns to talk with her and by the time all of us were done, it was 1:00 am. The singing session resumed but Samik and mysef left to Boulder. We had to wake up early on Sunday and join the Pooja celebrations. I came back to Toronto on Monday. It was great to get together at Guri's place again and have a fun filled session with passionate music lovers. Thanks again to the hosts, and also to the participants for making it a grand meet.
agli mehfil tak alvida
Srinivas
Jheel ke us paar
and covers Friday's proceedings.
Guri's challenge: A couple of weeks before the meet Guri sent me a note expressing his
view that RMIM meets are taking a life of their own seperate from the online community of active posters and readers. His concern was that this may be detrimental to the health and longevity of both
entities.He asked me to get one new attendee to the meet. I have done that in the past when I used to be in touch with new posters. Meanwhile I saw Nishant's post in which he expressed interest in
attending the meet and I thought I will get in touch with him and make sure that he attends :) Isi bahane RMIM ke taur-tarikon se waakif karane ka mauka bhi mil gaya thaa !
I came to know that Nishant lives in Boulder, which was where I was headed to a day before the meet.
farishton ki nagari men aa gayaa huun main:
I caught an early morning flight from Toronto on Thursday and was in Denver airport by 10:00 am. Since Samik's drivers license had expired, he suggested that I take a bus ride to boulder (a 1 hour drive from the airport). I managed to spot the bus Island in the nick of time and waved to the
driver just before he was closing the door. I only had $ 20 bills with me and the fare was $11. The driver said that he will accumalate change along the way and then charge me. My stop came and when I was about to pay, he said with a smile, "Keep it with yourself Sir.
Have a nice day".
Samik's appartment was a few blocks away from the bus stop on a hilly terrain. We decided to meet midway, and it was a downhill walk for me. As both of us are huge fans of Rajkumar and our conversations are filled with his dialogues, I promtly said Jaani ! thoDa tum uupar chale aao, thoDa ham niiche chale aate hain The first thing that caught my eye in Samik's appartment were the
several paintings hanging on the walls. Nestled between masters like Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh were some of his own drawings. By his own admission Samik is a party freak and a regular at Casino's and I retorted Jaani ! Juaari ke parde men ek fankaar chhipa hua hai. We spent the afternoon catching up and listening to Bangla songs. I have been on a Sudhin Dasgupta phase of late and when I mentioned it to Samik, he played several of Sudhin babu's songs. We also listened to Rabindra Sangeet. After dinner we watched Zia Sarhadi's Footpath, starring Dilip Kumar and Meena Kumari. The movie is studded with Khayyam's music and has several lesser known gems of Asha Bhonsle
apart from Talat's "shaam-e-gam ki kasam". ye rituen badii suhani: On Friday morning I rented a car and once Samik finished his TA duties, we drove the rockies. The fall fauna was spectacular. I am glad that most parts of North America are blessed with 4 distinct seasons. After spending the day in the rockies we set out to Guri's place.
Maine "jaana" seekh liyaa:
During my previous denver meets, I was riding with fellow RMIMers, and we ended up getting lost on the way to Guri's house. Last time around, Samik was driving and we spent so much time finding our way that Guri ended up saying "If you dont come in the next 15 minutes, main samhajtaa huun ki bangaliyon ka zamana gayaa" :) This time around I was driving and we didn't get lost at all, and reached there by 6:00 pm. When we arrived I could spot Aloka, Gargi, Arushi, ML Kapur, Nita, and
Pragya. ML Kapur greeted me and said "Ganti saab, aap mere saath aaiye" and took me to the computer room. He wanted me to make a post on his behalf regarding the Man Ki Jeet song " ai mere himala / hi maula) that was being discussed on RMIM. Normally i avoid reading RMIM
when a live meet is going on but I cudn't say no after seeing Dr.Kapur's enthu. I came down from the computer room and enquired about the rest of the folks. Guri and Pragyapati (Vijay's new name !) had gone to the airport to pick up attendees. Guri had circulated a spread sheet with the flight timings of the attendees by email, and a printout with latest updates was floating around. On seeing the names Dr. Kapur commented; "Kisi ka surname dutt hota hai ya gupta, ye duttgupta kya chiiz hai" I noted that Bengali surnames include Dasgupta and Sengupta as well and pointed that Bengalis are currently
in majority. At that point, the non-bengalis were outnumbered 4 to 3. We were soon joined in the living room by Saroj Kalra who had arrived earlier. It took some time before the next batch of RMIMers arrived and Dr.Kapoor was wondering if they decided to hold a mini-meet at the airport itself. News came that the gang was on its way and the friday evening traffic was the culprit.
Meanwhile we feasted on a variety of snacks and the boul full of banana chips vanished within no time. Dr. Kapoor was sitting in a sofa just opposite the big window. As soon as he saw a car entering the driveway, he announced "I am in the welcome commitee " and ran to the door to greet the arrivals.Given that the SUV was packed with people, their luggage had be loaded on the top and it took some time before the unloading operation was complete.
Guri, Dinesh K., Vijay, Balaji, Pradeep, Narsingh, Narsingh's friend Dr.Kochar and a "familar face" walked in.
I missed meeting Dr. Kochar by a whisker when I visited Narsingh on Vancouver island and was glad to meet him. A few were still missing and I overheard that the "Marathi Dal" was busy renaming Denver Airport to "Chatrapati Shivaji Airport" and that Anant Rege was the VP of operations :) They were expected any time. Anant's name wasn't in the spread sheet that was being circulated and
that completely caught me off guard. Then I realised that the "familar face" was none other than Anant's friend Jayant Pandit whom I met in Ottawa when I visited Anant. I thought "3 Canadians ay ? We can form our own group and stake the claim for takeover ".
Nishant and his mother soon arrived. It turned out that Nishant came to know about RMIM from Abhay Jains Radio show and has been reading it for a couple of years. We were also jined by Waqar Khan. Focus shifted to current affairs and the recent news of Tata pulling back Nano from Bengal came up. Pradeep Dubey has the ability to convert the most serious of conversations into a laughing riot and he didn't dissapoint." mamta ki chaon men Bengal" did the trick. US elections was the next hot topic and Guri interjected "This is an RMIM meet. Lets discuss about music". Pradeep retorted "reagan ki ragini vilambit men gaayenge aur ye rmim meet banjaayegi". Music was flowing from Narsingh's ipod in the background. Anant, Yogesh and Sushrut soon joined us. Sushrut took the cake for being the farthest attendee having come all the way from Pune. It was time for dinner and we enjoyed Roti and Sabji among other things. auditorium men aadhi raat ko We settled down in the auditorium and Pradeep started playing snippets of songs from Narsingh's ipod. All we had to was guess the song. Given that the ipod had over 12000, we covered several decades and composers. Some of the clues led to trivia questions and we had a lively session. When the Jogan song "gaind khelun, gaind khelun, kaanha ke sang" was played; Balaji asked us to name the actress on whom it was picturised. It turned out to be baby Tabassum. The selections ranged from the haunting "Mere dil ke geet chup the" to the catchy "sach kehti hai duniya, ishq par zor nahin". When "tauba ye matwaali chaal" came up, the audience protested "Tauba Narsingh ji ! aap aise gaane bhi sunte hain". Narsingh said that his collection goes well into the 1970s and included title music of films as well as piano
tunes of Brian Silas.
The next item started with a chorus "o lalala" that seemed to go on for ever before the unsuspecting audience were jolted with " maine baalam se puchha miloge kahaan, kheton men aadhi raat ko". A quick reference to the geet kosh reveaeld that the song was penned by Rajinder Krishan and tuned by Hansraj Behl. Few Talat songs came up and Balaji wasnt able to nail them. Nita was ready to pounce as always " abhi Guri nahiin hai. I can throw Pillows on you" when Guri stepped in. When "jaa jaa re chanda" came up Balaji pointed that the composer was Madan Mohan. He confused Private secreatry with Bank Manager and the audience was quick to correct "Composer to Ketan Dholakia ka chacha hai" :) "Jal ke dil khaak huaa, aankhon se royaa na gayaa" was the next number and it prompted a discussion on composer Sailesh Mukherjee.
Geet Kosh browsing ruled the roost as some of the songs in the ipod were from weird sounding movies like Bambai Ki Billi. Pradeep took charge of geet kosh while Narsingh played some melodies of Madan Mohan including "saanvari soorat man bhai re piyaa", " tum chaand ke saath chale aao", "badi barbadiyaan lekar" and so on. When "chaand madham hai" (Railway Platform) played, Vijay pointed out the leisurely pace of the song. Guri interjected, "The train would have left the platform before one line of the song is complete". LOL ! Balaji noted that Sahir collaborated with Madan Mohan in only 2 movies, Railway Platform and Ghazal. Pragya was at the wrong end of an argument and Guri intervened "choDo yaar, ye to abhi bachha hai". The audience went after Guri "panjabi
men ling bhed nahiin hota hai kya" ? I could faintly hear "Guri punjabi nahiin hai, bangaliyon ke ghar men refugee hai" as a big sound came from the back of the auditorium. Guri pointed that it was Samik who was unloading boxes of tapes that were shipped by Surjit Singh and managed to wriggle out of the situation with "Samik to bangali hai aur unmen ling bhed nahiin hotaa". The discussions went past midnight when Ritu; Surjit Singh and Harmesh arrived. Samik and myself left to boulder after greeting the latest arrivals.
Saturdays events -It was noon by the time Samik and yours truly arrived at Guri's place.Most of the people were assembled in the auditorium. Apart from the friday junta, I could spot UVR and ALUPer Dinesh Shenoy.
Tribute to Satish ji: Guri talked about Satish ji, his contribution to RMIM, and his
personality that has endeared him to all of us. Narsingh talked about his association with Satish ji. He
mentioned that his quest for the songs of Bezubaan put them in touch. Sushrut and Yogesh joined us just in time. Saroj ji got a video of Satish ji talking about his childhood days.She mentioned that this was recorded when Bhagwant Sagoo visited the Kalras.The video was in the form a vcd and the DVD player wasn't able to recognise it. Anant, Guri, Nita, Nishant, Samik ensured that an alternate arrangement was made within minutes.The vcd was run on a laptop and was connected to the monitor of a desktop so that all of us could have a decent view. Great job folks ! The video shed light on partition days and the migration of the Kalra's to India. Satish ji also talked about his and his brothers childhood memories in riot torn Kolkota.Dr. Kapoor mentioned that he hailed from the same area as Satishji and that one had to cross the indus to reach India.We continued to pay tributes to Satish ji during the course of the day.
The tribute was followed by a scrumtuous lunch with Roti's, Pumpkin Sabji stuffed with coconut, Rice and dal.
Documentary on Anil Biswas: The next item began with the shot of a building and the guessing game
was on as to which city it belonged. RMIMers started speculatin gand putting forth their reasoning to
support their hypothesis when it suddenly came to me as a flash "ye to Anilda ka ghar hai". I had seen the documentary at Anant Rege's place.It was an autobiographical account of Anilda interpersed with
interviews of other artists. The 4 part documentary covered Anilda's childhood, his career highlighting his association with several production houses and personalities, and his post Bombay days. Clips of his songs were included as well.
Thanks Anant for unearthing this and sharing it with us.
Video quiz:As always, Guri's video quiz was a brain teaser. It considered a series of video clips of songs with mismatched audio. We had to identify the video clips and nail the movie name,
singer, composer, lyricist. The maximum possibe score for a clue was 200 points.There was also a common theme that had to be identified.Anant, Prof Singh, Sushrut, Balaji, UVR, Nita, Pradeep, Dr. Kapoor, Yogesh etc were in one team. The other team had Vijay, Pragya, Ritu, Samik, Nishant and his mother, Aloka, Waqar Khan, Harmesh, Narsingh and yours truly.Meet quizes have always resulted in a lot of hallagulla with mature adults behaving like kids and this was no exception. The complicated scoring system added to the bedlam. Clues like the shot of an elephant, dows eating grain, a carvaan
passing by led to hair-splitting moments. Meena Kumari picturised in a bathtub sequence in foot path raised a few eyebrows and folks wondered how such a scene was cleared in the early 50s.
Inspite of a few silly mistakes our team won handily. Neither team was able to guess the theme; 21 different composers.
tasviir banaata huun, tasviir nahiin bantii: Arushi was the cynosure of all eyes and she was climbing on people and playing with their hair. Pragya and Ritu decided to capture some "kodak moments" with her and gave the camera to Dinesh K. Dinesh K. refused and as I was sitting next to him the camera was handed to me. Inspite of my best attempts I wasnt able to take a snap. Each time the three got ready for a pose, I ended up clicking the "off" button instead of the one to take the photo. They kept posing nevertheless hoping that I will get it right but realised that I was doing it on purpose :)
The mis(s)-adventure reached its climax when Nita, unbeknownst to us, was taking snaps of my trials
and the ensuing reactions. So we were still left with a few Kodak moments !
Introductions: We were joined by Satish ji's nephew Ramakant and his family; Sushruts family (Maithili and Rewa Vaidya); and Yogesh's wife. During the introductons Dr Kapoor pointed that he
now has a new car with license plate "P. Mulick" and emphasised that Pankaj Mullick is his favorite
composer. The introductions were plain and simple for a change. Apart from name and place of resdience, the only additional question was to mention the year when they started reading RMIM. When Anant's turn came he began with " I have been an RMIM'er since ...." and Guri heard it as
" I have been an *RMI'er* since" and questioned " aap south indian kab se ban gaye".
Memories of Satish ji: An audio visual with photographs of Satish ji was next shown. It included pictures from RMIM meets, his family pictures and a snap with Prithviraj Kapoor. His larger than life pictures shown on the big screen brought back fond memories of his active presence in the
meets and I am sure he must have watched it from above.Commemorative cd of Shankar Jaikishan made in memory of Satish ji was distributed.
Identify the photographs:We had adrak chai and snacks and came back to the auditorium.Surjit Singh began by talking about his association with Satishji. Prof Singh's quiz was based on a series of photographs and the person in the photograph had to be identified. He told that these were childhood photographs of RMIMers and that he emailed several of us and got promt responses. This prompted a few protests that they weren't contacted. Common sense prevailed as if we knew the names of RMIMers who werent contacted, cracking the quiz wud be easier.Several pictures were shown but none of the guesses were correct. The biggest laughs were reserved for a baby boy creating trouble in a bathtub. Everyone turned towards Pradeep Dubey and Pradeep responded "Surjit ji, aap ko mera picture kahaan se mila". But that guess also turned to be wrong. The presence of a number of baby girls made us suspicious as we dont have so many active lady members. We realized that Surjit ji mislead us and they were pictures of film personalities. Finally I got one right when I was able to identify the childhood picture of Sridevi. Prof's idea was to stop the quiz after the first correct answer. On public demand he pointed that the troublemaking kid was Shahrukh Khan.
Songs from Naushad's first 20 movies were distributed. Surjit Singh also talked about Amarjit Singh Anand and distributed tapes from Mr. Anand's collection.
Birthday wishes for Vish Krishnan
It was disappointing not to have Vish at the meet. We did the next best thing by conferencing him on
Yahoo messenger. It was a mini-mela of sorts with everyone trying to grab their chance, and Vish identifying us one by one.Vish paused for a moment and pointed to a person, I thought he was
referring to the one next to me. I unwittingly comitted a gaffe, when I said aloud " You mean the black man, -instead of saying - the man in the black dress", prompting a few reactions, that were subdued by a loud chorus singing "happy birthday!"
We then took turns individually to talk to Vish and greet him.
It was time for dinner and we had a delicious menu that included Rajma, Aalu Sabji and I believe Gobi sabji (this was a big hit and the bowl was emptied within no time !). I then played the documentary on Roshan ( this was the same that was shown at the New Jersey meet)
Singing session: UVR took center stage with Nishant accompanying him on the tabla. He
began with a Rafi number composed by Shankar Jaikishan. ( was it "kahaan jaa rahaa hai" or "duniya na bhaaye mohe" ? ) He mentioned an anecdote from 97 Denver meet when he told Satish ji
that SJ were unfairly critisised on RMIM and his comment made Satish ji happy.
Gyarah hazaar ladkiyaan aur baarah hazaar gaane !
UVR couldn't remember of the antara of the song from Gyarah Hazaar Ladkiyan "dil ki tamanna thi masti men" and Balaji promtly wrote down the lyrics. When UVR finished the song Balaji started humming the antara from the duet version. Meanwhile Narsingh's 12000 + songs were being transferred onto the external hardrives of some of the attendees. Singing sessions aren't complete without Guri's histrionics and he joined UVR in "ehsaan teraa hogaa mujhpar" Pragya was also called upon the stage, Pradeep joined with his Guitar, and soon we had a chorus singing "phaili huii hai sapnon ki baahen".
Chat with Malini:
We took a break in the singing session and meanwhie Malini joined us on the web cam. We took turns to talk with her and by the time all of us were done, it was 1:00 am. The singing session resumed but Samik and mysef left to Boulder. We had to wake up early on Sunday and join the Pooja celebrations. I came back to Toronto on Monday. It was great to get together at Guri's place again and have a fun filled session with passionate music lovers. Thanks again to the hosts, and also to the participants for making it a grand meet.
agli mehfil tak alvida
Srinivas
Jheel ke us paar
