Musings at the Moloy residence

We are all familiar with post meet hangovers. Here is an attempt to recap those moments. Thanks to Kanchan and Moloy for hosting this wonderful session.

Chetan's prompt call on Saturday meant that we were going to gather at Chiranjeevi ji's place and go together to Moloy's house. Chetan and I came as planned and Chiranjeevi Singh had a guest which meant that Kalyan (K) got an alibi. K came in with a huge bag and declared that these are Anup's T -shirts. I wondered if these got exchanged during laundry, and they are planning to collaborate on a movie.

Meanwhile Chiranjeev ji got the Sunday edition of hindu and pointed to an article authored by Anup Pandey. The immediate question on everyone's minds 'is this our Anup Pandey?". We spent the next few minutes debating if it was indeed Anup before leaving for the venue. We found it even more of a coincidence that his cousin Namrata Joshi's article was right above this article.

 We reached Moloy's place around noon. I got the 4 CD connoisseurs set of SDB's Bengali songs for Moloy. The song I have been hooked to the last few days was "ai chaithi sandhya jai britha”. While I understood the meaning of the first couple of words, Moloy clarified that Jai britha is leaving; so, it is referring to "passing of the evening of chaitra month".

 K's dream:

 Moloy proposed a toast to celebrate the success of the meet; K mentioned that while he never drinks in real life he got a dream the previous night in which he was drinking. Ashok asked us to find a fitting song for this scenario and mentioned that he has "kal raat zindagi se mulaqaat ho gayi" in his mind.

K added that he often gets dreams of movies and narrated that instance of Shin Shinaki Bublaa Boo. I wondered if one can get such long dreams and Chetan clarified that dreams are short but can cover a wide frame of time.

KA show:

The Purvanchal Gang beat the South Bangalore team (Ashok, Anup, Shailendra) in reaching the venue. As Anup (A) entered he said " we thought we would be coming first because the K-Factor would delay the Purvanchal Gang". We went to congratulate A and learnt that the delay was because of the A-Factor; responding to phone calls inquiring if he wrote the article in Hindu.

K and A were trying to outsmart each other throughout the evening.  The only thing missing was Kalyanji Anandji's background music which was a staple fare in many action movies.

We enjoyed Samosa and Bacarwadi along with the drinks while discussing about Ravi's music. Chiranjeev ji declared that 'sab kuchh luTaa ke hosh men aaya' is the composer’s best song. K reminded of Ashok's article that talks about Ravi having a limited variety of songs. "ai mere dil-e-nadan", "vo dil kahaan se laauun"and a few other melodious numbers of Ravi were recalled. His interview claiming that he purchased film fare records was also discussed. When the topic is

film fare awards, SJ and LP cannot be far behind. So they were also the topic of discussion.

Making of Teesri Qasam and the hardships faced by Shailendra was debated.

Our own Shailendra got along HQ Chowdhury's SD Burman book, which he borrowed from me.

Moloy mentioned that he read the book and there are a few references where SD mentioned that the lyrics came first. The consensus based on interviews of various celebrities were that the tune came first with some exceptions.

Rest of the pre-lunch session was focussed on mythology, and history. Ramayana and Mahabharata; Origins of Lahore (named after Prince Lava);  Chiranjeevi's of Hindu mythology; were some of the topics discussed.

 Konkani lunch:

Lunch included Sevige served with Coconut milk and Dal with Baby mangoes.It also had Khotte; Idli stuffed in Jack Fruit leaves. This is a popular delicacy in our house too and we call it Kotteka Butta in Telugu. This led to a discussion of ancestral origins and K reminded A that his ancestors ran away from Maharashtra to the mountains :)

Some of the food was catered and Ashok enquired if we can engage them for the next meet.

Next Meet:

We promptly discussed about the next meet and Chiraanjeev ji proposed another CR tribute show with sponsorship. November, December was suggested although K interjected; "There could be other meets at that time". It is left to the audience imagination if this was another dream of his?

Do's and don’ts for the next meet were discussed, and a rigid agenda vs free flowing style was debated. We concluded that,irrespective of the format, everyone cannot be pleased. Chetan summed it up well by saying that someone must 'stand-up"for a meet to be organised. He and Ashok did in the past; K did for the previous 2 times and Shailendra did it this time. Ashok noted that this duty comes in multiples, and proposed Shailendra to captain the next effort. Shailendra and his family’s efforts to make the meet a success were specially appreciated. Some suggestions included announcing the meet date 3-4 months in advance and taking the group picture on Saturday when maximum number of attendees are present.

 The 'Moloy" of memories, flowers and food:

I wondered what Moloy meant, and referred to another Bengali song of Sachin Karta "moloyo chalo dheere". I am interpreting it as fragrance in this context, although there are other variants.

K talked about some of Piyush Sharma's interviews. Vijay Anand's mention made Moloy quite nostalgic. He recalled his days in Lamington Road in the 70's when he got introduced to Ketan Anand through a common friend and recalled Ketan to be an intelligent person who did critical analysis of his uncle’s films including 'tere mere sapne".

Discussion turned to Runa Laila and Vani Jairam; two singers who apparently made Lata insecure. Moloy again dug into his memory bank and recalled an amusing incident. It was a quiet day at work and a Runa Laila song was playing on "Hi Hello" Moly was waiting for a phone call that would confirm the signing of a contract and was forced to listen to "Hi Hello" the entire day.

 We experienced real Fragrance too, thanks to the Sampige flowers in the garden. Since we were right next to Sampige road, this is probably not unusual.

And then we turned to the "moloy" of fish; or shall we call "amoloy" Different varieties of cooking of fish were recounted. Bengali's fry it before cooking as compared to South Indians; and this emanates more odour. Since the majority were vegetarians, we associate fish with odour rather than aroma :)

Moloy also mentioned that most of the fish consumed is fresh water and A quipped if fish from Ganges are consumed.

K: " Upstream fish are more fit". A: 'You seem to have a lot of experience".

I was left wondering if K ever ate fish in his dream.

Now that we were done with Moloy, we turned to Banerjee. Moloy had 3 Banerjee's in mind who were quite famous but never used Banerjee as part of their name. Kalyan guessed Ravi Shankar

Banerjee but Moloy said that these were much more famous. Raja Rammohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore were among the correct answers.

Which CR movie name resembles your personality?

 K started, "did you notice how 80 year olds fought for the mike at the meet? Everyone else stared at each other "K is adding masala to it".

I pointed out that during a recent conversation a friend proposed naming people after CR's movies and Jhamela and Hangama fitted K. Ashok called himself Nastik and proposed Insaaniyat for Chinranjeev Singh. Anup and Moloy both tried to choose Albela. After some time Moloy said

that he wants to pick Nirala, making people wonder if he was thinking about it all the while during the discussions. Shailendra called himself Azaad as he is switching jobs. Moloy preferred Anarkali for his wife as compared to Yasmin. A suggested Patanga for K.

The balcony door was kept open to make a permanent spot for Smoke Club members. This meant that we enjoyed the good fragrance from the garden along with the bad. We were also not immune to the natural sounds form the Garden. Squeaking squirrels gave us company while we sipped tea prompting Chiraanjeev ji recount his days in Belgavi? where squirrels were permanent guests during tea time.

Different clans of Saraswats, the correct pronunciation of 'Padukone' and the film stars who have foreign passports rounded up the discussions.

It was past 6 PM, and the South Bangalore team sans Ashok made the move. Ashok had plans to stay overnight. Since he was going back to US, we wished to see him again sooner than later. The Purvanchal Gang squeezed into Chetan's car and enjoyed CR commemorative on the way home.

Another day of lively discussions came to an end but it looks like we never seem to get enough of it.