Ek haseen shaam ko "botanika" bhaa gayaa..

When Anant informed about an upcoming get together I assumed it was going to be at Serene County and started thinking of songs that celebrate nature and praise the creator. Soon Anant updated that it's going to be at Botanika and Kushal Gopalka is attending. The new venue being equally green, didn't warrant a theme change but Kushal's presence meant that the Playlist was taken care of. We all sent our farmaishes to Anant for Kushal to incorporate into the agenda. 

When we entered Botanika; we were greeted by Kushal,  Anant ,Ramesh Panchakarla and our host Bharani. As Kushal was busy getting the audio set up, Ramesh took center stage displaying some vintage pieces from his record collection including " mounamela noyi" from Sagara Sangamam.

As the attendees started trickling in, we all huddled in eager anticipation. Kushal encountered a glitch in the audio and went to check the connections. Anita was seated right next to the audio set up enquired "main *raste* me huun ?". "raste pe hum khade hain dil-e-beqaraar lekar" was my response to which Kushal retorted "Rajput". If you didn't follow this conversation, you can relax by knowing  that you are a normal person!

Finally we got going and started the farmaishes along with the reason for our choice.

We started with Sharada's request  "ek shehanshah ne" from Leader. She considers this as epitome of romance but Kushal countered with Sahir Ludhianvi's retort " ek shehanshah ne banaake Taj Mahal ham gariibon ka mazaak udaaya" Kushal also mentioned that Sitar was played by Rais Khan and pointed that his play in this song deviated different from the style of his Gharana. He also gave a quiz to identify a similar Sitar styled song which was "Nainon men badra chaaye".

Srilakshmi picked a Chaya Ganguli number from the Album husn-e-jaana that goes, "jab phaagun rang". Manmohana (jodha akbar) was the choice of Bharanis neighbor.

As some of these songs were displaying the Krishna motif, Anita mentioned a Telugu song " tellavara vacche teliyaka na saami" sung exquisitely by P. Leela. This along with another nocturne " sadiseyako gaali" happen to be my most favorite songs of the singer. The farmaishes were interspersed with other songs to go with the flow of the conversation and "Jab deep jale aanaa" was the next number. Sharada recalled an interesting anecdote of this movie and Zarina Wahab's acting to her winning college elections.

Another Yesudas number "Shyam rang ranga re" was Anant's choice. Kushal's pick was Rafi's song koi aur duniya men tumsa and we could identify its similarity with "Maine poocha chaand se". Ironically the original tune was much less popular.

Some of the choices were deeply personal. Yamini picked the song she sung for her husband right after marriage " jaane kaise sapnon men". Vasundhara mentioned her choice was the song which Anant song to propose to her. I was thinking on the lines of "tum gagan ke chandrama" since Anant shared the paradox between his name and Vasundhara. "bade acche lagte hain" by Amit Kumar was the one !

Bharani's picked  jinhen naaz hai and bada nathkhat hai re krishn kanhaiya. Jinhen naaz hai touched upon a very serious topic which is better left for private conversations.

After my selection "uupar gagan vishal" was played Kushal mentioned why this was last collaboration of Kavi Pradeep and SD Burman. Pradeep preferred tunes set to his lyrics and sometimes supplied tunes. I pointed to clash between Sahir and SD as Sahir wanted greater credit and Kushal added that OPN also stopped working with Sahir for same reason.

Sushmita picked her Dads favorite "madhuban men radhika". "chupa lo yuun dil men" was Anita's choice. "Shokiyon me gholaa jaaye" requested by Sreekala started a discussion on SD Burman's ability to understand essence of lyrics and situation and orchestrate accordingly. (contrary to some myths that he doesn't understand Hindi / Urdu). This led to "mora gora ang laile" which started a long discussion on why this song must have been written by Shailendra but credited to Gulzar. It was also pointed out that when SD asked his team to Orchestrate it sounded heavy and SD apparently commented something to this effect "laDki chhup chaap nikalna chahti hai. ye sunke laDki ka baap uTh jaayega". Anita pointed out that "aakulo aakunai" from Megha Sandesam sounds similar to this. We wound up with       "beeti na bitaayi raina"

Veg Rolls, home made Gajar Halwa, Samosas and am assortment of sweets kept our energy levels high.

By the time we came to Photo Session " sab log *raste* pe aa gaye" and arranged themselves in a pattern. Bharani's, Vasundhara, Anita, Sharada, Ramesh, Anant, Yamini on the "Non-Sri" side. Resident of ShreeNiketan (Kushal) was separating the Sri's and Non Sri's. Sreekala, Srilakshmi, Srinivas and Srimati of Srinivas ( Sushmita) on "Sri" side.

That ended another lovely session. Botanical garden road has been common to the three venues where we had sessions. *rasta* badalna chaahiye kya ?