RMIM meet report - Bangalore (2009)

Prologue: May 16, 2009 - India was in the grip of election fever. Party offices were bustling with activity as the counting began. As the evening dawned, results started trickling in,and open discussions gave way to close door meetings. Veteran members of the ruling coalition started trickling into the residence of General Secretary, Kalyanji Kolachalaji. The hopes were high and the stakes higher. Hardliner, Chetan Vinchhi, was among the first arrivals. He had mellowed down over the years, but the intensity in his eyes and sincerity in his voice was as striking as ever. Game changer, Arunabha Roy, was the most sought after member. His vote has always been crucuial, given his history of switching sides at the drop of a coin. Central observer Anup Pandey flew in from Delhi with special instructions from the high command. Dissident leader Ashok Dhareshwar moved the motion to have the RMIM meet on June 26,27,28 and it was unanimously adopted.

Yours truly got wind of the developments and was relieved. With my india trip already finalised I was hoping that the meet will coincide with my visit. It just did.

Thanks to Kalyan, Sushmita, Sirisha, Moloy, Kanchan, Chetan, Arunabha, Ashok for their tireless

efforts in organising the meet.

June 25, 2009 - I took an evening flight from Hyderabad to Bangalore. My return was delayed due to friday evening traffic. Bangalore folks attributed the delay to me getting kidnapped on the way.(One RMIMer threatened to hijack the plane since I was not visiting mumbai during my india trip!) I finally arrived at Kastle Grace and knocked on the door. Arunabha greeted me

"Chalo grocery karne chalte hain !".

We let Kalyan know about my arrival. He wanted to stop by since we had some hawala transactions to perform. We went downstairs and spotted Kalyan's car. I was tempted to say "Kalyanji, aap se milke bahut aanand mila", but realized that Chiranjeevi Singh was in the car. After exchanging pleasentaries and DVD's they left. Arunabha said "why dont we have dinner first ? We can get groceries later". I said to myself " I didn't expect nawabi tehzeeb, but atleast I am not being mistreated".

June 26, 2009 - "are ye kya kiyaa tuu ne": Although an NRB (non-resident bong) since birth, Arunabha's laid back approach has bhadralok written all over it. On top of that Kalyan assigned him the task of picking up Chiranjeevi Singh on the way.The next hour was spent with Arunabha calling several cab companies with little luck. Meanwhile Pavan called to inform that he is in mumbai but his flight from there has been delayed. After several near misses, Pavan's excitement was understandable and he asked Arunabha for periodic updates. Arunabha made calls to Moloy and Kanchan's residence and finds that Ashok; Chetan, Purvi and their kids; "Cool dude" Saksham; Abhay Phadnis; Manjari Dhamankar, have already arrived.

"intezaar aur abhii, aur abhii": After a wait of one and a half hours the cab company finally sent one.

We picked Chiranjeevi singh and reached the venue around 9:30. Attendees started speculating if the Bangalore folks would arrive later than the Jaipur / Mumbai folks but we managed to beat them by a whisker. Most of the attendees had already arrived. Apart from the ones mentioned above; I could spot

Kalyan, Sushmita, Sirisha, Sirisha's friend, Vivek Dhareshwar, and his daughter, Anup Pandey, Dr.Khaitan,

Dr.Shekhar, his wife, his mother; Dr.Mohan and his wife.

We were having a scrumtuous dinner when two gentlemen arrived; Vibhendu Tiwari and Pavan Jha.

To take a cue from Ashok "God and Gulzar finally relented" and we were thrilled to have Pavan. Ashok had already warmed up, and started reeling quotable quotes. He quipped "Ganti's reports are like Gulzar's writing!"

Introductions: A new dimension was added here with RMIMers providing insights about their fellow members.

Cool dude's introduction had us in splits. "My name is Saksham. I am 19 years old" Moloy shared Saksham's confession "In his good old days, he was a non-vegetarian". Kanchan mentioned that her first meet was in New Jersey and Chetan added that she was the co-host for her first meet ! When Dr.Sekhar's mother introduced herself, Ashok added that she won the second prize during a world space quiz and he will reveal later as to who won the first prize.

After Abhay's introduction, Chetan added that Abhay is a big fan of Begum Akhtar. Chiranjeevi Singh mentioned that he got the oppurnity to see her in person thrice. Abhay recalled that in the Chennai meet he saw two Sardarji's and wasn't sure who was Dr.Hamraaz till one of them talked in Kannada. Chiranjeevi Singh's command over various languages is well known. Ashok also mentioned that it was Mr. Singh

who won the first prize in the world space contest Manjiri mentioned that she is not all part of the new group online but has been attending meets. At the last Arunabha and myself mentioned to her that we Marathi songs but dont understand the language well. Manjari mentioned that this motivated her to translate

a few Marathi songs into Hindi.

Lata or Asha: Aruanbha complemented RMIMers and noted that it has been a great experience for him to meet lovers of vintage music in the meets. Chetan mentioned that Arunabha started out as an Asha fan and switched to Lata. Arunabha retorted that he now likes both equally well.

Sushmita Kalyanam:When Sushmita talked about her interest in old songs, Kalyan interjected and mentioned their pre-wedding exchanges. When Kalyan asked her what kind of music she liked, Bhajans was her reply and quoted that Comics are her favorite books. Kalyan noted that she tried her best not to marry him :)

Chetan mentioned a little bit about the history of RMIM meets and Anup chipped in as well.

It was my turn and I spoke Hindustani...

" mujhe is mehfil men baar-baar shaamil hone ka mauqka mila hai, lekin,

is mehfil men chand lamhe bitaane ka shauq abhii baaqi hai

is aalam ka lutf uThaane ka junoon abhii baaqi hai

"

Kalyan compared my meet reports to Sanjay narrating events of Mahabharata and Ashok quipped that I even write reports of meets that I don't attend.

"How to miss an RMIM meet" by Pavan Jha: His two near misses when he had to cancel his tickets at last minute have attained legedndary status.Pavan's talked about the art of missing and his thrill at finally

attending a meet. He introduced in Hindustani as well. Vibhendu's intrduction was followed by several people mentioning about his participation in Quiz competitions. Ashok introduced himself in Kannada. We were about to call it a day when Ashok had the last laugh with his comment to me "Your Hindi has improved since you moved to Toronto"!

Arunabha, Pavan, Chiranjeevi Singh and Your's truly left in Dr.Khaitan's car. During the drive I talked about the famous poet from Hyderabad, Maqdoom Mohinuddin, whose sher with the beher "abhii baaqi hai" inspired mine. Some of the film songs of Maqdoom were discussed. Dr.Khaitan dropped us at Arunabha's residence and went on to drop Chiranjeevi Singh. Pavan worked on the audio visual introduction on VK Murthy and was awake most of the night. Arunabha and I also looked at several books that Pavan got.

It was a memorable evening to Savor and this was only the warmup to the formal events on Saturday and Sunday !

The cloudy skies gave way to bright sun shine as the clock struck ten. It was a quiet morning with the ocassional cooing of the doves. The silence was interrupted by a phone call. A familiar voice said " When are you guys planning to come".
It was Chetan. I sensed that we were running late and alerted Arunabha and Pavan. They woke up and continued in the vein of the previous night; talk, browse books, and did i say talk ! We took turns to answer Chetan's followp up phone calls and blame the delay on the other person till Chetan announced "I will be at the door in 10 minutes".The procrastination invetably led to change of plans, and Chetan got assigned to other pick up duties leaving place for only one of us in his car. Arunabha managed to convince Pavan "You have a lot of books which won't fit in auto.You shud go in the car" We accompanied Pavan till the car and saw Saksham besides Chetan. Arunabha greeted him "Will you be singing a song spanning 3 octaves" and the cool dude shoot back "Are you Crazy. Its 2 and half at most".

As we walked back into the appartment Arunabha heaved a sigh of relief; and eased into the sofa by saying "Now I can get ready at my own pace". The delay in getting ready was more than made up by the fact that we had much better luck with the auto and we were at the venue almost on time. By the time we arrived, the auditorium was packed. We sat in a corner besides Saksham. The first event had just begun and M.A Parthasarathy, former production head at Gemini Studios, was talking about C Ramchandra. Meanwhile Kalyan came by and said that my seat was  needed to put a music system and pointed to another empty seat, right at the tail of the long rectangular table. This was a much more visible spot, and the moment I was noticed, several hands and mouths swung into action. No, it wasn't a greeting! Some were passing sheets of paper, and others were enquiring if i needed a pen. Before I could realize what was happenning Srisha came by and said "No need to take notes for the meet report. We are recording the proceedings"

Thanks to Srisha, Pavan and Anant Rege, the recording will soon be available at rmim.in.  This post is just a trailer with juicy tid-bits.

M.A Parthasarathy and the Gemini music room: Parthasarathy mentioned that, after song recording was complete, Ramchandra always wanted to see the final version of the film. But films typically needed editing, and Parthasarathy used to show him the rought cut. Several interesting aspects were revealed ; including Lata refusing to sing for Ramchandra after 6:00 pm any given day ! Parthasarathy also mentioned about a recording by Emani Sankara Sastry called "aadarsha shikara aarohanam" - the ideal progress of a musical expression, and that Ramchandra loved it. He went on to talk about Chandralekha (1948) and its composer Saluri Rajeswara Rao. During the ensuing discussion, Dr. Sekhar enquired about the picturisation of a dance sequence from Raj Tilak in which Vyjayanthimala and Padmini had a competition. Parthasarathy mentioned that the producer, S.S vassan realised that making either actress win the dance sequence would have repercussions. So he devised the scene such that the chandeliers would crash and disrupt the dance, leaving it inconclusive.

Maya Rao and the music for dance ballets: Dr Maya Rao, internationally reputed dancer, choreographer and founder of Natya Institute of Kathak & Choreography, was the next guest. She talked at length about her association with Anil Biswas. She began by giving a brief background of Anida's tryst with AIR, her introducton with him and a delightful account of his personality, which sounds plain in a report. The recording is worth listening to just for this! Maya Rao returned from Moscow after studying in Theatre Arts. She also played a couple of songs fron her dance drama on Amir Khusrau, composed by Anil Biswas.

"Gori sovay sej par, mukh par daaray kes,
Chal Khusrau ghar aapnay, rain bhaii chahu des " and

" Ai chehara-e zeba-e-tu rashk-e butaan-e-azari "

She went on to mention that Anilda also composed carnatic styles on Vishnuvardhana and Venkateshwara Vilasam for TTD (Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam) She also touched upon a Kathak number whose lyrics were by Narendra Sharma and was sung by Anilda himself. A clip of the song was played as well. An interesting anecdote on Anilda driving his car in reverse direction was also recalled. She recalled an interesting incidentg where where she hummed a Jhinjhoti tarana to Anilda that she had heard and asked him to compose something similar. Anilda retorted" tum to Bageshri gaa rahii ho" We were in splits when she shared Anilda's comments to out of tune cheoreographers, with us. He apparently said "tum sab asur ho".

It was time to wind up the discussions with chief guests and break for lunch. This was perfect time to catch up with old friends and meet new people. Apart from the attendees on Saturday; I could spot Animesh, PreetRanjan, Sushrut, Sathya and his wife. I was also introduced to Samik Dasgupa's mother, sister and brother-in-law.

Introductions: As Arunabha and Preeti mentioned; Kalyan's father's introduction was special. The remark by Kalyan's father speaking of Kalyan "Given our music preferences, I sometimes wonder if he is the father " was received with smiles all around. We all mentioned about our favorite singers and composers. Preeti's introduction was "My favorite singers are Mukesh and Anup Pandey" When a comment was made about having visibility ? Vibehndu stood up on the stage in order to be visible !

Sense of humor was displayed in abundance duing the intros.

Quiz: Kalyan was planning to do an event but had to pick up V.K Murthy. I jumped in with my quiz which Preeti has already mentioned in his report It was fun to watch IIT Profs Animesh and Preeti solving problems. While most RMImers are by now aware of the theme (matching pairs of songs with movie name of one contained in the mukhda of the other); having a subtheme for the odd clues was a more recent introduction. I gave a clue that the odd songs had the same composer. Both teams latched on when i mentioned that he was a golden era composer who was still alive I could see them rejoice when I announced that both guessed the name correctly as Ravi. I wonder if that really helped in the final analysis or people got distracted into focussing too much on finding which songs were by Ravi instead of matching the pairs.

The quiz brought out the best of Anup Pandey. Anup and Pradeep Dubey were two RMImers that I always wanted to meet, especially because of their sense of humor. Unfortunately they went back to India around the same
time I became active on RMIM and started attending meets. I finally met Pradeep a few years back and now Anup.Soon after the quiz ended, one attendee wanted to leave and Anup looked at me and said "tumhara quiz ka pehla shikaar".

V.K Murthy: Pavan Jha presented a nice audio visual about his cinematography. Murthy saab talked at techinques he used for various song picturizations. He talked about how the specific beam of light was achieved in "waqt ne kiya" from Kaagaz Ke Phool by a unique mirror arrangement. Preeti has summed this up nicely. The discussion about "saaqiya aaj mujhe" has to be heard to be savoured! Murthy saab also talked about his understading with Guru Dutt as well his work with other producers / directors like Kamaal Amrohi, Pramod Chakravarthy .

When asked about the picturisation skills of other directors and specifically Vijay Anand, he mentioned that having a good sense of music and dance helps and Vijay Anand had that. He also mentioned about his work on TV serials with Govind Nihlani, his contemporaries in India and abroad. It was a very interesting and informative session

Film on RD Burman: A lot has been written on RMIM about the film itself, whether it was appropriate to showit at an RMIM meet, and so on. I will leave it at that.

The Cigar Club: As we came out for dinner I could spot a member of this club wandering around with a Cigar and looking for the others. In earlier meets I used to see them take short breaks from meet proceedings to go out and smoke.Now they seem to take short breaks to come in and attend the meet :)

Singing session: At the Bangalore meet 2 years back, Arunabha and myself mentioned about our interest about Marathi music but our limited lyrical understanding. Manjari decided to translate a few Marathi songs in Hindi and sing for us in this meet. I can only recall "nava vadhu priya mi" right now. Actually Arunabha, by virtue of beig brought up in Bombay can understand conversational Marathi well and has much more exposure to Marathi music than me. So he shud be able to fill in the others. Manjari also mentioned that she translated some Ghazals into Marathi for the benefit of non-urdu knowing folks. This was followed by Antakshari which not surprisingly had lot of SDB sungs. There were a couple of LP songs too including "Gam ka fasana, ban gayaa accha" and Manjari even went to the extent of immitating "accha jii". We wound up the antakshari session around midnight and it was time to say goodbyes since several of us weren't going to be there on Sunday.

The meet presented a perfect oppurtunity for Arunabha and myself to relive grad school times in Chicago. We weren't the only ones having that feeling. "Bay Area Bonding" was well evident with Anup, Kalyan and Preeti getting nostalgic as well. While the get together was primarily for music lovers to come together and share their passion; it wudn't have been as lively; without the wit and repartee. It ensured the right balance.

RMIM meet report - Denver (2008)

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 

RMIM meet report - New Jersey (2008)

Here's an account of Friday's events at the 2008 RMIM meet held in New Jersey at Uma and Abhay Jain's place. I had been looking forward to this meet since a long time. I recall how keen Satish ji was for having a meet in the area. Many thanks to Uma ji,Abhay ji, Deepali and Nikhil for keeping the tradition alive. Having meets and sharing the passion for music is the least we can do to keep Satish ji's spirit alive.

I took a Friday afternoon flight into LGA and was treated to a stunning view of Manhattan. From LGA I took a shuttle to Newark and got stuck in the friday evening traffic. Ritu had kindly agreed to
pick me up and she was running late as well. She came a few minutes after I arrived at Newark airport, and Abhay's place was just a short drive away. jaane kahaan mera "naksha" gaya ji:
Historically folks who have given me rides to RMIM meets get lost, as I (unintentionally) engage them into engrossing conversation :) Worse was to happen here as the piece of paper having the driving directions got misplaced. Finally we were on our way but not before Abhay called.
By the time we arrived Dr. ML Kapoor, Saroj ji, Dr. Surjit Singh and Harmesh ji, Vish Krishnan, had already arrived and were having dinner. Abhay's neighbour Mr.Mehta was also present. Even before I could say hello to everyone Dr.Kapoor commented "I never understood the concept of desert island, aap hi samjhaiye". Seeing a lot sweets on the dinner table I remarked "aap ye saara desserts
island par le ke jaaiye, aur baat ban jaayegi". Vish pointed out that the concept of desert island should be changed in this era of 80 GB ipods. The emphasis should be on the songs that you would not want to carry along on your ipod and leave them behind. Soon Sanjeev, Armeen and Rikhav; Vijay Kumar (Satish ji's nephew who posts as ek bharateey) and his wife; Deepak Sabnis with his friends Mr
and Mrs Desai, arrived. We enjoyed the delicious dinner with a variety of items. My favorites
were beans ki sabzi and badam burfi.

Khana ke baad Gaana:
The scene was set for the singing session and we got to see the prodigious talent of Rikhav. Dhaai (2.5) saal ke umar men "baalam aayo baso more man men", "so jaa raakkumari" jaise gaanon ka sur
pakaD leta hai ! Sanjeev began with "mitwa laagi re ye kaisi" A soulful renedition of "aa jaa ri aa nindiya" by Armeen cudn't put Rikhav to sleep and he was running all around imitating the taans while Sanjeev was singing "madhuban men radhika naache re". Vijay Kumar (ek bharateey) played "rasik balma" and "mohe bhool gaye saanvariya" on flute. Karnika sang "tum na jaane kis jahaan men kho gaye". Surjit ji requested - ab ek "do gaana" ho jaaye; Sanjeev and Armeen sang "aa jaa ke intezaar men".

Songs not picturized on heroine: When Abhay announced on his radio show that "dhiire dhiire machal" was picturised on Surekha Pandit he got a phone call saying that this was the first time I heard the correct information. Most people would assume that being perhaps the most famous song of the movie it must have been picturised on Sharmila Tagore. Vish pointed that Vyjayantimala wanted "koii mere sapne men aaya" to be excluded from the film New Delhi as it was not picturised on her.

The lost luggage saga: One of the hot topics on Friday was Vish's missing luggage, which had
the inlay cards for the commemorative. While the air lines had promised to deliver the luggage at Abhay's house overnight, contingency plans of printing the inlay card were being discussed.
After Armeen sang "ye shaam ki tanhaiyaa", the topic came to the fore again as Saroj ji came up with a parody that had us in splits. US airways ki travel men, luggage khone ka gam CD's kahiin khoye, ? piike aaye rum

Shankar vs Jaikishan, Hasrat vs Shailendra: The interesting topic of which songs were composed by Shankar and which by Jaikishan as well as the lyricists involved came up. Vish pointed out that the song based on raag Kalyan gives us a hint that it was a Shankar composition and given that Shankar worked mostly with Shailendra, he is the likely lyricist. The likely lyricist of SJ's happy / wild songs was also explored.

Masters at work : This was the first time that both Sanjeev and Vish attended the same meet and their renditions and comments exploring the nuances of the songs gave us some unforgettable moments. (Shankar Jaikishan discussed above is one example) Without making too many requests, we
left them to their muse. Such informal settings, devoid of pressure and pattern, lets creative juices flow and it showed. When Vish asked Sanjeev, "do you like Mehdi Hassan", Sanjeev retorted
"yes (in capital letters with exclamation marks)" and gave a solulful rendition of "dekh to dil ke jaan se uthtaa hai". Sanjeev requested Vish to take the center stage. Vish began with meet favorities like "Dolaa rakh de musafir", "aaye kuch abr kuch sharaab aaye". He expressed his desire of hearing more of Dada Burmans in his own voice and hummed "khaai re ham ne qasam sang rehne ki". He also
rendered "dhiire se jaana bagiyan men". Focus then shifted to Noorjehan and Vish sang " vo kwaab suhana TuuT gayaa". By the time Vish finished "sitaaron merii raaton ke sahaaron", it was past midnight. As it was getting late we decided to call it a day.

The first thing on our minds after waking up was the missing luggage. We were eager to check if it had been delivered overnight, and to our relief we found it in porch. Abhay immediately called Vish to convey the good news. Abhay had to go to the grocery store and I accompanied him. When we
returned, Surjit ji and Dr. Kapoor were engaged in conversation and we joined them. Abhay was eager to know if the video of Parichay (1954) is available. He recalled seeing the movie as a kid. When Dr.Kapoor, pointed out that he has a Parichay in his collection, we joined in chorus "That must be the other Parichay!". Influence of movies was debated as well and Dr.Kapoor pointed out the
reason for choosing his profession. Dr. Kapoor's father was a huge fan of Dr.Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani and Pankaj Mullick's Doctor and wanted his son to become a doctor. I started imagining Dr.Kapoor singing "aayi bahaar aaj aai bahaar" in the train.

Saara shahar unhen "professor" ke naam se jaanta hai ! Surjit ji soon started checking his email and read out the contents. Most of the mails were song requests from visitors to his website. There was one mail from the granddaughter of an artist whose song was posted on the website. The rate at which his long lost relatives are growing, I wudn't be surprised if they soon outnumber RMIMers !
saara RMIM ek taraf, aur Surjit ji ka bichDa huaa parivaar ek taraf :) Surjit ji also pointed out that a TV channel was making a documentary on Sikandar and wanted to know all the movies in every language that had the name. They landed up on his website as well. Sikandar turned our attention to Sohrab Modi and his movies like Pukar. I pointed out that the movie was released in 1939 and suggested that we can confirm in Geet Kosh. Surjit ji took out his ipod, scrolled down the
movie list, and confirmed that its from 1939. For a minute I thought, "Surjit ji ne to ipod to pocket geet kosh bana liya with id3 tagging for each song". We continued to discuss about Sikandar, and I pointed out the striking similarity between the young Pritviraj Kapoor and the young Shahshi Kapoor.We moved onto Shahsi Kapoor and the year of release of Dharmaputra needed confirmation. I asked Surjit ji to check his ipod, but he mentioned that it only has pre 60's songs. Surjit ji also gave a tip to easily remeber his site; Hindi-movies- songs. The first letters of the site H-M-S are derived form Har Mandir singh. Music lovers started trickling in. Saroj Kalra, Ritu Kalra, Satish ji's sister, Satish ji's nephew and his wife, Vish(wanath) and his borther-in-law arrived. Surjit ji started asking each new arrival, "what is the first movie that you recall seeing in the theatre". As people were taking turns to answer , Dr.Kapoor interjected " Professor sahab has found a good way to estimate peoples age !"

Focus shifted to finding out the hometowns of the attendees. When Dr.Kapoor pointed out that he grew up near Peshawar, discussion drifted to partition and history of India. Vish(wanath) pointed out
that a recent book "The 20th wife" by Indu Sundaresan has depicted mughal era quite well.

Which Vish(wanath)?
We have been dealing with multiple Vandana's and Vijay Kumar's over the years. Time to add another V to the list. A couple of years back there was a post by Vish mentioning that he was looking for Dara Singh movies.
http://tinyurl.com/5ab86q
Reading that post, Abhay emailed Vish (Krishnan) and it turned out that the poster was a different Vish. Of late, he has been posting on RMIM as Vishwanath to avoid confusion. Vishwanath circulated the Dara Singh movies he got from India as well as couple of film booklets that he got in Kolkota in the early 70's. The booklets were amazing, and included movie ads from as far back as
40's. Vishwanath recounted his association with Satish ji. They first met around 2 decades back and Vishwanath mentioned that he sings "munna baDaa pyaara" whene ver his son cried and that made his son stop crying. After many years when he posted on RMIM, Satish ji emailed him asking whehter he was the same Vishwanath. Hearing this anecdote, Saroji ji requested Vishwanath to sing "munna baDaa pyaara" and he obliged. Meanwhile the living room was abuzz with a host of people. I could spot Ammie, Deepak, Vish, Ketan, Shalini, Karan, Medha, Khantha, Srinivasa Rao, Mr and Mrs. Ramaswami, Dr.Rajurkar, Ashok, Vinay, Ritu, Madhura. 3 year old Karan became the cynosure of all eyes as he sang "piya tose naina laage re"!
We became busy embracing old friends and making new ones. Animated discussions between attendees huddled into several groups ruled the roost when it was announced that we had to gather in the living room.

Introductions: The meet formally began with Dr.Kapoor handing over the statue of Goddess Saraswati to Uma and Abhay Jain. Attendees were asked to tell their name, place of residence, Favorite composer, favorite Lata song by the composer and last song (chronologically) of Lata that you like. Vinay mentioned his favorite composer as RDB. Shalini's favorite was Roshan and her favorite Lata song was from Roshan's last movie Anokhi Raat (mehlon ka raaja milaa). Sili hawaa
chuu gaye was her last favorite Lata song. GK Venkatesh was Ashok's favorite composer.
I mentioned my favorites as Anil Biswas, Roshan and SDB and the last Lata song I like was "rajanigandha phool tumhare". I forgot to mention where I stay and folks tried to pick on my international status. Are bhai, people have come from as far as California aur ham to bas "jheel
ke us paar" rehte hain. Anilda and Roshan were Vish's favorite composers. He picked the songs
of Shankar Hussain among the last Lata songs he likes. Medha pointed that she is a Maharashtrian and likes CR. Pat came the reply "You don't need to be a Maharashtrian to like CR". Medha also
mentioned Vanraj Bhatia among her favorites. Madhura pointed out that she is a Maharashtrian as well. Inspite of their best attempts chances of a Marathi take over are still remote ;) Ritu's opinion was that its not possible to choose a single favorite and if she is forced to pick one, it will be SDB.
Sanjeev and Armeen arrived just in time, to see "trouble maker" (Ashok) in full action. When Dr.Kapoor mentioned that his favorite composer is Pankaj Mullick, Ashok interjected "Your car name plate is still Naushad". Vishwanath noted that he had several favorites but chose his college
days obsession, OP Nayyar. When he thanked Deepak for sending a tape even though they hardly knew each other ; Ashok commented "was it a Spam Tape" ? That prompted Sanjeev to say "trouble maker!"

Abhay narrated a couple of hilarious animations; Himesh Reshamiya growing up with foxes and a tamil song with penguins dancing. Ashok had us in splits again when he retorted ``Those are not penguins but Tamil film heores!" Sanjeev mentioned that he posted on RMIM that SJ is unfairly bashed, which hints that he likes SJ and chose him for the ocassion. Both Sanjeev and Armeen had similar choices when it came to Lata's last favorites; dil huum huum kare (Rudali) and o palanhaare (Lagaan) As Ketan was busy with the camcorder, he was last one to do the introductions. Before choosing his favorite he turned back (expecting a prompt from Ritu) and picked SDB. Ashok was at it again " Oh! I thought you were looking for a prompt from your wife". After the introductions we had a hearty lunch that included Roti, Cholay, Gulab Jamoon, among other things and settled down in the living room. We were joined by Vijay Kumar (ISB wala) along with his wife and 2 kids.

Tribute to Satish ji: This meet was very special as we gathered to remember Satish Kalra ji. A commeomorative containing the songs of Shankar-jaikishan was released in his memory. Satish ji had expressed the desire to have an S-J commemorative over the last few years and it was a fitting tribute
to him. When Saroj ji and Ritu Kalra narrated some poignant moments in their lives, we had tears in our eyes. Madhura sang of his favorite Bhajans "sur ki gati main kyaa jaanu". Ashok, mentioned that several years back he used to bash SJ. On one ocassion Satish and Saroj Kalra invited him over to their place and pointed out that if someone gives you joy, that person should be criticised. Ashok went on to say that he learnt his lesson. Vish thanked the Kalra's for embracing us as their extended family. Several of us spoke about Satish ji and his qualities that made him
such an endearing personality.

Geet mera sulaaye jagaaye tujhe: It has been just over 40 years since the Roshanlal Nagrath passed
away. A decade has passed away since we had the commemorative on Roshan, jo RMIM ke itihaas ka ek eham panna hai.That was the first time cd format was used and commentary was interspersed with the songs. The musical journey of a couple of RMIMers began with that compilation as well.
It was time to revisit this composer and I made a short documentary on him drawing from various sources. Delhi Doordarshan tribute , Vividh Bharathi interview as well as various song videos were used. I would like to thank Anant Rege, Arunabha Roy, Gautam Chowdhury, Ramaswamy (Mumbai), Srinivas Rao (Mumbai), Surjit Singh for their contribution.

Guess the singer(quiz): Surjit ji and Dr.Kapoor complied a quiz containing songs from 30's and
40's. Surjit ji showed his Professor qualities as the quiz was like a true / false oral exam.
A song snippet would be played and Surjit singh would say " If you think the singer is Pahadi sanyal, raise your hands". When a few people did that he would retort "You are absolutely wrong" and move on to the next clue. A cd of the songs was distributed as well.

Sweepstakes: Surjt ji had shipped hunderds of tapes from Late Amarjit Anand's collection to Abhay's place prior to the meet. The tapes included compliations of film and gair filmi songs as well as classical music. A few from each lot were chosen to make a set of 13 tapes for each person to ensure a fair distribution. That didn't stop folks from going around to see what everyone else got and trying to exchange the freebies. I could even hear "ek ka do, ek da do" in the
background.

Conversations with Ameen Sayani: Abhay played a recording of his conversation with Ameen Sayani. The entire recording including Ameen sayani describing his meetings with
Kishore Kumar will be played by Abhay on dhoomfm.com.

Odd one out(quiz): Sanjeev did this wonderful quiz in which we had to choose the odd one out of a song set. There were 20 sets of songs and each set had 4 songs. 3 of those 4 had a common theme and we had to find the odd one out. I am not divulging more details as it will be posted online for those
who missed the meet.

Match the pairs (quiz): This was a two part quiz by yours truly. First part was for the participants to get the mukhda based on a snippet of antara. Second part was to pair the songs, the relationship being the movie name of one song is contained in the mukhda of the other.
Example:
hum ko tumhara hi aasra (Saajan)
pyaar ki rut do rangi saajan (Apni Izaat)
first song is from saajan which is in the mukhda of the second.

There were 15 clues of which there were 6 pairs and 3 odd ones. An additional clue was given to identify the common theme behind the 3 odd ones. All the 3 odd songs were picturised on Rajinder Kumar and this helped teams to match the paits after eliminating the odd ones. We took a break for dinner and it was around this time that Ramesh and Radhika Hariharan along with their 2 kids arrived.

Singing session: Sanjeev kicked off the singing session with several Rafi numbers.These included aanchal men sajaa lenaa kaliyaa (Phir wohii dil laaya huun), tuu ne mera yaar na milaaya (Shama Parwana), tum se kahuun ik baat (Dastak) and a song from Shirin Farhad. Chitragupta had the biggest share of the evening with atleast a couple of songs; kahiin se maut ko laao (Mera Qusuur Kya hai) is the only one I am able to recall. How could the meet be complete without the perrenial favorite maana mere hasiin sanam (Adventures of robinhood) ? That was the next song on the agenda.
Vishwanath sang kashti ka kamosh safar and aaj ki raat baDii shokh baDi nathkahat hai. Several OP Nayyar songs were also hummed. Ramesh sang a bhajan and Dr.Rajurkar sang a Talat number.
It was around midnight when Vish sang "chaai kaari badariya baraniya ho raam" and we called it a day. Most people left leaving behind a few of us who stayed overnight at Abhay's place.
We woke up quite early on Sunday morning as Surjit ji, Harmesh ji, Dr. kapoor and Dr.Rajurkar had a long drive to Virginia and I had to visit a friend. We had breakfast and looked at the pile of VCD's that Abhay got from his last trip to India. It was time to say good byes and Uma ji had tears in her eyes. Thank you Uma ji, Abhay ji, Deepali and Nikhil for the hospitality. While departing Surjit ji said "ham to milte rahenge". Certainly as RMIM and RMIM meets have been a constant amidst the dynamics of life.
Till we meet again, good bye and good luck.

RMIM meet report - Bangalore (2007)

I was glad that I could take a weekend out of my hectic India trip and visit Bangalore. Arunabha played my gracious host and even took care of booking my flight from Hyderabad.When I landed in Bangalore, he was waiting for me at the airport. We muscled through the crowd and boarded an auto. We started discussing about the meet attendees and Arunabh wished that there were 10 RDB and 5 LP fans among them. I protested at his omission of KA and pointed out that we were surrounded by KA fans referring to vehicles with name plate KA.

The auto manuvored trough the heavy and at times stand still traffic (welcome to Bangalore) and  mazed through the lanes and bylanes ( welcome to Indiranagar) to reach our destination, Kastle Grace. True to its name the complex was grand and Arunabha's appartment was cosy.  As Arunabh visited me in New York last month, comparision of surroundings featured prominently. When we started walking to Chetan's place on the next block, Arunabh mentioned that he asked Ashok and  Chetan to save their best for me. Not that the "deadly duo" needed any incentive :) When we reached Chetan's appartment, it was abuzz with activity. The "deadly duo" greeted us at the door. Kanchan Banerjee, Abhay Phadnis,  Manjari Dhamankar, Chiranjeevi Singh,  Vivek Dhareshwar and Dr.Khaitan had already arrived. Soon we were joined by our resident CEO Kalyan Kolachala. I settled down with a beer and few pieces of Baadam Burfi. Chiranjeevi started talked about various chief ministers with whom he interacted  closely. He mentioned Ramakrishna Hedge among the best Karnataka CMs.  Soon discussion drifted to music taste of CMs and it was noted that "tum na jaane kis jahaan men kho gaye" was among his favorite songs. That definetely makes him one of the best CMs, remarked Abhay.

When Chiranjeevi mentioned that Kishore Kumar assisted Khemchand  Prakash as an assistant,  Ashok had everyone in splits, " Kishore was a good composer but didn't  have the talent to become an assistant" I gave a high five to Arunabha  as the first salvo has been fired in his favor.  As the call for dinner was made attention invetably turned to  composers and their assistants. We had a mix of Indian and chinese food for dinner. The menu included  what Ashok termed "Meat Balls". It was pure and delicious vergetarian stuff though.

Several aspects that distinguish Hindustani and Carnatic music including improvisation, emotional content were discussed. Chiranjeevi  pointed that purists didn't consider MS a classical singer but an exponent of Bhakti Genre. Attention shifted to the recent controversy involving Narayana Murthy  and national anthem.Various versions of Vande Mataram were compared.  Couple of people mentioned  that they always heard " maa thjhe salaam" as "amma tujhe salaam". That was interpreted by Abhay as "Salute to Jayalalitha". The monotonous nature of Rehman's music promted Kalyan  to remark that AR in AR Rehman stands for "Always repeating".

With Chiranjeevi around there were several references to Anilda & CR. Ashok pointed to Abhay's post expressing his dislike for "seene men sulagte hain armaan". Everyone started at Abhay Phadnis who looked perplexed and refuted the claim. Ashok cooly commented that he was  referring to Abhay Avachat's post.

The popularity of male version in tandem songs was the next item. Arunabha pointed out to the quiz conducted by Aashish Thakker and Yours truly. When Chiranjeevi mentioned that he liked Hemant's versions of "ye bahaaron ka samaa" and "bas ek chup si lagii"; the usually polite and non controversial Arunabha managed to loose his tongue :) He said that he will start doubting Chiranjeevi's judgement from that point. Ashok immediately pounced onto Arunabha's so called  "misjudgement" of Bheegi Raat tandem with his preference for Lata's
version over the much more popular Rafi's.

Attention returned to SDB and his assistants with a discussion on the  superior version of Abhimaan :) It was pointed that Lata sings off key in "tere mere milan ki ye raina" to suit the context of the song. A remark that the soundtrack is average and overrated was followed by  the comment "RDB may have composed it". On the topic of ghost composing, it was mentioned that Ravi may have tuned "ai baad-e-sabaa" from Anarkali. Hemants touch in some of Salils compositions was also discussed. Several topics including Hemants alleged mispronounciation in "jai  jagadish hare", Geeta's Hindi accent in Bengali songs, CR's style of composing, Jaddan Bai and her affair with Mohan Babu, kept us busy till midnight. Most poeple then left leaving behind Arunabha, Chetan and Yours truly.Chetan then showed us the meet commemorative. He played songs that missed the cut on the condition that we  cudn't  question his exclusion of  specific songs. Arunabha and myself then returned to Kastle Grace. As I was about to go to sleep Arunabha said " Close the windows. Else birds will enter  the house". 

I retorted " Ye Kastle Grace hai ya Chidiya Ghar".

Next morning, Chetan came to Arunabh's place to pick us up.  The venue Alliance Franciase de Bangalore was less than an hour away.  We also picked up Chiranjeevi Singh enroute. Chiranjeevi talked about his meeting with Anil Biswas and stressed on Anilda's immaculate memory.  When we reached the venue, Abhay and Manjari had already arrived. We settled down in the auditorium and set up the music system. Abhay kicked off the proceedings with "aaj milan ki raat hai" followed by the Marathi original "dhundha madhumati raat re". There was a unanimous preference for the Marathi number. The Marathi track of Pinjara and its Hindi counterpart also featured in the discussion. Shantarams movies were next on the agenda. Sandhay's acting ability, rather the lack of it came under scrutiny. Arunabh commented that he liked her performance in " Jal Bin Machli". We were soon joined by Anand Srinivasan, who has been reading RMIM since 1998.

Abhay and Manjari did an audio presentation on CR. CRs style of composing including his preference to get the lyrics first was illustrated. CR typically composed multiple tunes to the lyric and picked the one he liked most. The sample played was a Marathi number expressing a girls love. CR composed 3 different tunes and all the three were played along with his commentary on his final choice. CR rejeted the first due to lack of emphasis on the right words. Second was found to be too blatant an expression of love in the context of a traditional Marathi girl. The third tune was finally selected.  This was followed by Last years quiz question. The patriotic composition that brought tears to a PM. The singer was Asha, PM was LB Shastri and the song wasn't "ai mere watan ke logon". It was a chorus number by Asha and was recorded after Indo Pak war. It adressed the widows who gave balidaan of their suhaag. During the show Asha came on stage decorated with Jewelry and at the end of it she donated all of that to relief fund. The song played at the meet was a solo version of the same song. This was performed by Asha at LB Shastri's residence.

Soon we dispersed for lunch. At the mention of the French venue Vivek had earlier commneted that we may end up eating Croissants. However we had a scrumptous India Menu with Rice, Roti, Papad, Kurma, Dal and a couple of sweets including Benaras Khaja. We were joined by Kalyan and Dharam Singh. Kalyan came with a note book and pen and I was expecting a quiz. Kalyan cooly remarked that he never got around writing last years report and will make a combined one of last years and this years. We pulled him saying that he will end up wiriting about RMIM Bangalore meets in his memoirs.

Chiranjeevi introduced us to the Director of Alliance Franciase. He seemed to have got acquainted to India food and music quite a bit. He remarked that he found it harder to appreciate Carnatic music as compared to Hindustanti.  He also mentioned an interesting anecdote with Kavita Krishnamurthy. During a breakfast with her and L.Submamanian he mnetioned about his liking for Indian music and asked Kavita to sing a song from Bombay. Only after Kavita sang the song did he realise that she originally sang it in the movie.

We sat on wooden tables under the trees for lunch. I mentioned about my interest in Marathi songs and the recent Bhavgeet concert that I attended in New Jersey. Manjari then sang a few Marathi songs of Asha, Lata and Manik Verma. When we assembled inside the auditorium post lunch Manjari  was requested to sing more. She started with another Marathi number. Abhay then commneted that telling Manjari about ones interest in Marathi music is like telling the oldest person in a group about ones liking for Golf.

Usha Mangeshkar's Hindi output was then discussed. Manjari sang "mungda, main gud ki dali". The role of the movie Jai Santoshi Maa in popularising the Goddess was discussed. The discussion on Usha's duets diverted to Asha-Lata's duets and when "man kyuun behka" was mentioned I cudn't help saying "16th good song of LP". (On Friday night Chiranjeevi challenged Ashok to list 20 good songs of LP and Ashok came up with 15. Chiranjeevis point was that one has to make an attempt to recall good songs of LP).

It was then the turn of Abhay's quiz. Hints on preludes were given ( lyrics different from Mukhda sung before the song, musical preludes and lyrics recited were excluded) and the mukhda had to be identified. This had 4 rounds.

1) Translators round: Prelude words in English are read out.
2) Part of the prelude lyrics are  read.
3) entire prelude lyrics are read.
4) Audio of prelude is played

The quiz mainly cenetred around femaled singers and majority of songs were by Lata. Inspite of the presence of quite a few Lata bhakts the quiz was quite difficult as many songs were obscure. Most of the right answers came from Ashok, Arunabha, Chiranjeevi, Manjari and Dr.Khaitan. One of the clues was an SJ composition and Abhay gave an extra hint that the track was discussed on Friday. No one cud crack it and Abhay mentioned that it was from Aurat. Kalyan, who mnetioned the track on Friday, came up with an excuse for forgetting. "I got married, had a kid and started a compnay since I last heard Aurat". Thankfully Kalyan hasn't forgotten his wit and it was on display several times.

Gulzar winning the best lyricist award for 2005 and 2006 was mentioned. As Chiranjeevi hasn't heard "Kajraa re" a snippet of the song was played. While we were on Gulzar, the question of the lyricists first song was raised. Ashok mentioned  last years Bangalore meet was attended by Hamraaz's publicity agent and he set the record straight. Everyone was curious as to who this person was. Ashok stumped everyone by saying " Surjit Singh" !

Abhay then played several songs including the ones sent by Nani. These were the numbers from which "dheere se aa jaa ri akhiyan men" was inspired. An interesting anecdote about "ye zindagi usi ki hai" was mentioned. CR told in an interview that this song was inspired by a Marathi number. The composers son wanted to clarify with CR as the Marathi song in question had a different tune. CR remarked that his father used to hum the Marathi song in the bathroom "out of tune". That sounded sinmilar to ye zindagi usi ki hai. Another incident involving G.D Madgulkar and Sudhir Phadke was also mentioned. Gadmia's wife once asked Sudhir Phadke " My husband gives you so many different lyrics. But you seem to compose the same tune for them". She was referring to Gadima singing the songs in Bathroom. Ashok retorted "All Marathi songs sound the same" :)

Abhay then played "kacchi hai umariya" and Chiranjeevi pointed out the different parts of the song that were based on Bihari, Tamil and Bengali folk. Other songs of chaar dil chaar raahen including "intezaar aur abhi" and "o stella, o baby" were also discussed. It was then the turn of the commemorative. The compilation was a rehash of the 1996 Rare Classical songs tape, with a few additions and omissions. An mp3 cd from the collection of
Surjit Singh and ML kapur was also distributed. This had 200+ songs from 1930 to 1937.

We vacated the auditorium around 7:00 pm. Anand, Chiranjeevi, kanchan, Dharmendra and Dr.Khaitan left. The rest of us assembled at Chetans place. Anilda was again the topic of discussion. People expressed their opinion on Anilda not being considered an important figure in Bengal. Kalyan pointed out that when he approached Bengali associations with a proposal on Anilda's tour to US there was lukewarm interest while artists of much lesse stature were given importance. Arunabha pointed out that Anilda not composing Bengali songs was a factor. Also Anilda didn't have much box office success post 50's and his name faded away from public memory. Kalyan and Vivek soon left.

 Ashok, Abhay, Chetan, Arunabha, Manjari, Myself then went to an indian restuarant for dinner. Ashok and Yours truly ordered North Indian mini meal while the rest ordered Pav Bhaji. The mini meal was quite heavy and we needed others help top finish it. While we were enjoying the meal, power went out and Abhay remakrked "Andher Nagari". I added "Choupart Raja".  We asked Manjari on Anilda being a household name in Maharashtra. She attributed it to the extensive books on HFM in Marathi and that several writers had high regard for Anilda and wrote articles on him.

After dinner Abhay and Manjari left. Arunabha and Myself were accomanied by the "deadly duo" on our way home. I have been grilled by the "deadly duo" since 1999 and this was no exception. The allegations this time were more serious and included betrayal. We reached a mutual agreement and the case was adjourned till next meet.  Ashok and Chetan then left to Chetan's place while Arunabha and Yours Truly returned to Chidiya Ghar (Kastle Grace).

RMIM meet report - Bay Area (2006)

Food at airport - 10 dollars
Flight from NY to SFO - 300 dollars
Pleasure of attending RMIM meet - Priceless

I was lucky to experince this pleasure for the 10th time, thanks to the following individuals.
Pradeep, Madhuri, Ankit and Niharika; Neha, Vivek, Akshay and Abhishek; Ravindra, Richa and Rohan; Vish Krishnan for organising the meet Nimish and Rricha for hosting me till tuesday
All the meet attendees

Prologue: My plans for the meet were thrown topsy-turvy because of a last minute call saying that my flight was cancelled. I was able to catch an earlier flight though and landed into SFO by 1:00 pm instead of 5:00 pm. This threw the original plan of meeting Animesh near the airport and
getting a ride from Vandana into disarray. Neha kindly offerred to pick me up from caltrain station nearest to her office and then dropped me off at Pradeep's house. Enroute we picked up a huge crate of Samosas and I then realised that this meet was going to have record attendance.

Arrival: I was the first one to arrive at the Dubey residence, and got an opportunity to talk to Pradeep's son Ankit. He talked about his classical music training, cricket practice among other things. Ankit is a chip of the old block ( we are not talking about intel chips here !!) and share's a lot of music interests with Pradeep. We were enjoying tortillas with salsa when my cell phone rang. It was
Nimish. He informed me that he is unable to ftp the sd burman AV clip from Aashish Thakker's site. Thankfully Aashish also set up web access and the problem was solved. (More about the SDB AV in part 2). Pradeep then arrived with a huge crate of Samosa's and as we sat down to eat my cell rang again. This time it was Vandana informing that she hasn't heard back from Animesh. There was no way we could contact him. Animesh belongs to PIGS (Poor Indian Graduate Students) category and
can be forgiven for not having a cell :) Finally I got the word that Animesh missed his scheduled train. As the next train wasn't going to stop at Sunnyvale, Vandana had gone to Mountain View to pick him up. The randomness thrown in by my flight cancellation has been nullfied and order has been restored. Soon Animesh and Vandana arrived. Pradeep's daughter Niharika was amused
when we greeted Animesh. She mistook his name to be Himesh ! Shows how popular Himesh Reshamiya is among kids.

Attendees started trickling in. We were sitting in the backyard of Pradeep's house enjoying the cool breeze and exchanging greetings with who's who of RMIM. Special mention has to made of ppl. who came from other continents. Dr.Shekhar (with his mother) came from Dubai and Gautam Chowdhury came from Holland. Pradeep's friend from Bangalore who was on an offical trip to US was also present. News came in that Chetan Vinchhi (also from Bagalore) worked around his US trip to ensure his presence and will come on Saturday.

Since most of the regualars were present, attention was diverted those who were't coming. Balaji-Malini and Ritu, figured in the conversations. Attempts were made to add a mystic touch to Guri's
abscene. Gautamda finally updated us by saying that Guri won't be able to make it as he is extremely busy.

Marathi takeover:
Guri's abscence meant that there were no "jo bole so nihaal" conversations.I was wondering, "No takeovers this time ?" My train of thought was disturbed by a loud voice" tuu kasa aahes ? "It then dawned upon me that we were surrounded by Marathis. In fact a stong Kobra contingent made it to the meet; Kale, Modak, Vidwans and probably Sabnis.
We feasted on the scrumptious food and moved indoors.

Introductions:
A question popped up. Which meet was this ?
West Coast Meet
Best Coast Meet
Saroj Kalra Pitched in
Best Host Meet
Some other suggestions were drowned in the ensuing laughter. Attendees were asked to name their favorite composers. Whenever SDB got a vote, Vish started announcing the number of votes. My hunch that we will be having an SDB commemorative was converted into a certainity. Under normal circumstances I would have mentioned my favorites as Anilda, Roshan and Sachinda; (like the Suffolk meet) but the atmosphere was far from ordinary. Air was rife with acquisitions of booth
capturing with Neha leading the efforts in rigging the poll in favor of Anil Biswas :) So I stuck with "Zindagi Aur Hum" Roshan and Sachin Dev Burman.

Everyone in Nachketa's family mentioned RDB among their favorites prompting the response "family doctor..composer". Anil Biswas, Roshan and Salil also got a number of votes. SDB probably got the most. Pradeep's son Ankit made his dad proud by mentioning Kishore, Salil and Gulzar
as his favorite artists; only to retract later by saying his favorite singer was his Guru, Nachiketa. Attention then turned to least-favorite composers and Himesh Rehamiya's name came up. Preetam chipped in by saying that Bappi Lahiri is a better singer than a composer. L-P's name was also taken.
Interestingly none of the attendees mentioned CR as their favorite. The large Marathi presence didn't help either, as CR worked in very few Marathi films.Sudhir Phadke, Vasant Prabhu and Hridaynath Mangeshkar were mentioned among the favorites.

Singing session:
Vish sang "aaye kucch abr kucch sharaab aaye", and the regular "nimbuaa tale dolaa rakh do"; Vivek sang "ranjish hi sahi" and some new songs including "mitwa" from Kabhi Alvida.. The Marathi takeover reached its logical conclusion when Shrikhand (prepared by Vandana Vidwans) was served.
Immediately there was farmaish for Ravi and "ye raaten". For a moment I thought, since when did Ravi's "ye raaten ye mausam" become such a favorite. (Ok, I am allowed to have my non-hardcore rmim'er moments) But when Ravindra / UVR took over, I realsied that he was the *Ravi* in
question. The song was now a no-brainer; the cult-song of RMIM meets if ever there was one, "ye raaten ye mausam ye haNsaanaa haNsaana" by Pankaj Mullick. Nitin Sharma and his wife; Vijay and Pragya then arrived. Immediately Pragya was asked to sing. Like any hard-core RMIMers, Vijay and Pragya are hooked to commemoratives. One farmaish came in the form of song 3
from cd 4 :) True to the expectations she began with a song from a commemorative, composed by Zindagi Aur Hum Roshan ! I am referring to "jaa re jaa re merii chhod chunariyaa". She also sang
another Roshan compostion, "o aasmaan ke vaasi" from Aagosh.

The venue for the meet on Saturday was Neha's house in Cupertino and the scheduled time was 11:00 am. I was staying at Nimish's place in Fremont and we were running late. When we reached the venue by 12:00 noon, Nimish had to answer a few questions "Late kyuun aaye ? tumhaari
biwi kyuun nahiin aaii ? :) " Most of the people had arrived by then and the house was bustling with
activity.Everyone was waiting for Ashok and Satish Kalra. While music was the main theme, the hidden theme was musical chairs. Whoever went to pickup / trash the food lost their seats :)

Music personalities: Dr.Shekhar had the good fortune of meeting several stalwarts and he
shared some anecdotes with us. He began with a story on Barsaat, and narrated the events that forced
Raj Kapoor to give pink slip to Ram Ganguly and choose Shankar and Jaikishan. Apparently Lata was called for a recording, and she entered the wrong side of the studio. There she found Ram Ganguly recording the Barsaat song with a different team and alerted Raj Kapoor. His visit to a remote village in Goa to meet Dattaram was quite captivating. Finding the village was an adventure as Shekhar had to cross a river on a stormy day. With some difficutly, he was able to locate Dattaram's house. Dattaram was quite hospitable and talked in length about his career. His breakthrough into the big league was quite incidental. One of the regular tabla players in S-J orchestra wasn't available and that was Dattaram's chance. That catapulted Dattaram from
a song dubbing artist into a full pledged musician. (Satish Kalra chipped in by pointing an analogy of actor Raj Kumar). Dr.Shekhar also talked about his meeting with Basu Manohari. As soon as
Dr.Shekhar took SDB's name among Basu Manohari's favorite composers, Vish's had went up. The vote counter had just been incremented.Basu considers "waqt ne kiyaa kyaa hasiin sitam" among his favorite songs. While we were on Dattaram, the possibility of Gulzar's first song coming from Shriman Satyawadi was also discussed. A parallel topic of some artists not knowing which songs they contributed to also came up. This was more ture for up and coming artists as the only information they get is something like "movie x, song y, take 2". They never know if the song was finally okayed. It is only later when they listen to the song, the realization dawns that their version
was finalised.

Soon discussion drifted to the Parsi community and the Bombay symphony orchestra. Vish mentioned that that famous strech of land in Bombay where western classical music thrived in the yore. Vish posed a question on the composer of the AIR signature tune in Raag Shivaranjani.
Pat came the reply from Arun Simha, Mehli Mehta. Mehli Mehta was the founder of Bombay Symphony orchetrsa and his son is Zubin Mehta.

Sweep Stakes: A bunch of people had gathered in the living room and I realised that everyone were trying to grab LP's that Deepak Sabnis wanted to give away. It included many movie tracks including "The Graduate". Kamlesh Kapoor asked what were the famous songs from the movie, and
Vish started listing the songs one by one, "Mrs. Robinson", " Bridge over troubled waters", " Scarborough Fair". Kamlesh was expecting hindi songs and was quite amused to hear all these Simon Garfunkel tracks. Later we realised that she confused "Graduate" to the Shammi Kapoor movie "Professor". For a true poly glot like Vish, changing gears comes so naturally ! Then it was Surjit singh's turn to give VHS tapes. He distributed one VHS per individual and the remaining ones were distributed at the rate of one per family. People were busy trading the VHS tapes and the venue resembled a true mafia den with "maal" being exchanged :) Some of the video tapes had names thatcudn't be easily deciphered. So we tried to associate them with popular acronymns.

OS - Operating System ( Probably " old songs" or "other songs" )
NSF - National Science Foundation
and so on.
 Surjit Singh also distributed a cd containing Kurshid Anwar's works.

Lunch Break: While music is food for the soul, we need food for the body too. The mouth watering dishes served at the meets are stuff of the legend. We feasted on the Puris and Aalu Sabji among other things:) The dessert was Rasgullah !

Surjit Singh's quiz:
We were divided into two teams. Neha tried to draw imgainary lines of seperation to get Vish into her team :)

In true professor style he began "write numbers 1 to 24" We asked " in descending order" ?
After that he played songs from Vol 1, and we had to identify the singers. After 4 songs he realised that the exam is too difficult and converted it into take home. Naniwadekar's presence might have made a difference !
After the quiz Surjit ji gave us a cd of the songs.

"man panchhi albelaa" - Commmorative on Sachin Dev Burman:
The time for the most awaited moment of the meet came up. I was ecstatic when my prediction turned into a reality. Vish said a few words about Burmanda, played the piano prelude of the song "yaad aa gaii vo nashiili nigaahen" and a Lata masterpiece from Mad Bhare Nain. Was it "mose saanchi kaho baNvari" ?

Shekhar's quiz: This was badalte saathi based on song picturizations. A portion of the song was played and the pair on which the song was picturised and most clues were from Vol IV and V with a few from vol III.

A snapshot of the answers would look like this.
gun gunaa rahe hain banvare - Rajesh Khanna, Sharmila Tagore - Aradhana
gorii gorii gaanv ki gorii re - Dev Anand, Sharmila Tagore - Ye
Gulistaan Hamara uff kitni thandi hai ye rut - Dev Anand, Simi - Teen Deviyaan
Each clue had 9 points, 3 for each actor on which song was picturised and 3 for the movie name.
Ashok, Chetan, Neha, Satish Kalra, and Vish were the captains for the teams.
Our team had just 5 people and Ashok expected that I would know most of the songs and made me the captain :) Quite a few songs spanned from mid 60's to mid 70's period, an era which is not my forte. There were a bunch of songs by "Charan Das" including that one from Gopi, "gentleman gentleman gentleman". Honestly I don't find anything gentle or gentlemanly about the song !
Vadana took a break and went out. Suddenly Neha got a phone call from Vandana and there were acquistions that she was reading answers from geet kosh. All hell broke loose when her answer paper was snatched :)
There was one song where Rafi goes something like "ui aama" and I was literally laughing.
2 of the teams came very close to answering all the questions and We didn't even bother to count our points.

Match the pairs: Then it was my turn. I divided teams into two, one with Satish Kalra and
the other with Vish.
I played antaras of 20 songs. First part was to guess the mukhda and and movie name.
Second part was to find pairs, given that movie name of one song is contained in mukhda of the other.
There were 8 pairs and 4 dummy clues (indicated with *). One twist was
that one of the pairs wasn't unique.Song number 1 matches with 8 as
well as 20. However of 1 is paired with 8,then 20 cannot be paired. So
teams will be able to make only 7 pairs.

1)khoii khoii akhiyaan niind binaa (Chand) (1)
2)unkaa ishaara jaan se pyaara(Pehli Nazar) *
3)main pyaar ka RAAHI huun (2)
4)armaan bhare dil kii LAGAN tere liye hai (3)
5)rasiyaa re man basiyaa re (Pardesi) (4)
6)suno More Nainaa (Daaera) *
7)ab gam to banaalenge jiine ka sahaara (Nirmohi) (5)
8)chaand so gayaa taare so gaye (Raahi) (2)
9)hat gaii lo kaalii ghaTaa (Lagan) (3)
10)ik PARDESI meraa dil le gayaa (4)
11)nain dwaar se man men vo aake (6)
12)daakiyaa, daak laaya (Palkon Ki Chaaon Men) (7)
13)ehsaan teraa hogaa mujhpar(Junglee) (7)
14)vo aaye hain dil ko qaraar aa gayaa * - Malkia Salomi
15)baandhi re kaahe priit (Sankoch) *
16)umangen dil kii machali muskuraayi ZINDAGI apani (Jugnu) (8)
17)rim jhim ke giit saawan gaaye (Anjaana) (6)
18)man re tuu kaahe na dhiir dhare, o NIRMOHI moh na jaan (5)
19)abhii to sajii hai muradon ki duniyaa (Zindagii) (8)
20)na ye CHAAND hogaa, na taaren rahenge (Shart) (1)

Then came the bonus clue. I asked the teams to look at the beginning portion of the songs and find something hidden. The first letter of each song adds up to "Kumar Sachin dev Burman". This was purely to check errors and Vish's team realised that they got no.7 wrong. They identified it as "phir chhedne aaii vo kaali badariyaa" from Rasiyaa.
Both the teams got A grade on the quiz.
Number of Lyrcists:
Next Vish posed some questions.

Which composer worked all of the following lyricists.
Sahir, Sailendra, Shakeel, Majrooh, Hasrat, Narendra Sharma,Rajinder
Kirshan, Pradeep, Prem Dhawan.

Ashok guessed SDB. I wasn't 100 % sure if SDB worked with Prem Dhawan but since no other composer matched, seconded that.

Which composer worked with maximum number of lyricists ?
Based on Ketan's post on RMIM long back I would Say Roshan. He worked
with 50 + lyricists.

Who worked with minimum ? Answer is trivial if we don't impose any restrictions. I mean if we can
pick with composers who did 1 or 2 movies or for that matter one song like Sudha Malhotra.
Surjit Singh's idea was to write a perl script to parse the geet kosh
:)

Desert Island Soundtracks: Since Ashok / Chetan's analysis will cover all the team's I will just
focus on the our team's choices.

Nimish was the captain and our team included ML Kapoor, Kamlesh Kapoor, Dr.Shekhar, Dr. Shekhar's mother and Nachiketa's mother. Given Nimish's picks our team didn't have too much debate on the era from which tracks need to be chosen. All our final choices were pre 70's. We did discuss about RD Burman and soundtracks, Amar Prem and Aandhi. However they didn't make
the cut. We began by choosing everyone's favorites and removing those where there were objections. Ater a first pass we ended up with Basant Bahar,Hum Dono, CID and Sahib Biwi Aur Gulam.
We then realised that not a single track of Roshan and Madan Mohan were present and no track had songs of Talat. As Baiju Bawra was already picked, we decided to drop Basant Bahaar to add more variety. Nimish and myself wanted Tarana but consensus was towards Qismat. We picked up
Mahal over Tansen though.

Guide
Madhumati
Mahal
Taj Mahal
Baiju Bawra
Wo Kaun Thi
Qismat
Barsaat
Anarkali
Sangdil
After I presented our selections to the audience I realised that we had no Saigal and Kursheed:( I am sure I would have got support from the team and we may have included Bhakta Surdas among our picks. Over all the three quizzes covered VOL I to V and the desert island track disucssion went beyond that, right upto Bunty Aur Babli. In a nut shell songs from practically every decade of HFM got their share of focus.

SDB's BIO AV :
Recently sdburman.net did a centenary tribute to the composer in Delhi. That included an audio visual on the life of the composer and it was played at the meet. Lot of effort went in not only to make the AV for the SDB centenary show but to get it in a presentable format for the RMIM meet.
Pavan was awake for most part of two consecutive nights to redo the audio visual at high fidelity and remove glitches. Pavan, Ritu and your's truly were on conference chat to deicide on the
logistics. We needed information of the equipment avaliable at the venue in real time. Vivek Gaurd immediately responded to my instant messages. Aashish Thakker (who was busy with a forthcoming
international trip) promptly set up an account for me on his server and also set up web access.

Because of the flight change I didn't get around to make the VCD and had to deligate it to Nimish.
Thank you Aashish, Nimish, Pavan, Ritu, Vivek and everyone mentioned blow.

credits ( from the AV clip)
VOICE OVER
Saajid Hussain
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
Ramesh Kumar
RESEARCH ASSISTANCE
Sonu
LIFE STORY SKETCHES
Usha Sudhir
PORTRAIT SKETCH
Sameer Mahalookar
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Asad Kidwai - Script
Mohan Siddharth - AV Concept
RARE FOOTAGE COURTESY
Kaustubh Pingle
Pavan Jha
Bheemsinh Rahangdale
Aniruddha Bhattacharjee
&
Mrs Basanti Datta (SD Burman's grand-niece)
SOURCES
Filmfare Archives
All India Radio
The book Bhati Gang Baiya
www.SDBurman.Net Archives
POST PRODUCTION
JIMS Studio
Kalkaji, New Delhi
SPECIAL ASSISTANCE
Pavan Jha
PRODUCTION & EDITING
Imran Ali
SCRIPT & DIRECTION
Ritu Chandra

Chetan's presentation: Chetan Vinchhi is planning an event in Bangalore to commemorate 75
years of sound and solicited the opinions of the audience.

Singing session: Chronologically this came in before SDB's AV. As Nachiketa was leaving,
he was requested to sing a few songs. All I can recall now is that he sang 3 songs. Someone pls. fill
in here.

Gautamda then enthralled with his mouth organ. He played Sachinda's "ye dil na hotaa bechaara",
"ik ladki bhiigi bhaagi si" and one Salilda number. Was it " Rajanigandha phuul tumhaare" ?
Deepak Sabnis rendered "hai apna dil to aawara".

Pradeep Dubey then took center stage with the Salil-Mukesh masterpiece "nain haamre saanjh sakaare" and the Soorat Aur Seerat number "bahut diyaa dene waale ne". He also tried to sing the Rajanigandha number in Rehsmiyaa style " ra ra ra ra rajaniganda" :) RMIM's first couple Richa and Ravindra rendered "chupa lo yuun dil men pyaar meraa". Ravindra also sang the Sajni number "qismat ka nahiin dosh baanvare". Neha then asked Vivek to sing an Anil Biswas song and he obliged with "beimaan tore nainwaa" and quipped that he has to compensate by singing an ARR number. He promtly changed gears with "luka chupi" from Rang De Basanti. It was time for the cult song "kajraa re" from Bunty Aur Bubli and everyone sang along.

It was past 1:00 pm by then and Ravindra & Richa dropped me at Nimish's
place. It was another memorable weekend I am looking forward to the
next meet
chalta rahe ye carvaan
umr-e-ravaan ka carva

RMIM meet report - Denver (2004)

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.