RMIM meet report - 2010 (Denver)

Thanks to Guri, Gargi and Arushi for hosting the meet. Thanks to Nishant and Nishant's mother for having me over.
taaron ki zubaan par hai muhabbat ki kahani
ai chaand mubarak ho tujhe raat suhani

It was well into the night by the time I reached Denver. The sky was clear and the celestial stars were shining. The cyber stars weren't far behind as they started trickling into Guri's residence. By the time Nishant and yours truly arrived, the bases were fully loaded. From Vijay with 'Ghanti bajii to hamne socha Ganti aa gayaa" to Nitin
Sharma giving me a hug and saying "milke bahut saal hogaya yaar" everyone greeted us and the feeling was surreal. Home run or not, it felt like a homecoming.

I could also spot Ashok, Balaji, Bhagwant, Deepak, Guri, Irfan, Narsingh, Pragya, Sajiv Anand, Saroj kalra, Vish on Saturday. Dr.Kapoor had already left for Waqar Khan's house. Casual conversations ruled while we were having dinner. The topics ranged from "Daughters Stalking Mom's" to "Complaints about Verizon
Wireless". Sajiv Anand, Guri's former classmate, took the center stage. He started with a string of Kishore songs and switched to Rafi with "ajahoon naa aaye baalamaa" and "tuu kahaan ye bataa". Mukesh's songs
soon followed. "yaad aayi aadhi raat ko, kal raat ki taubaa" started we quipped  "thoDa der se yaad aaya...aadhi raat ke baad".


Dam Dam Diga Diga prompted Balaji to comment .." 1960's, shankar- jaikishen, raj kapoor, mukesh, kalyanji-anandji, Manoj kumar - they all sound the same to me." As a L-P - Mukesh song ensued, I interjected "lets add L-P to the list and added that Husnlal - Bhagatram are the odd ones out and pointed that Mukesh sang for them
in Afsana". Balaji commented 'qismat bidagi, duniya badli' is such long that H-B finished their full Mukesh quota with it. I retorted " uske baad duniya badal gaii" promting a few laughs.The laughter wasn't reserved for the witty comments alone. Guri's background catcalls got their share too. They picked up tempo as the night passed and were accompanied with his self-choreographed gyrations. These are better left to the reader’s imagination :)
'yaad aa gaii vo nashili nigaahen' and 'na tum hamen jaano' were the next items. As 'na tum hamen jaano' started a voice from behind said 'baat ek raat ki' and I retored - ek baat nahiin do baaten - "kal raat ki tauba" aur "nashili nigaahen" referring to the songs that we just sung. By now it was past 3 am and Nishant and myself called it a day.


Saturday's events: It was approaching noon when we came back. Nishant's mother also joined us. After exchanging pleasantries with Dr.Kapoor and Vinay Jain, I went to the recording room to make copies of the commemorative cd. I could spot Balaji enquiring about his missing luggageand Ashok joined us. Ashok turned to me "How do you know Nishant? ". I told him that we met in Denver at the 2008 meet and have been in constant touch since then. I also mentioned to him about our Hyderabadi connection and to press home the point remarked "Nishant was named after the Shyam Benegal Movie"  ( The next day Nishant told me about his Nok Jhok with Ashok. Ashok enquired a few things about Nishant and when he came to know that Nisant has a sister commented "Is her name Bhumika ?". That's Vintage Ashok for you!)

The meet was formally kicked off with Sajiv Anand's renedition of namo namo'.


Introductions: Vijay introduced each of us and asked us to tell a little more. His antics resembled a talk show host. I wasn't sure if these were extemporaneous, but were laced with wit. While introducing Vish, Vijay said "Even if he doesn't attend a meet, he is always present in spirit. If he is not there we will say - Wish he was here " Vijay introduced Dr. ML Kapoor by saying " we celebrate MLK Jr's day, here's MLK Sr." Arushi then did a piano performance that thrilled the audience. Sitar player, Roshan Jamal Bhartiya, soon joined us and talked about
his music and his assocciation with L-P.  Bhagwant Sagoo talked about his introduction to RMIM and Satish Kalra's role in that. He also talked about his visits to Kalraji's place and their long association.  Dr. Kapoor turned to to Bhagwant "zaraa zor se boliye, hamaare kaan kuchh kam sunte hain" prompting Ashok to fire his first
salvo of the day "Agar kaan thiik hote to naushad ke fan nahin hote".

Bhagwant continued by saying "In my 20's I had the audacity to propose ...an idea to BBC". Guri remarked "I thought you were going to tell how you proposed to your wife" and the ever vigilant Vijay pounced "BBC ho ya BBG (Bibi Ji)". Bhagwant appealed to Vish and Guri to make time and share their knowledge with the world. He also talked about Copyright laws, making songs from saregama's archives available, and the compilations he had released on Saregama label. Irfan Anwar read out a letter he had written to EMI Pakistan regarding copyright
enforcement of his father's works and the lack of response to it.

Dr Kapur's quiz: Several video clues were played and the actor on whom the song was pictures, movie and composer had to be identified. The songs included MS Subbulakshmi from Meera, Pankaj Mullick from Mukti,
Jayashree from Shakuntala, Kanan Devi from Street Singer, KC Dey from Dhop Chaaon. Dr. Kapur also distributed cd's of Rani Ki Jhansi in color, Noorjehan in Pakistan and the inauguration of Rafi Academy.

Commemorative CD: Vish asked us to try and figure out what the theme of the commemorative this year. We were asked to make guesses and Vish would reply with a yes or no or possibly etc leading us toward the
right answer. The theme was  "MDs who did not get their day in the sun in the Hindi film domain". Vish pointed out that this could have been due to various reasons like they being too busy with other assignments
(as assistants or in regional films), or more likely not fortunate to have their day in the sun.

Ashok talked about a remark by Vish to one of his earlier Quiz "RJGK 28: Jaane Anjaane: Great Songs by Obscure Music Directors". In that Vish registered a a feeble complaint by mentioning that there were no
GS Kohli compositions in the quiz. 15 years later, Ashok did a tit for tat. Vish then mentioned why no GS Kohli compositions made it to the commemorative. Vish also added that he had only 1 song for each
composed, with one expection. The songs from the commemorative were being played as we broke for tea and snacks.

I caught up with Irfan Saheb talking to Vish about how SDB recycled "dil pukaare aa re aa re" from 'balma ne maana" (Jeeva Jyoti). I sometimes wonder if Irfan Saheb likes SDB's music more than even his
fathers ! Vijay made a comment that the Suseela & PB Sreenivas duet in the commeorative "naina jo nainon se" (Daku Bhat) is similar to "nain so nain nahii milao". I mentioned that Daku Bhupatwas dubbed version
of Telugu movie Rajanandini (1958) and the tunes were taken from there.
(Those interested can check the Telugu song 'andalu chindu seemalo"
http://www.hummaa.com/music/song/Andalu+Chindu+Seemalo/128822# )
Of course the Telugu song has similarity to "nain so nain".

Guri's quiz: After the break we resumed with Guri's video quiz. The 1st video clip showed a man blindfolded on a chair...prompting Ashok to ask Guri "your first patient?" As Guri had to run an errand I was
asked to go ahead with my quiz.

Quiz by Yours Truly: This was an audio quiz in which clips from antaras were played. Teams had to get mukhda and lyricist. Scoring was on lines of golf. Both correct answers got a Birdie (-1), one correct answer got a Par and '0' correct answers got a bogery (+1). There were bonus songs as well. Scores were announced before each bonus song so that teams can choose their strategy.  The bonus songs are like a drivable par 4 on a golf course where you can go for a green and try for an eagle (-2). But you also stand a chance of getting a double
bogey (+2). Alternately a conservative approach can be used by opting for a clue. Team 1 was called "Guptas" and Team 2 was called 'Mauryas". When I announced the teams AShok had us in splits with "So, I am chandragupta maurya". I looked at the first team and said "samudra gupta".

The teams were evenly macthed and struggling to break par in the beginning. A string of birdies followed, with Mauryas making full use of the clue "His most famous songs are for Khayyam and Jaidev" and identifying the lyricist as Naqsh Lyallpuri. They also cracked "tadap tap ke kaTii umr aashiyaane men" as well its lyricist Hasrat. The Guptas missed on both oppurtunities and infact had a bogey on "tadap tadap ke". That gave a 3 shot lead for Guptas. Although they scored a "double bogey" on the bonus song "pyaar ki rut do rangi saajan", the
Mauryas retuned the favor on the same clue. Guptas maintained their 3 shot lead till the last song "jab chaaye kabhii saawan ki ghata". Mauryas hit back with an eagle by identifying lyricist as Raja Mehdi Ali Khan and were now behind by just 1 shot. The Gupta's escaped with a par and won by 1 shot. Final scores: Guptas -6 ; Mauryas -5

Guri's quiz resumes: There were several video clues whose audios were mismatched. The audios were the prelude music of songs.We had to identify the number of clues, the correct audio and video sequence and
the theme. It was quite tough and Vish was able to crack a few.  "do din ke liye mehmaan yahaan", "yaad rakhna chaand taaro" were among the songs.

Nishant and I left briefly to buy a connecting cable. When we were at radio shack, the phone rang. It was Samik Dasgupta "jaani main meet pahunch gayaa huun.” I was like, atleast he showed up ;)

Nishant's quiz: This was another video quiz and was tited 'allah jaane kyaa ho aage" A dialogue from a movie is shown and the immediately following scene had to be guessed. In most of the cases this was a song. This was a tough quiz as well. Some songs included 'kyaa ho jo din phir rangeela ho", "kuve.n me.n kuud ke mar jaanaa, yaar tum shaadii mat karanaa", Janam Liyo Lalna. Vish was able to guess the Parivaar song after Nishant gave a hint that it was picturized on Kishore although and it was a guest appearance for him. Balaji was able to guess the Ferry clip where Dev Anand and Geeta Bali have a Sarod / Sitar duel.The sone Ke chidiya verse "aaj ki raat bahut garam hawaa chalti hai" was another clue.


Bhagwant's quiz: Bhagwants links quiz was fascinating but with our limited knowledge of Hollywood / British movies we had to resort to google searches. The clues were like Lee Van cleef - Abhijeet. That pointed to the theme music of "Good bad and ugly"


Next clue was Clint East Wood - V Shantaram and we finally zeroed in on the song from 'jal bin machli".
"ye dil na hota bechara" was the answer for another series of clues.

By the time the quizzes ended, it was past midnight and Nishant and yours truly left as we had a very long day ahead. (Unfortunately we missed the singing session but the songs sung have already been posted by Nita on facebook.) We were driving to aspen the next day. Saroj ji decided to join us and postponed her return tickets. Nishant's mother also joined us. We went to Guri's house Sunday morning to pick up Saroj Kalra and got a chance to meet some RMIMers again.

On Monday morning, Nishant was to drop me at the airport. As flights of few other RMIMer's were also on Monday, we picked up Ashok, Saroj Kalra and Narsingh from Guri's place. There is no shortage of action
when Ashok is around and he started enquiring as usual. Nishant dropped all of us at the airport and I realized that my flight was delayed. I was thinking of calling Ashok but didn't have his cell handy. The gates for the flight changed and when I went to  the new gate and relaxed in front of TV. I heard a familiar voice "what are u
doing here". It was Ashok ! In his usual style he started probing and threw a few googlies. We said goodbyes with the hope that we will meet in Bangalore.

Till the cyber stars gather again to create magic, so long..

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