2008 Denver meet report - part 1
Srinivas Ganti
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
sepectacular. 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.
To be continued ....