31 July 1980 - A Day to Remember

I am not sure what do I call this soul..... A god's gift to us, a human being's tribute to god or he himself is a GOD...... !!!

Exactly 29 years back on this day, this soul of Hindi film music left it's body and flew towards the world where there are no footprints.....

So many people imitated him and made name, fame, imitations, irritations, all sorts.......

But no one could even come nearer to him and no one can become like him.....

That's Mohammed Rafi.......

When he died, Doordarshan covered his last journey live... In the background, the which was being played was

क्यूँ संवारी है यह चन्दन की चिता मेरे लिए

में कोई जिस्म नहीं हूँ के जलाओ गे मुझे

राख हो जावुंगा बिखर जावूँगा में दुनिया में

तुम जहां खावोगे टोकर वही पावोगे मुझे........

मेरी आवाज़ सुनो प्यार का राग सुनो

What else do I say about this great soul... There will be no one like Rafi.. All those who are imitating Rafi and imitated Rafi, let them keep trying...

Coincidence....

It's quite interesting to note that Pt. Basavaraj Rajguru died in 1991 and exactly 18 years and 1 day, Gangubai Hangal ended her battle with life....

Gangubai Hangal... A Memory

It was 1990. I was jobless. I was seriously into theatre and learning Hindusthani classical music under Pt. Seshadri Gawai. I went to Hubli and Dharwad where my relatives stayed. Panditji had asked me to meet up with three of his friends and our GODs.... Pt. Basavaraj Rajguru, Vidushi Gangubai Hangal and Pt. Mallikarjuna Mansur..... Even though I could not meet Pt. Basavaraj Rajguru, I met Pt. Mansur and Vidushi Gangubai. Pt. Mansur was staying in Dharwad near All India Radio and Gangubai was staying in Deshpande Nagar in Hubli.

Those were the golden moments, when I touched their feet and my forehead was firmly on their feet and I could not control my tears thinking of my forutne.... I can bet that everyone won't get those kind of opportunities.

My mother's uncle who was a freedom fighter, teacher and also a freelance journalist, Swamirao Thirumalarao Deshpande, took me to Gangubai's house, Ganga Lahari. He knew her since her time in Kundagol.

Such a down to earth person in spite of reaching those hieghts, I could not believe. Initially I was speechless and I could only feel the softness of her feet. As I kept talking to her, I started feeling the softness of her heart.... she was very happy that I came to meet her and asked me to convey Pt. Seshadri Gawai's wishes..... She told me "sheshannanige nanna preethi vishwasa thilisu (convey my love and affection to Sheshanna).... She asked Krishna Hangal, her daughter to give us some chivuda (in Dharwad and Hubli, it is Chooda (avalakki) (not sure what they call in English) and Besan laddu and nice chaha (Tea).... I can never forget that hospitality... it was very nice of her to treat me who was a novice just like her kid.

Sad that she is no more.... her memory will always be there with me for ages to come.....

The world of Buses

I happened to travel by BMTC from my home to Majestic and by KSRTC (NWRTC) from there to Honnavara, a coastal district in Uttara Kannada (North Canara)..... It was a strange experience though.....

what I found interesting thing was that (as if I am experiencing this now), the bus itself a world and so many things gets created, so many things shattered, so many thoughts, so many questions....

I overheard multiple conversations during my travel..... most of them conveyed one common message. I (person who was talking about something) am always right and rest of the world is wrong.... someone kept on cribbing about his friends, his relatives, about everything in the world and boasting himself that how he is too good to be a human being and he is almost god !!!!

Mutliple smells..... smell of whiskey, smell of sweat, smell of paan, smell of not brushing the teeth, smell of jasmine, smell of other flowers, smell of powder, creams, after shaves, all mixed up.... it was quite confusing for me to sort each one out even though I could sense that each one of them are there. :)..... not sure what I call this experience.....

One of the most common thing was mobile phones... believe it or not... from my house to majestic, it is a 14 kilometer journey and around an hour's journey. Throughout the 14 kilometer, a girl was on the mobile, sometimes crying, sometimes just a vague smile, sometime a big laugh.... and on another seat there was this guy who was on the mobile and was under the impression that he is in front of a microphone and the entire world should listen to his talk.... he was talking to his friend about a girl, whom he was feeling that she ditched and he eyeing for some other girl and his fight with the family.... all the things in his world were becoming the topics for this world....

Some people were eyeing for those "to be vacant" seats and were standing so close to each other that they were ready to push the next guy with force so that they can attack the seat vacated...

All these were happening at the same time and it was very confusing to watch all these and sense all these and make sense out of it.....

If this was the case with BMTC, then KSRTC was another world.... As usual the bus was late when it reached Honnavara. It was late by just 2 hours. In the bus, the voices were so clear and people were talking as if they are talking at home and they do not care for any one in the world....
The moment the lights went off in the bus, husky dusky voices started making noise. There was a couple who were sitting right behind me. Looks like they were recently married. They almost forgot that they are sitting in a public place and whatever they speak would be heard very clearly to other passengers......

Someone stamping on someone's leg in a hurry to go to the loo and war of words happened and finally, they had to be asked to keep quiet by other passengers..... Both of them looked so decent and well behaved in the beginning, but was strange in their behaviour. That's the reason I told so many things got created in our minds and so many things broke up in reality.....

It was a different experience... By the way, I am almost deciding that I would start commuting by BMTC once a week very soon......

Deaths & Remembrances

Not sure what is happening !!!! This week is totally filled with remembrances and deaths....

First it was Raju's remembrance after seeing his video on youtube (kurigalu saar kurigalu).

Then, I had a lengthy discussion with a friend about Venki, one my closest friend and TV / cinema actor and stupid fellow left us few years back.....

Couple of days back, it was Nilu Phule, one of the best artistes in the world of indian theatre and marathi cinema

Now it Maina Chadru....... Yesterday this friend of mine with whom I worked in theatre beginning my first production Kaalagnaani Kanaka in 1987 till around 2000, passed away leaving all of us to suffer.

Apart from being a namma rangabhoomi geleya, he also was a producer who produced NS Shankar's Ulta Palta, remake of Hindi movie Angoor which was based on Shakespeare's comedy of errors. Apart from this he acted in serials and one of the most remembered serial is Sihikahi Chandru's Yadva Tadva. He played the role of "inspektar asok kumar, very strict aapeesar".... people recognized him so much with this role. Actually during one of the episode's shootings, I met him and we along with Chandru had lunch together and he spoke at length with me on all his ambitions. I kept on telling him time and again to bring "Puttakkana Medical College" play on the stage once again under his direction. Now who will bring this on stage??

My sincere request with heavy heart to all my friends who are reading this blog, please do not get into an addiction of alcohol. Also please tell your friends not to get into this habit...

Seriously We do not want to loose any more friends because of this reason.....

Alocohol killed Venki and Maina.

Maina was 43 and Venki was 40 when they succumbed to death..... Both were such talented artistes

What a sad way to end the week !!!! :(

Nilu Phule - Marathi Stage / Cinema - No more

Quite sad...... Nilu Phule, one of the best stage / cinema artistes I had ever seen is gone...

http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20090714/1251/ten-phule-no-more-end-of-an-era-in-marat.html

I was in Mumbai for a theatre festival and there was this play called "Sakharam Binder". Nilu Phule acted in this play and I became totally fida about his performance. After the play , I could not resist jumping on to the stage and shake hands with him....

I also remember watching Nilu Phule in a very small role in the film Naram Garam, which had Amol Palekar and Utpal Dutt in the lead.

A veteran in the world of theatre and cinema in Marathi, Phule saab's memory will be there ever with me....

Late Remembrance.....

It was 1987. Life was in full throttle in amateur theatre.... I was heavily into the theatre festivals, acting, singing, working in backstage. It was so much fun.....

Raju, walks into my life during this time. He was studying in National College, Jayanagar. He walked into the festival to work in the festival. I was happy with that addition, as I was aware of the fact that he was the son of legendary singer Mysore Ananthaswamy. I had heard him singing in some of the occassions. I was happy that I got one more friend who was a singer.

The intensity of freindship between me and Raju got quite intense. We used to meet up every evening and used to discuss so much about music. He was a singer, he had completed senior in Tabla through Pt. Seshadri Gawai, he could play quite other instruments. He was an excellent composer... more than anything, he was an excellent human being, fun loving character. We used to loaf around a lot and used eye lot of good looking girls !!!

Some of the days, we all used to sit on the stage at HN Kalakshetra with Raju during some of the afternoons, and Raju used to sing for us with hormonium... what a singing it was !! Mindblowing...

Slowly, life took a different mode for both of us... he got quite busy with his singing, recordings, music composing, studios, mastering, etc... We lost in touch with each other..... After many years, on couple of occassions, we met, but it was not the same Raju whom I had interacted earlier. Raju was totally drunk, he was not himself and he seemed to have been searching for something which he himself could not express. This was some time in 2001. After that he started getting disconnected from his old friends. Later I came to know that he got married and husband and wife did not stay together long.... It was quite sad to him... there were people in the music industry, who according to some sources, prompted him to drink more and get spoilt so that he will not be a competitor for them. I made all efforts to get in touch with him, but I could not... I also heard that he went to US and was trying get de-addict himself from alcohol. By that time, alcohol had damaged his health to a great extent.

18 January 09, my mother was going through severe health conditions and I was taking her to the doctor. I got a call from one of my friend that Raju died suffering kidney failure. I was so shocked that I suddenly applied break in the middle of the road. Even though, I was aware of his health condition, I was optimistic that someday, he will bounce back... but it never happened.. I could not even go to see his face for the last time as the situation at my home was quite tensed.

Raju, a composer, singer, music director, tabla player, a good friend, a good human being, was no longer in this world giving way to all sorts of jokers who were making mockery of light music.

All these I remembered as yesterday evening, my niece, Anupama was singing on stage for a musical evening and there was a display and sale of audio CDs. I picked up a CD containing 32 songs of Raju which had his own compositions, his father Ananthaswamy's compositions. Today morning I was listening to it and I just could not control my tears. I just cried silently to myself.

Guru Dutt – A Synonym for creativity

This is the article which I wrote in 1999 for the same day.... I am just copying and pasting that article

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39 is definitely not an age to die and that too commit suicide? But, unfortunately for a person like Guru Dutt, there was no other alternative.

Guru dutt Shiv Shankar Padukone, born in Karnataka, began his career as a choreographer in Calcutta. From Calcutta, he came to Bombay and in 1946, he choreographed for a movie called Hum Ek Hain. He was also an assistant director for the film. At that time, he was employed at Prabhat Studios where Dev Anand was also working. Both of them became quite close and they decided that whoever gets a chance to become a director would give a chance to another as a hero of that film and vice versa.

1951, Dev Anand began his home production Navketan and became a hero for the film BAAZI. As committed, Guru Dutt was made to sit in the director’s chair. That’s it. The magical wonder was born. From there onwards, Guru (that’s how Dev Anand and Johny Walker used to address him) never looked back. Jaal (1952) Baaz (1953) Aaar Paar (1954) Mr. & Mrs. 55 (1955) Pyaasa (1957), Kagaz Ke Phool (1959), Choudvin Ka Chand (1960), Sahib Bibi Aur Gulam (1962), it was rain of hits. A total of 9 huge hits in a span of just 10 years!!!! Might be Guru Dutt was too tired to complete the other films which he committed that he will do it.

If this is the case of his professional career, destiny had something else in store for him for his personal life.

He got married to Geetha Roy (who later became Geetha Dutt), for whose voice, he fell flat. Things were going quite smoothly in his life. Varun and Tarun were born and he was leading a comfortable life. One fine day, a storm came into his life and it did not stop till it washed him out of this world. This storm was none other than Waheeda Rehman.

Waheeda was an absolutely talented artiste. She was a good dancer, good actor and more than anything, she was breathtakingly beautiful. She acted in CID (remember the song “Kahin pe nigahe kahin pe nishana?). From there onwards, Waheeda never looked back in her career. Gurudutt and Dev Anand exploited her talent to the maximum extent. When Gurudutt started his film Pyaasa, he decided to give more emphasis on Waheeda and thus they started getting closer to each other. This turned into an absolute romantic story. Mind it, it was not a gossip. It was a true story, which was going on.

Quite natural, Geetha Dutt ignored these things in the beginning. But how long? Things started getting worse and literally every day Geetha used shout at Guru Dutt. For an extremely sensitive person like Guru, he was helpless. Geetha dutt stormed out of his house along with two children. From there onwards, Guru Dutt’s life became so lonely and he started getting depressed. In that depression, he made Kagaz ke Phool, which was based on a Film Director’s story. Was he trying to portray himself? VK Murthy, who was a permanent cameraman for all the films of Guru Dutt, felt so in one of the interviews.

In each and every frame of his films, Guru Dutt’s sensitiveness towards life was clearly visible. In spite of this flop in his personal life, he never gave up Waheeda Rehman. After this, he did Choudvin Ka Chand and Sahib Bibi Aur Gulam with Waheeda in the major character.

Post these films, Guru Dutt became more depressed and one fine day, he felt that he had enough of this loneliness and decided to share his feelings with the people with whom he was very close. There were 4 people. Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Johny Walker whom Guru Dutt introduced and Abrar Alvi who used to write the story and screenplay for Guru Dutt’s films. He called up Dev Anand and said he is feeling alone. As usual, Dev took this in a joking sense, started laughing and kept down the phone. That was the beginning of Guru Dutt’s end. He called up Raj Kapoor but Raj said he would be able to meet him only next day morning as he was going to Pune for some work. He could not get Johny Walker and Abrar Alvi on the line. He immediately took a decision that there will be nobody for him and in that distress, he switched on his gramophone and put on the song “Waqt ne kiya kya hasin Sitam, Tum rahe na tum, Hum rahe na hum” (how the time made all of us. You were not you and I was not I) sung by Geetha Dutt. He consumed a bottle full of sleeping tablets and went to sleep forever. The song ended and almost at the same time, Guru Dutt’s physical presence in this world came to an end. This song sounded so much made to him. If you listen to each words of this song carefully, you can feel that pain and loneliness which Guru Dutt suffered in the end and it feels that this song bacame a swan song in his life. Even today the people, who said they were thick pals with him, fondly remember Guru Dutt. They were friends with him only when he was in thick of happiness.

Guru Dutt and his films
Most of his films were based on an existence of emotional bondage or ruthlessness of the society. These issues were depicted through every single character he portrayed in his films. Whether it was Pyasaa, which portrayed the main protagonist reminiscent of Devdas, or Aar Paar, where Driver Kalu (Guru Dutt played this character) thinks of eloping with the employer’s daughter made the viewers have a shock. Please remember that I am talking of the generation of 1953. His films had the audacity to take playful swipe at the bourgeois traditions of family conducts and social values[1].

Are you a communist? No, I am a cartoonist. So says his hero in Mr. & Mrs.55. Though Guru Dutt would be the last person to describe himself as a cartoonist, yet it is an equally interesting angle of vision on the man as the more conventional one of the sensitive, misunderstood romantic.[2]

As far as the aesthetics of his films were concerned, Guru Dutt can be termed as a pioneer in using the lights in the best possible way. One of his classics Kagaz ke Phool is a beautiful example for usage of light and shadows to depict brightness and darkness of life. And to your surprise, you will see the darkness more than light, which as I said earlier was an integral part of his life. His cameraman VK Murthy was one of the brain behind these classic shots and they set a standard. Guru Dutt also set the new trends for song picturization in his films.

Overall, with a very short span and less number of films, Guru Dutt is remembered among the line of classic filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Akira Kourasowa, Felini, etal.

“In the formula-ridden film world of ours one who ventures to go out of the beaten track is condemned to the definition which Matthew Arnold used for Shelly, “….an angel beating his wings in a void”. I believe one who is out to go against the winds has to be prepared for bouquets as well as brickbats, for triumph as well as heartbreaks, whether or not one makes a classical or collects the cash. It is this baffling unpredictability that gives edge to the thrill of movie-making”

- Guru Dutt

[1] Shampa Bannerjee in her article on Guru Dutt. Shampa is one of the best film critics with specialisation of Satyajit Ray and Guru Dutt
[2] Shampa Bannerjee and Ref : Guru Dutt : A Life in Cinema by Nasreen Munni Kabir

Major Tasks & Facebook

My exams and after that Deeksha's Kuchupudi dance performance.... both for me and Bhargavi were something we wanted to sail through... and we did......

Off late getting hooked on to facebook.... so much that in the last 15 days I have got 98 people connected. All my old friends, theatre fellows whom I have not met for ages, friends from the media, performing arts, cinema, all are getting connected....

Nice to be in touch with them. Some of them have totally forgotten me. I had to remind them as to where we met them, when and on what occassion. Suddenly the response comes, "oh.. it's you, where were you all these days???". or sometimes people have replied "yenlaa... yengiddeeya? (what yaar, how are you? in kannada pakka rural vocabulary)" and some of them have plainly accepted my friend request, which implies that they have recognized me and also they have met me through blogging here and also in Kannada bloggers network....

Thanks to the technology and it's very interesting to be on facebook.....

Deeksha Danced......

Finally, it happened.....

Deeksha's performance started at 7:30 PM and went till 8 PM.

I was standing on the side-wings.... It was quite a strange feeling. So far, I used to be there on stage and if I am at the side-wings, then it would be with make-up waiting for my next scene to come.... But this time, I was there to encourage Deeksha and pat on her back. It was quite a nice feeling.

Quite a few of them turned up. Myself and Bhargavi are very thankful to them .....

Srikanth Raghavan (my boss), Ravi Ivaturi, Sunil Koshy, Nagaraj, Latha (my friends) and Tejaswini (their daughter), and it was also nice to see that my friends Raama, Raaghu, Puneetha, Lakshmi, Deepa, Vinay, turned up at the auditorium to watch Deeksha and Raama was telling me that Deeksha is very graceful... he could not believe that it was Deeksha. He was seeing her after few years !!

Ravi, who could not bring his daughter (down with fever) who herself is an upcoming dancer, made sure that he was there at the venue to watch the performance. It was quite nice to see him come all the way from HRBR Layout.

Even though I was bit tensed up, I kept encouraging her and was telling her standing on the side-wing before the performance on how to utilize the expanse of the stage during her movements and to my disbelief, she literlly did that !!! She was dancing all over the stage with every nook and corner and made sure that her presence on stage was felt everywhere by everyone.

I was told that not many kuchupudi dancers are there and that too performing Kuchupudi at the age of 12 is a hard task.

Myself and Bhargavi must thank Vyjayanthi, Deeksha's Guru. It is she who literlly took Deeksha into her folds and nurtured her and still nurturing her like the mother birds feed the food for the young ones.... It is really quite emotional to see this bondage. This is the Guru-Shishya parampara.

Two more people I must mention here are Yael Tal and Prateeksha. Yael Tal, a student from Isreal, who is here in India to learn Kuchupudi dance, helped Deeksha massively along with Vyjayanthi's training. She was a second Guru to Deeksha. Prateeksha, Vyjayanthi's daughter and student, made sure that Deeksha looked graceful in her make-up and that was one of the highlighting point for me being an artiste.

Deeksha was honored with a basket of fruits, a certificate and cash of Rs.750. by Ananya Academy's Dr. Raghavendra. It will remain a lifetime memory for Deeksha.

Raama was so happy seeing her performance, he straightaway gifted Rs.500 to Deeksha. Other 600 came from others and my cousin was so happy that he lifted her like a child and showered his affection. These gestures definitely shows how much of encouragement Deeksha is getting.

I think we should get used to these kind of post-performance reactions in the future and Deeksha has begun her crawling in the field of classical dance. We are quite optimistic that she would reach the heights which Vyjayanthi has gracefully reached and of course, that's Vyjayanthi's dream as well. Lots of effort required for almost a decade to reach that level.