This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
I have mentioned it in the past that one can often make guesses about me from the number of posts appearing in the blog in a day and also from the length of posts made by me.
Most of the articles posted during the last few days have been guest posts, which indicates that I may have been preoccupied in activities that prevented me from blogging. For instance, I travelled eastward on the first day of the last week. After returning back, I was required to travel westward for two days towards the end of the week on a very short notice.
My westward travel during the end of the week on this short notice brought me to Delhi. I boarded a train on the early hours of friday and arrived at Delhi station in the morning some five hours later. Yes, these days I am located 250 km west of Delhi and 250 km east of Lucknoow, so both these places are at five
hours journey away for me.
I had come to Delhi to attend a two days official seminar. On arriving at the venue (Vigyan Bhawan), I met some old acquaintances who had arrived from various places and I met some of them for the first time in well over two decades or so. On enquiring from the organisers (three decades old colleagues all) informed me that the second day programme would be only till lunch hour and not a full day affair as planned earlier. The first day was going to be a full day seminar, followed by dinner at another venue.
Whenever I come to Delhi, I make it a point to meet Sudhir ji. I mostly come to Delhi for two days (like on this occasion) and the second day is spent on worrying about catching the return train. So my meetings with Sudhir jee takes place on the first day of my stay at Delhi and it takes place in the evening.
It was at about 4 PM in the seminar hall that I realised that the seminar for the day may be over by six o clock and that may give me time to meet Sudhir Jee, provided I give the dinner invitation a miss (which I mostly do). So I sent Sudhir Jee an SMS informing him that I was in Delhi. I received his call after sometime. It was decided that I would inform him my whereabouts after I was done for the day.
I got free a bit later than I anticipated. It was nearly 7 PM by the time I arrived back where I was staying and wondered if it was not too late for meeting with Sudhir Jee. Sudhir Jee arrived nevertheless and we had over one hour of discussion at my place of stay itself. I kept coming across several of my old acquaintances all ready to go to the dinner and I kept telling them that I was not going there. It was not that I only met my acquaintances. even Sudhir Jee came across an old school friend of his there.
We held “important” discussion about HFM where we expressed concern about the official apathy towards preserving this art form as well as their disinclination towards recognising and honouring those private individuals who were contributing their mite in this field. We also discussed matters related to the blog.
Our deliberations lasted a little over one hour. I told him that the seminar was likely to get over by lunch time the next day and I was planning to catch an afternoon train that would take me to my place by evening. Sudhir Jee informed me that the next day was saturday and it was during saturday afternoon that several HFM lovers of Delhi would assemble at a coffee house and hold HFM related discussions. He invited me to join that meeting. I immediately jumped at the offer and decided to catch my return train at night as planned originally. Sudhir Jee phoned some of the regulars about next days meeting and informed them that I was also joining the get together. At least one or two originally reluctant participants decided to make it to the meeting.
The seminar was over the next day at 1 PM itself, well ahead of the time of 2 PM when HFM lovers of Delhi were scheduled to gather at the appointed coffee house. I had been to this coffee house once with Sudhir Jee and there we were met by Bakshish Singh jee. So I knew the place. I was informed by Sudhir Jee that this place was at Baba Khadak Singh Marg in Connaught Place.
I gave the address to my taxi driver. He took me to Baba Khadak Singh marg and showed me a coffee house. I got down and went there. But this coffee house was not the one where I had been to in the past. I walked to nearby places and I located another coffee house in an interior lane that appeared to be the coffee house where I had been before. I kept convincing myself that this was indeed the place but even I was having my doubts.
How was I going to know if the participants to the meet had arrived or not ? I only knew Sudhir Ji and Bakshish Jee by appearance, and I had no option but to wait for them. I entered inside the coffee house and tried to locate some people who looked like HFM lovers, but I drew a blank. There were some ladies too inside the coffee shop and I wondered if any of them were HFM lovers. :) I realised that we do not have any regular blog visitor among females from Delhi. Our nearest female blog regular was located hundred of miles away from there and she was not there in the coffee house, of course. :)
I was reminded that apart from Sudhir Jee and Bakshish Jee, I also knew Srinivas Ganti, who was also scheduled to join. And soon enough, I saw a person who was unmistakably Srinivas Ganti. So I went over to him and he too recognised me. We had met once during our Mumbai gangout of december 2014.
Has anyone else arrived, he asked. I told him that I would not know because I only knew Sudhir Jee and Bakshish jee and they had yet to arrive. Srinivas Ganti entered the coffee house with me, looked around and declared that Jawed jee was already there. We went up to that table. I recognised Jawed Habib as I have seen his photographs in several meets of HFM lovers held in Delhi.
Bakshish Jee arrived next.
Srinivas Ganti had a tiny speaker with him and he would play songs on it from his mobile. I wondered how he did that. I thought of asking him but I forgot to ask him.
Bakshish jee revealed how he came to know about the presence of S Mohinder in Mumbai during his and Sudhir Jee’s visit to Mumbai in connection with the blog gangout in August 2015. He phoned people to get the phone number of S Mohindra and got an appointment to meet him. He alongwith Sudhir Jee and another HFM enthusiast met him and they had an extremely fruitful four hours long chat with him. The other HFM enthusiast, viz Shishir Kumar Sharma later conducted another interview with S Mohindra the next day and posted it in his blog “Beete Hue Din”. Sudhir Jee too had planned to write an article about the meeting with S Mohindra, but that article, as also the second part of his report on that Mumbai gangout are still pending. :)
Ravindra Jain had passed away the previous day (9 october 2015). Jawed jee, who is into HFM of 1960s and before wondered about Ravindra Jain’s music. I informed him that Ravindra Jain was the regular music director of Rajshree Productions movies and all these movies were remembered mainly for their music. Ravindra Jain composed music for Rajshree Productions movies like “Geet Gaata Chal”(1975), “Chitchor”(1975), “Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye”(1977), “Paheli”(1977),”Ankhiyon Ke Jharokhon se”(1978), “Naiyya”(1979, “Sunayana”(1979), “Nadiya Ke Paar”(1982) etc. Ravindra Jain’s music reminded Srinivas Ganti of S D Burman’s music though I did not think so.
We discussed songs from three movies called “Dada” that were released in 1978, 1966 and 1949. Usha Khanna had composed music for the movies released in 1966 and 1978 and I wondered whether these two movies had the same story line.
Sudhir Jee turned up rather late. He had with him another HFM enthusiast namely Arvinder Sharma, a name that I was quite familiar with from facebook. That completed the list of participants for the day.
Discussions on many HFM related topics took place. Arvinder Sharma fished out a piece of paper meant for Sudhir Jee. The list contained certain rare songs that he was looking for and which were not available on YT. Sudhir Jee would search into his two portable hard disks, each containing around sixth thousands or so songs of all types in them. He would plug the portable hard disks into his laptop and then play the songs on Srinivas Ganti’s tiny speaker.
“”No bhajan without bhojan” is an (impromptu) hindi saying and so Sudhir Jee had brought a packet of sweet which was described as “Ajmeri barfi” or so (as I recall incorrectly) but later Srinivas Ganti described it as chaandni Chowk barfi on FB. No matter what its name, it was very sweet as the bard has said(Ajmeri barfi by any name is just as sweet). :)
I think it was Arvinder Sharma, or perhaps Jawed Habib, who wondered if I was running short of songs to discuss in the song blog. I told him that we had only discussed around 11000 plus songs whereas the total number of HFM songs that were created till 1970s stood at around 44,000. We also discussed songs of 1970s and so in all we had a total of around 60000 songs that we needed to cover. Seeing that we have covered less than 20 % of all these songs, we are likely to remain busy for a long long time.
I was told that there were some four or five groups of HFM enthusiasts in Delhi and they tended to have their gatherings at the residence of one of the members of the group. This coffee house gathering was a weekly affair that took place every saturday afternoon. Sudhir jee informed us that when he phoned Arvinder Sharma the previous evening and told him that I was also coming for this gathering, Arvinder Sharma jee enquired “Squarecut waale Atul ?”. Yes, indeed, Sudhir Jee had replied. As it is, I am known in facebook as Squarecut Atul and this facebook ID is derived from “squarecut” which usd to be my ID in cricket forums where I was active before discovering blogging.
Though all of us (with the exception of Sudhir Jee) were active on FB, whatsapp etc, we all condemned them as evil things. :) So we all have the makings of successful politicians. :)
Bakshish Jee condemned whatsapp as evil because he got happy birthday greeting on an incorrect day on it. :) I told him that he had mentioned his own name while greeting another person and that had caused the confusion. Bakshish Jee was in fact greeting Ava Suri and he typed something like “Bakshish Singh, happy birthday Ava Suri”, and that created the confusion. Bakshish jee informed us that he knew Ava (he pronounced the name as Abha) since 1980. She was the daughter of one of his relatives, he told us though Ava herself was not aware of this fact till recently.
We discussed some fellow HFM lovers. It was informed that Gajendra Khanna, a Bangalore based HFM enthusiast was scheduled to arrive Delhi soon and they had planned to meet him accordingly. He incidentally is also going to be a participant in the blog gangout that is planned on 7th november 2015 at Bangalore.
We also discussed AK of “Songsofyore” fame whom a few of us (I, Sudhir Jee and Arvinder Sharma jee) have met in the past. That blog has published articles recently where (I was told) Naushad has been given better marks than C Ramchandra when it comes to creating great songs with Lata. Arvinder Sharma jee is looking for songs to argue the case on behalf of C Ramchandra. :) And he sought the help of Sudhir Jee in this connection. :) Sudhir Jee played a few Lata songs of C Ramchandra from “”Anarkali” (1953) and Arvinder Sharma jee went “”waah waah” as befitting a C Ramchandra fan. :)
I saw a notice in the coffee house mentioning “No Official meetings allowed in the coffee house.” I took this to mean that unofficial meetings were allowed, and our meeting was strictly unofficial and informal, of course. :)
At about 4:30 PM, Sri Ganti wanted to leave stating that he had another pressing engagement coming up at 4:30. Others claimed that the time was just 4:00 PM and so Sri Ganti was denied leave by 4-1 majority vote(with I abstaining from voting). Sri Ganti subsequetly managed to get away a few minutes later. Bakshish Jee was the next to leave. Then came the turn of Arvinder Sharma and Jawed Habib. It was at 5:50 PM that I too left as I had to catch a train from OLd Delhi Railway station that was to leave at 7:50 PM. I thought that two hours was enough margin and I would arrive the station well ahead of time. But the traffic was such that I found myself moving at snail’s pace and I actually began worrying that I would miss my train. Fortunately, I managed o arrive at the station at 7:30 PM and managed to reach the designated platform and the coach just in the nick of time and heaved a sigh of relief after finally boarding the train.
I was wondering what song to discuss with this writeup. I was reminded that Bakshish Jee had mentioned a singer called Devendra during our meeting. On being asked, he told us that Devendra had mostly worked with Hansraj Bahl and he may have sung around 15-16 songs in Hindi movies.
So when I searched for songs sung by Devendra, I came across a few. Most were composed by Hansraj Bahl as was mentioned by Bakshish jee, but one song that really caught my attention was composed by K Datta.
Here is this superb light hearted comedy song from “Daaman”(1951). This song is sung by Rajkumari and Devendra Mohan. Raja Mehdi Ali Khan is the lyricist. Music is composed by K Datta, as mentioned above.
Here is this fantastic song from “Daaman” (1951) for the listening pleasure of the readers.
Song-Tu Jo Dil Leke Mere Peechhe Peeechhe Aayega (Daaman)(1951) Singers-Rajkumari, Devendra Mohan, Lyrics-Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, MD-K Datta
Lyrics
tu jo dil leke mere peechhe peechhe aayega
tu jo dil leke mere peechhe peechhe aayega
dekhna muhalle mein ghotaala ho jaayega
dekhna
oye oye dekhna
tu jo dil leke mere peechhe peechhe aayega
dekhna muhalle mein ghotaala ho jaayega
dekhna
oye oye dekhna
oy kya karoon main laage tera mukh bada
khoob re
khoob re
mukh bada khoob re
o main kya jaanoon
jaake kisi baawdi mein
doob re
doob re
baawdi mein doob re
baawdi ka paani matiyaala ho jaayega
baawdi ka paani matiyaala ho jaayega
dekhna muhalle mein ghotaala ho jaayega
dekhna
oye oye dekhna
tu jo dil leke mere peechhe peechhe aayega
dekhna muhalle mein ghotaala ho jaayega
dekhna
oye oye dekhna
tum jo mere ghar aaye to doongi main gaali
tum jo mere ghar aaye to doongi main gaali
daro mere bhaai se wo bada hai mawaali
tera bhai
tera bhai
wo to mera saala ho jaayega
tera bhai
wo to mera saala ho jaayega
dekhna muhalle mein ghotaala ho jaayega
dekhna
oye oye dekhna
hota hai to hone de muhalle mein ghotaala
saali ko bula la chaahe saale ko bula la
nakhre mein
nakhre mein sabke masaala ho jaayega
dekhna muhalle mein ghotaala ho jaayega
dekhna
oye oye dekhna
shaadi mujhse karni hai to mujhe na bataao
jaake meri maiyya ko baaton mein phansaao
sau rupaiye pagaar ho to do sau bataao
haan aan
ghar mein mere aane se ujaala ho jaayega
ghar mein mere aane se ujaala ho jaayega
mere maa aur baap ka deewaala ho jaayega
dekhna
oye oye dekhna
tu jo dil leke mere peechhe peechhe aayega
dekhna muhalle mein ghotaala ho jaayega
dekhna
oye oye dekhna
