Let the music flow - a tribute to RDB

Today, one of the most prolific of music directors in Hindi films, Rahul Dev Burman, would have been 81 years old. Unfortunately he died relatively young, more than two decades ago.

Having been the son of the great Sachin Dev Burman, it would have been even more difficult for him to carve his niche. Obviously the long apprenticeship as assistant to his great father helped  R D Burman straddle different genres of songs with ease - rock, folk, classical, quirky. What set him apart was his use of commonplace items of daily use such as broomsticks or combs or even tin sheets to produce beautiful music. Today, social media will be awash with tributes to him and I would like to add my little soupcon.

What I have done is that after visiting a time classification of his work, I have selected films or songs which touched my soul. These are the films (totally ten) selected from each of these periods:

1960s - one: Teesri Manzil
1970s - six: Amar Prem, Aap ki Kasam, Aandhi, Ghar, Manzil. Mehbooba
1980s - two: Masoom, Ijazaat
1990s: one: 1942 - a love story

From each of these films, I have selected the song I like most. I realise that just ten songs out of more than two hundred films is a woefully inadequate sample and that your choices could be drastically different from mine.

Just indulge me, strap on your headphones and listen to these songs:

1. Teesri Manzil - Mohammad Rafi : Deewana mujh sa nahi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J1PUEiilUU

2. Amar Prem - Lata Mangeshkar: Raina beeti jaaye

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRk9pG5Upe4

3. Aap ki Kasam - Kishore Kumar: Zindagi ke safar me guzar jaate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqdNqBA44Bg

4. Ghar: - Lata Mangeshkar: Tere bina jiya jaaye na

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqdNqBA44Bg

5. Aandhi - Lata Mangeshkar & Kishore Kumar: Is mod se jaate hain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STOM6NZfcrs

6. Manzil - Kishore Kumar: Rimjhim gire Sawan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDbi7nP8RV8

7. Mehbooba - Kishore Kumar: Mere naina sawan bhadon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vPjMX17qC4

8. Masoom - Lata Mangeshkar: Tujhse naraz nahi zindagi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q04Z1rCQlk

9. Ijaazat - Asha Bhonsle: Mera kuch saaman tumhare paas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlvXDGJAMT0

10. 1942 a love story - Kavita Krishnamurthy: Pyar hua chupke se

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0FsE0b7Z-s

Thank you

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Remembering Madan Mohan in Rafi saab's voice - five dimensions of love

This is the fiftieth post on my blog. As a friend on a music group on Facebook mentioned, today is the 96th birth anniversary of one of the the greatest but relatively unsung composers of music in Hindi films - Madan Mohan Kohli, known better as Madan Mohan. This post is a tribute to him.

Some of the best songs tuned by Madan Mohan have been sung by my favourite singer, Mohammed Rafi. Kohli saab's official website https://www.madanmohan.in/ says he composed a tad less than seven hundred songs and in this blog I shall be posting just five of them. I am not going to tell you much about these songs except to fit them into a story of my own. I am not technically competent to tell you about the instruments used or even the ragas in which these songs were composed and will not even try to do that. As a layman and Hindi film buff, at various times, each of these songs has moved me to either sing or whistle alongside or just to say 'Wah ! Wah!' or just to feel myself on a different plane of enjoyment and reverence. I want to share that feeling with you

The five songs which make my story:

1. A young man gets a glimpse of a beautiful woman, feels a terrific attraction and then sings this lovely number from the film Dulhan ek raat ki, 'Ek haseen shaam ko dil mera kho gaya'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H89315fEZTY

2. He meets her, they both fall in love and he is so smitten by her beauty that he breaks into singing
 'Mai nigahen tere chehre se hataun kaise' . Film: Aap ki Parchaiyyan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHF3sA6B_sA

3. He joins the Army, the stark beauty of the remote landscape reminds him that he is far away from his lady love and .. he sings this lively song from Haqeeqat - 'Masti me chhed ke tarane koi dil ka'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjHqi5XHMbc

4. The course of love isn't always smooth and he feels he has lost his lady love. He laments thus 'Rang aur noor ki baarat kise pesh karun' from Gazal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZmSgtSq9T8

5. Fortunately for the hero, it was a false alarm, He does get to marry his heroine and then, this song from Suhagan expresses what he feels 'Tu mere saamne hai, teri zulfein hain khuli .. '

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ4YKgeZDPA&t=33s


Like most Hindi films and all fairy tales, everyone lived happily ever after !

***

Remembering a friend

Friendships formed when one is young often tend to last a long time. Some of these relationships get stronger, some get revived when people meet after a time, some wither away because people drift apart and some are rent asunder by events beyond our control. This blog talks about a friendship which was terminated by one such act - not an act of God but wholly an act of man.

Kumar and I did our Management course together at XLRI, more than forty five years ago. He had the best of both worlds. A married sister of his used to stay within walking distance of the institute's hostel. He stayed with her notionally but spent almost all his waking hours with us at the hostel. His loud boisterous laughter could be heard often, punctuating almost every conversation.

In due  course, we finished our course and joined the corporate world. For a time, both of us were in the same city. We used to meet often, usually at his sprawling family house in central Chennai. He had some health issues, sorted these out and then got married. After some time, we lost contact as I got transferred first and then changed companies and cities. I heard that he and his wife had moved to the States  and he was doing well.

A couple of years later, a chance meeting with another classmate gave me the bad news that he was no more. More details emerged when more of us friends met. Apparently, it happened when he was traveling from the States to India. As he was coming down for a function in the family and couldn't get a direct flight, he went to Canada. With him were his wife, his sister and the sister's three children.

Unfortunately for him that plane was Air India's Boeing 747, Emperor Kanishka flying from Montreal to Bombay on 23 June 1985. More unfortunately, some terrorists had managed to place a bomb in the hold and even more unfortunately, the bomb went off when the plane was over the Atlantic. What was worse was that all the perpetrators were not found and convicted, apparently due to a botched investigation and a turf war involving two Canadian investigating agencies.

Terrorism is just some images on a television screen till it affects somebody close to us. It hit me that day.

What I haven't understood and never will, is what these madmen achieved by placing the bomb in the plane, apart from devastating the lives of almost three hundred families all over the globe - most of whom were not even from the country with which they had a grouse.

I can only tell Kumar 'Keep laughing, wherever you are, my friend'. Om Shanti.

****

Unlucky number eight

In my family, we haven't ever paid heed to numerology which the dictionary defines as 'the occult significance of numbers', though many people swear by this pseudo-science.

Many decades ago, when we moved house, one of the neighbours in the new place told us that the digits of the house number (116) added to eight which was considered lucky in his part of the country. Looking back, many good things happened in that house, but some many not so good events too. On balance, there was nothing too good or too bad which happened - but that is life, isn't it?

Many years after this, I came across the significance of number eight again but in a diametrically opposite way. I was a sales manager in a company manufacturing motor scooters and while sitting with my dealers in Tamil Nadu, discovered that no customer wanted to purchase a vehicle with the registration number totaling to eight e.g. 1412. The belief was that nobody would buy a vehicle, new or old, with digits adding to eight and hence, the disingenuous excuse that resale of such a vehicle would be difficult. Smart dealers found this to be a route to earn something extra. They persuaded customers that they would have to pay a 'fee' to the clerk at the registration office who assigned numbers to ensure this - and people paid willingly too. If a customer wanted the digits to add up to his lucky number, say 9. the ante went up! The funny part is that customers who would haggle over every extra rupee while negotiating price, would without batting an eyelid pay anything extra demanded for a lucky number or even to ward off an 'unlucky' number.

The ultimate example of such superstition was the customer who threw a tantrum at the time of taking delivery when he found that the total of the digits in the chassis number of his scooter added to eight, though the registration number didn't. He demanded a change in his vehicle which was impossible as the paperwork was already done. The sweet-talking dealer persuaded the customer by telling him that the alternative vehicle was not in the latter's lucky colour!

Just a small example to demonstrate that watching experienced people teaches much more than books can, especially in the areas of sales and customer psychology!

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