Date: 4 Jul 1997 00:52:45 GMT Quiz: Match Lyricists to Lyrics Suneeta started it all when she said that in all the meets there hadn't been any lyricist-oriented event. In her capacity as the principal of the SADSACKS, she ordered us to see that there is such an event in our Meet and we set to work obediently. It seemed prudent to put many irons in the fire and we started telephoning and e-mailing and soon had a few going: Veena was highly inspired by Vish Krishnan's presentation on Asha Bhonsle in the West Coast Meet. She offered to do one on Kaifi Azmi. Next, I remembered satish's brilliant post that pulled off the impossible: squeeze blood out of stone ..., no no no, what am I saying, scratch that..., squeeze meaning out of Gulzar's lines. I thought of approaching one of the nettors with a flair for multi-lingual poetry to try and talk them into making up a lyrics quiz: render selected Hindi songs imaginatively in English and the task for participants would be to guess the original. Right at that moment, we heard it on the grapevine that Pradeep is "temporarily single" and would be free and able to help in any way with the preparations for the Meet. The idea of the quiz appealed to him and he promised to have the quiz ready for the Meet. I decided to have another lyricist quiz as a standby—it doesn't hurt to have a few events too many; one could always scrap a host-prepared event. :) My first thought was to prepare a presentation comparing and contrasting the approaches of two poets toward the same topic, through paired songs, e.g. . mai.n dil huN ek aramaan bharaa (Satyendra Athaiya) . tu ham ko dekh aur hamaari nazar se dekh (Vir Mohammadpuri) . do boonde.n saavan ki (Sahir) . is pyari pyari duniya me.n kyuN alag alag taqdeer (Pradeep) . ghaayal hiraniyaa mai.n ban ban DoluN (Shilendra) . pyaasi hirani ban ban dhaae (*) . aurat ne janam diyaa mardo.n ko (Sahir) . naari jeevan jhoole ki taraha (*) (*: I'll tell you the poet later!) Well and good, but I wasn't confident of making a lively presentation out of this material in front of a 30-strong bandar Toli. :)) This idea appears to be more suited for a serious thread on RMIM by lyrics buffs (Hint, hint!) So, I looked for a variant. In the past, I have found it helpful to have an exercise that entails dividing up the participants into small groups and letting them discuss and interact in a "safer" setting, primarily as a way of drawing out the more shy members. You might remember the Desert-Island Soundtracks from last year's Meet. (In fact, I have a feeling that this particular exercise was a greater success as a thread on RMIM than at the Meet!) I decided to put the two ideas together and the standby quiz on lyricists came into being. For ten of the well-known lyricists, I chose a song each. I soon gave up the ambitious notion of trying to see that all 10 songs were roughly on the same theme. Basically, I got ready for the Meet with lyrics for 10 songs by 10 different lyricists, in case the event was needed. As it turned out, the event was needed. Veena couldn't find any source material on Kaifi Azmi and we had to scrap the presentation. Pradeep had to travel on work unexpectedly and couldn't finish the "guess the song from the English version" quiz. I hope RMIMers with a talent for writing will work on the idea in their idle moments and have a quiz ready for the next Meet! The Quiz at the Meet The mechanics of the quiz were as follows. The Meeters were divided into three teams of roughly 10 each. Following the age-old management practice, the three unruliest, most difficult to control members were made the team leaders: Ramesh, Pradeep, and guri (it also helped that all three had a penchant for colorful presentation). Each person was given printed copies of the lyrics of 10 songs and the list of 10 lyricists. The opening lines of the songs were played and the three teams were sent off to discuss and match lyricists to lyrics. Full versions of the songs were playing in a loop as the discussion proceeded in the small groups. After about 45 minutes, all the teams gathered and the three team leaders took turn presenting the answers arrived at by their teams. The amount of mutual trust among the Meeters was truly remarkable: each team had designated watch-dogs to chase away spies from rival teams from overhearing the discussion. Ketan was highly proud of his accomplishments in breaking through the defences of another team and revising one of the answers of his team; that lasted till the results were presented and it turned out that the net result of his efforts was nil, as he had only traded one wrong answer for another. I was asked to collect all three answer sheets before presentations started, lest later groups change their answers after listening to an earlier group's answers! Quiz on RMIM Perhaps the best way for you to get a feel for the quiz at the Meet is to participate in the same quiz by e-mail, under conditions as similar as is practically possible. How about the following? Over the next day or two, I shall post the complete lyrics of the 10 songs on RMIM. Your task is to determine the lyricists for each song and send the answers to me by e-mail. After a few days, I shall make another post comprising the answers by the three teams, your answers and THE answers. Various team members can follow up with accounts of reasoning process they used and fill in with details of what were the best part of the quiz, the presentations by the team leaders. 1. Send your guesses regarding lyricists to: ADhareshwar@WorldBank.Org 2. Try your hand at guessing the music directors also. In case of a tie, the MD answers will be used as the tie-breaker. 3. Ideally you should study the lyrics and judge the possible lyricist by the lyrical content rather than try to solve it using P-statistical knowledge. The participants at the Meet, however, did not refrain from using their P-statistical knowledge to guess lyricists/MDs, hence, let us say, you could do the same. But you should rely only on your memory and avoid use of any reference materials, such as liner notes of CDs or cassettes, ISB, video titles, etc. It is alright if you just listen to the song. 4. SADSACKS will try to make audio clips of the opening lines available on the net. Any of you who has a homepage and sufficient disk space, and is willing to put up audio files on your homepage, please contact Surendra at Surendra_Rajak@mail.amsinc.com 5. Please don't post guesses/answers on the net. Looking forward to many entries. The songs: 1. jai jai hindustan 2. mohabbat aisi dhadkan hai 3. baabul ham tore anganaa ki chiDiyaa 4. sudha bisar gayi aaj 5. rooThe sai.nyaa 6. qaid me.n hai bulbul, saiyaad muskuraae 7. aaye vo phoolo.n ke rath par 8. ek dil hai, ek jaa.n hai, ek jaane jaa.n 9. naari jeevan jhoole ki tarah 10. pyaasi hirani ban ban bhaaye The lyricists: A. Anand Bakshi B. Bharat Vyas C. Gulzar D. Hasrat Jaipuri E. Kaifi Azmi F. Majrooh Sultanpuri G. Rajinder Krishan H. Sahir Ludhianwi I. Shailendra J. Shakeel Badayuni There are 9 music directors involved. Ashok PS: On the e-mail: Ajay: So Ashok, is the appearance of your article in the next few days a certainty or a probabilistic event ? Preeti: I think I know his strategy - write 10 articles, consume 10 glasses of alcohol, and randomly post the articles to 10 newsgroups. RMIM is assured of receiving his promised post with a probability 0.1. Ashok: How did you know? You are spot on about 10 articles and 10 glasses. :)