Path: Lehigh.EDU!netnews.upenn.edu!dsinc!newsfeed.pitt.edu!scramble.lm.com!news.math.psu.edu!news.cse.psu.edu!uwm.edu!news.sol.net!newspump.sol.net!newsfeeder.sdsu.edu!news.iag.net!seminole.iag.net!ketan From: Ketan Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.misc Subject: RMIM Meet - Washington DC (looooong report) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 15:55:29 -0400 Organization: Internet Access Group, Orlando, Florida Lines: 354 Message-ID: Reply-To: Ketan NNTP-Posting-Host: seminole.iag.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII return-receipt-to: ketan@iag.net *Sigh* Here we go again. It seems to me that this job of writing the report was already decided even before the actual meet. The moment I entered Ashok's house, after the initial greeting from the hosts, I was told that I was doing the write-up. Despite all my protests and complaints of having a poor "hingliss", it was to no avail. Also after having typed all this once yesterday, my server crashed and left me with nothing, so I had to retype this all over. Awright so much for the griping. Had to get that done u know. :) **************************************************************************** RMIM MEET WASHINGTON DC Firstly, I would like to thank 2 groups of people. The hosts and the participants. This meet would have been a no-show if either group had not had the enthu. Trust me there is nothing worse for the host than to find his idea and hospitality spurned, and all the food going to waste, ofcourse. :) There is nothing worse for the RMIMer than to have to read the review later on and feel--"Shit, I wish I had been there". So to both these groups--Thanks a lot, and hope you continue to host and participate in the future. As for the actual meet-IT WAS A BLAST. This according to me was the best one so far. Maybe it was because I was not the host that took the pressure of hospitality of me, that I enjoyed so much. But I would not be entirely right here. This was a great success simply because more people than ever came to this, and it had been planned and arranged so well, that one never ever got bored. Below I reproduce my "aankhon dekha haal". Things got underway shortly after midnight, (00:15 am) on Sat morning, July 29th, with the arrival of the first guest, yours truly. Well actually as Ashok has reminded me, my inclusion was done at 11:30 pm on Fri when I recd his message at a friend's house asking me to come over. I was about to keep calling Ashok and listening to the preludes of "Garjat Barsat" on his answering machine, but he had foiled my plans. When I reached Ashok's house, Chetan and Ajay were busy vandalizing the trees and shrubs nearby by hanging signs proclaiming the meet. I went inside and greeted Ashok, and we all sat down in Ashok's rec-room. The first thing that hit my eye, was his collection of books and tapes/CD's. I reeled and the room seemed to be doing a shimmy of sorts, to the tune of CR's "Naacho ghoom ke" from Sarhad. The room was filled from top to bottom with music. As if that was not enough, Chetan opened up a few cupboards to reveal some 100's of more tapes, and took me to another room which had another few hundred tapes. I think next to the HMV store-room, Ashok's place would be the next best source of music. Negotiations are on even as we speak to allow me to take up temp residence. The post is hotly contested, but I have the inside on this. Heh heh! They (the hosts) then pointed out a table of the RMIM talent show, which consisted of the Asha-Legacy CD with Rajan Parrikar on it, another one- "Chalo ghar chalen" with music by Guri on it and yet another one "Raam naam sukh dhaam" with Sanjeev R and Kavita K on it. Yet another one was the Indo-Jazz suites by Warren Senders. Next to them was a book from apna "Pintu Diwana"-Shashikant Joshi of his poems. Now me not being much of a poet can hardly understand this stuff, but the few I read, seemed real nice and made more sense than some lyricist whose name starts with a G. :) (No flames please). Atleast one did not have any "nashemans" and "aassmani's" to worry about. :) Keep it up Pintu. Good work there. Shortly after comes in Ramesh Hariharan the "Yesrafidas" dude. He comes in looking slightly sleepy and confused, apologizes for coming into the wrong house, turns around and then recollects that he has seen us somewhere, and introduces himself as Ramesh, in a tone of voice as if he was trying to convince himself of his own label. So now the quorum has been established. While going thru Ashok's collection, I come across some real beautiful gems on vinyl records. I pick out one which Ashok says he found in a desi grocery store, titled Naushad's innovations- which according to Ashok was an oxymoron. :) Chetan then puts on some nice records and then we settle down to one of our many discussions. While listening to the songs of Malhar and the fabulous Lata number 'Garjat barsat" which is similar to the Barsaat Ki raat one, we discussed the recent Asha show in NYC. Seriously I was expecting better stuff from the show too. We then turn our attention to Salil and his heavy orchestration methods and I then play the Bengali version of Janneman Janneman to refute the claim. The Bengali version for instance is simply beautiful and is very simple. Someone suggests tea and promptly a meeting is held. All eyes turn towards me and before I can say a word I have been picked to prepare tea. I don't know how these things get decided by people who don't even know me. :) So here I am "chula jalaoing" at 2 am or so. The tea naturally turns out superb, and is consumed faster than u can say tea. While all this was going on, the Virgoness and neat freak in me awoke and I merely suggested that maybe we ought to clean up the kitchen and leave it looking less like a scene from Twister. Promptly Chetan, Ajay and Ramesh appointd me, CEO-Dishroom. Only Ashok spoke in my behalf. Anyway it was fun breaking someone else's dishes for a change. We then moved our discussion to H Mangeshkar and played some of his gems from Ashok's collection. All this time Ashok had been looking at his watch and commenting on the time. I guess he wanted us to leave so that he could get his 8 hrs but we refused to take the hint. Finally at 4 am we decided to move We piled into Chetan's white Saturn, and headed towards his home. Now Chetan wanted us to listen to some nice songs on the way but Ramesh, Ajay and me had other ideas. We started singing and esp tried the difficult taranas of "Madhuban main radhika" and "Laga chunri main daag". Chetan threatened to jump out of the moving car considering the amount of noise we were making inside the confines of his chariot. Wiser counsels however prevailed and we proceeded homewards. Reaching his home we crashed right away. At 7am for reasons unknown to me as yet, I was woken up by Ramesh and informed that he was going jogging hence I should get up. I failed to see the connection then and even now. Anyway I tried to go back to sleep, and was again woken up by a noise that initially sounded like a nuclear explosion. Closer inspection revealed that it was merely Chetan's alarm clock doing its deed for the day. A ham like fist from chetan put an end to its work. After that I gave up trying to get my 25 winks. Chetan and me finished our showers and were ready to leave. Ramesh walks in and says--Saala main galat ghar main chala gaya. It seems instead of 1A our man was banging on 1E and had actually started singing "Jaago mohan pyare" when a rude "Whaddya want" from within put an end to his voice reproductions. He went for a shower and started singing inside, scaring the mold of Chetan's bathroom walls. He was out soon though, having probably dry cleaned himself. Ajay went in next and this guys speed at solving quizzes is inversely proportional to the amount of time he takes for a shower. We begged, cajoled, pleaded and ordered him to hurry up and each time we were met by an even more energetic splash from beyond. I suspect he had a rubber duck and toy boat in the tub with him. Finally having clothed the person we were ready to depart. This time we spared Chetan's arab steed of any more noises confining ourselves to discussing the merits of Bappi L's copying against that of others and as to how it was easier to detect a copy when Bappi did it against that of others esp RDB. Obviously some RMIMers and their views came into the discussion. :) Reaching Ashok's place we were met by Ajay Nerurkar from Buffalo. So the three furthest people- self, Ramesh and Ajay were the first to arrive. We started arranging the place and then went to fetch some other RMIMers Neha and Jeyashree, this time self doing the chauffeuring and proving a perfect menace to pedestrians. Here again we got delayed since when we reached Neha's place there was food present and Ramesh was hungry and Chetan "I never refuse tea" Vinchhi told Neha his middle name. Upon our return we found the place full of people. Pradeep, his wife and kids, were there. So was Anand K alongwith his parents both avid music fans. Also present were Surendra, Anuraag, Himanshu Gupta, Ashish Banerjee, Arup Ray, Udit Batra, Vinod Arekar, Faez Kaiser, Helen Abadzi, UVR, Suneeta Donepudi, Sunit Joshi and any others whom I might have missed. After the initial introductions Helen got off to her Greek quiz. Now being elsewhere during this time I cannot supply much details so i will look to someone else to provide the details of this. We then started the singing session. Having Pradeep's guitar and karoke equipment, alongwith Surendra's keyboards and MIDI files, and Anuraag's tabla we had a live jamming session. Ramesh started off as usual with a KK song, being a Rafian, and others followed suit. Next to sing were Sunit Joshi, Anand K, and UVR who sang a lovely Talat Ghazal. Ramesh and Ajay Divekar sang "Huzoor is kadar". Pradeep whispered to me --Let's see how long it takes for the Rafians to sing even one Rafi song, and he was right. Only one Rafi song was sung and that too by everyone not just a Rafian--Pukarta chala hoon main. The hosts were busy doing the hosting and making sure everyone looked well fed without any food. Finally we started the audio quiz which had preludes and interludes of the songs and one was supposed to guess the song listening just to the music. The public assembled, was divided into 2 teams, one comprising Pradeep, Ramesh, Udit, Sami, Neha etc and the other one had UVR, Vinod, Anuraag, Surendra, Himanshu etc. Now imagine this--I am ready to start the tape and the Q goes to Pradeep's team. Just when the music starts 10 of the members of UVR's team start yelling so that Pradeep's team cannot hear anything, while one of UVR's team members will listen intently and crack the clue when the question is passed. This was practiced by both the teams. Ajay Divekar incidentally was the scorer based on his performance on RMIM 2. His participation would have made it one sided. The guy is simply amazing at these things. His seek time is faster than the time it takes for others to boot up their CPU's. Some really hilarious comments were passed all throughout this time. Each and every question was hotly contested and argued. Things got off to an inauspicious start when they missed the first Q--"Doli main bithay ke kahan". C'mon guys what did u expect from a Burman fan(atic)? Pradeep once again was the source of most of the noise and comments. Someone said or called someone "lallu" and then someone replied "yeh bhi koi jeena jeena hai lallu" and the whole company assembled did their version of the hyena. After banging the gavel for some 200 times, all was quiet and were waiting for the next Q. All of a sudden one hears a gurgle, followed by a chuckle. We turned around and identified the source as Ramesh. With some 30 pairs of eyes on him, he then giggles(I had never seen a male giggle till then), and makes the most medically inaccurate statement there can be-- "Hey, mujhe hasne de yaar, nahin to mere ko kuch sunai nahin deta hai. isliye Timeout", and we were off again. What with all these interruptions and distractions we were running into lunch time, a thing which no one would miss, not even for music. The attention paid to this food, was overwhelming and rightly so. The hosts, Suneeta and Neha had cooked a great meal. Everything from veggies to the non-veggies was cooked by them, and .....hang on I need to get meself a pail.... one regretted that one had but one stomach to fill. "Jughead" Ramesh was of course the first to reach the table, secretly practising the sprints just for such occasions. My only complaint is that the guy gets thinner the more he eats. *sigh* I wish such luck befell me. There was roti, some 2-3 vegs, some 2 non-vegs and biryani, followed by dessert. This was the only time we were glad that the fewer RMIMers who showed up the better. Lunch concluded, and with everyone's clothes straining at the seams, we sat down to finish the half concluded audio quiz. Before I forget, a big thanks to all those who helped with the food, including klutz me, who carried the food without dropping any of it. Ashok is a great cook and that my dear friends is one more reason for the temp residence. After all I am a man of simple tastes--only the best will do. The second half of the quiz proved more interesting. Pradeep's team had established a big lead, but this time around Surendra who was simmering to my left, cut through some 7 Q's in a row, like Stallone does to the "not nice persons". Pradeep's team ofcourse yelled and howled, particularly since one of the Q's was from "My heart is beating". They protested that since this was an "angrezi" gaana, they were not prepared for it. The lead narrowed and things looked tense. As usual Pradeep's team started bickering and finger pointing among themselves. Both team members reached out for the cloth, as the beads of persp broke their foreheads. Finally in the closing moments they once again broke the spell and managed to eke out a well fought victory. Both teams did very well, and each of them had some good members on both sides. Our next destination was the video quiz. In this the hosts would play a scene from a movie with the volume muted and one had to guess the song, and give the P-stats. The theme was Badaltey Saathi, so if one song had Dilip K and Madhubala, the next would have M and Dev A, and the third would have Dev A and Waheeda and so on. We were joined by Roopa and her friend. The teams were self, Ramesh, Roopa, Udit, Vinod, Surendra, Ajay N and Anuraag etc and the other one had Sami, Pradeep, Neha, Anand K, UVR, Suneeta etc. The songs selected were fantastic. There was one song that was thrown open to both teams and no one got it. It was from a Dev-Suraiya starrer, called something and Dev looks like a taxidermists handiwork on his day off, in turban et al. Once again Pradeep livened up the events. What happened was that almost 3 songs in a row had had Sahir's lyrics. The first was "Naghma O Sher" from Ghazal, the second one was "Nigahen milane ko jee chahta hai" with the awesome lines "kisiko manane main lazzat jo paaye", and then when the third one was "Raat bhi hai kuch" from Mujhe Jeene do, I turned around to ask Sami, if it was Sahir. Pradeep hearing this became a human chameleon and while still imitating the colour of a tomato, yelled " Hah Sahir hi ho sakta hai. Aise ta thaiya, hai daiya, nachaniya, mujre, cabaret waale gaane aur kaun likh sakta hai". At another point, one of the clues was the lovely rafi number from "Dulhan ek raat ki", which escapes my memory currently, and Sami leaned over to Pradeep and said--"Dekha kya mast gaya hai", to which Pradeep replied--"Hah, kabhi kabhi achcha gaa leta hai". At this Vinod jumped in to say, "Are kabhi kabhi to gaa leta tha, yahan to woh bhi Mukesh ko gaana pada, aur KK nahin gaa saka". The KKKlaners being the most sporting guys on earth laughed the loudest ofcourse. Well folks the real result of this was that our team won, but the hosts did not allow it. What happened was that in the melee the quiz masters forgot to turn off the volume on the last Q, and they without a second thought gave it to the other team. *WHINE* :)) We now move on to the next event of the day, which was another round of singing. Sunit Joshi sang some great KK songs, and we all joined in on whatever instruments we could find, and lending him vocal support. A couple of windows did crack but we ignored the flying shards of glass. We then moved onto the Desert Quiz. I won't elaborate much here since Ashok has promised a more detailed analysis of it. The idea was that all of us would be divided into 3 teams and each team would have to come up with a list of 10 movies whose songs they would take with them on a desert island. The idea was to arrive at a Consensus, among all team members. Now imagine arriving at a consensus, putting KK/Gulzar-Pradeep, in the same team as Rafi/Sahir-Sami, and u will see how tough it becomes. Chetan was in my team alongwith Ajay N, Mohan, Vinod, Roopa, Anuraag, etc, and Chetan seemed to think that Consensus was the Roman prefect in the Camp at Compendium near the Gaulish village. Whatever we proposed he opposed. Land sakes, he and Ajay knocked off Guide, my pet movie. If someone suggested Albela, then one would say why not Anarkali for CR, or why Chori C and not Basant Bahar for SJ etc etc. Finally after enough bartering and much of "U support my choice and I will support yours" we came with our 10. Just because they did not think of it, out of sheer jealousy, the other teams did not allow our entries of Kanoon and Pushpak. Our 10 were, Madhumati, Mamta, Bandini, Abhimaan, Aar Paar, Baiju Bawra, Barsaat Ki Raat, Hum Dono, Tere Ghar ke Samne and Pakeezaah. The other teams had similar choices. Sami and Pradeep being on one team, were now arguing with each others choices Pradeep castigating Sami for choosing Shabaab over Mughal - E - Azam, and Sami lambasting Pradeep for having chosen Chalti ka naam Gaadi when there were better KK movies. There was only 1 movie common to all 3 teams -- Madhumati. After this Pradeep could not stop beaming and one could only hear him say "See I told u so". The hosts then sprang a surprise by giving each of the RMIMers present a lovely tape --Rare Classical Gems, which they had compiled with the help of Vish K. A million thanks to all 4 of them, for this superb tape. The art work on the cover was beautifully done, and the P-stats with the ragas, and the taals neatly printed inside. Sami never one to let a chance slip by asked chetan, with Pradeep sitting next to him--"Are Chetan, isme KK ka ek bhi gaana kyon nahin hai?" He then flipped the cover and said " Oh I forgot, it says Classical gems". All Pradeep could do was to give Sami a "Tujhe yaad rakhoonga, Thakur" kinda look. By now the hour was well advanced and everyone had started to make plans for departing. Self had to go to a previous engagement so what follows is a "kano suna haal". After around 8 pm it seems the remaining junta--still a substantial number, stayed and chatted. After a while they had hot chai and samosas. They then started playing Antakshari. They would pick a word--say "Beqaraar"- and one would have to sing all songs with that word in it. All in all they were at it till 2 am, and all of us who were not there had only one thing to say--"Damn we missed it". Hopefully someone will fill in these missing parts. That dear ladies and gentlemen concludes my report. Hopefully others will add to it. The meet in all lasted 26 whopping hours, right from the first to the last discussion, fight etc. It was simply too good to be missed and one only hopes that such things continue to take place and more and more people participate in it. Who knows maybe one day we could all have a combined East-West meet. That would be truly amazing. If anyone at all is keen, I nominate myself as the host, over the Thanksgiving break. We could all fly in 1 day, meet over 2 days and have 1 more day to relax. Any takers? Hmm, do I detect a few mouths dripping at the thought of the idea? Now for some awards: Most enthu RMIMer--Ajay Nerurkar. he slept overnight in a greyhound and made it. Most puncutal--Self of course. 00:15 am is hard to beat, wot. Most quietest--Jeyashree, Ashish, Arup, Ajay N. Noisiest-- Pradeep, Ramesh, self, Chetan, Vinod, Sami, Udit. # 1 Lyricist of the day--Sahir, since he was the most discussed and vilified. # 1 Musician--Hmm, since it was hosted partly by Chetan, I shall bow to Madan Mohan. Star of the Day-- Niharika dubey(age 4 months). She was the only person, fawned on and pampered by everyone there. Creeps of the Day--Udit and Ramesh for telling Ankit Dubey(age 3 years) that K-E-T-A-N was pronounced as "lallu". After that the kid kept asking me how "K" was pronounced as an "L". My position was similar to that of Om Prakash in Chupke Chupke in the pthiasis and pneumonia case. Most eligible parent to be--Chetan Vinchhi. I have half a dozen photos of him and Niharika dubey, so ladies if u are looking for a person who will be an ideal Dad look no further. **************************************************************************** Ketan Dholakia A Burman fan(atic)