Research Shows- 2

My research findings from life, continued.

Teaching is an art, and not everyone is an artist.

If there is an artist-teacher, he or she can captivate a learner. I have had the fortune to get some artist teachers in school (Hindi, English), MBA (Organizational Behaviour, Marketing) and Ph.D.  College, not many. I also tried to introduce artistic ways of teaching humdrum stuff like Marketing Research and not-so-humdrum stuff like Digital Marketing and Advertising.

Learners also respond to non-academic ways of connecting, if done right. Without biasing the evaluation that needs to be done professionally. 

Ties can go beyond the college/school years, between students, and also between teachers and students. Some of these bonds can be as strong as those between friends of the same age. I have been very lucky in this department, with alums of various institutions who are great friends now.

Artists at Their Peak

There is something special about artists who are at their peak form. I am going to talk of a few Hindi music and film greats that I remember. All of them made an impact.

The sixties and seventies saw a few singers at their greatest form. These include Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Manna Dey, Mukesh, Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. My favourites were Kishore and Asha, but all of them produced many great songs. There were also heroes at their peak. Rajesh Khanna (Aradhana, Kati Patang, Anand, Aap ki Kasam), Dharmendra (Aadmi aur Insaan, Aankhen, Blackmail, up to Yadon ki Baraat) , Dev Anand (from Jewel Thief to Johny Mera Naam), Sanjeev Kumar (Manchali, Manoranjan, Koshish, Aandhi, Sholay) and so on.

Of course, in music, we had RD Burman, Laxmikant Pyarelal, Kalyanji Anandji who dominated the landscape, with their superhit numbers. Filmmakers in my view included Basu Chatterji (Rajnigandha, Chitchor, Chhoti si Baat, Shaukeen), Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Golmaal, Chupke Chupke), Gulzar (Parichay, Aandhi), and Nasir Husain (Yaadon Ki Baraat, Hum Kisise Kum Nahin), Manmohan Desai (Amar Akbar Anthony, Roti). Govind Nihalani with Aakrosh and Ardh Satya.

In classical Hindustani music, we had Bhimsen Joshi, unparalleled in many ways. In instrumentals, Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia. whom I have also heard live. Ghulam Ali, Pankaj Udhas and Mehdi Hasan, and Jagjit Singh in ghazals.

I feel fortunate that so many of these artists were at the peak and I along with my friends and contemporaries enjoyed their wonderful performances.

Vanishing Artists

Daler Mehndi, Alisha of "Made in India" fame, Ranjita Kaur who was a regular in several 70s/80s films like Taraana, Damaad, Ankhiyon ke Jahronkhon Se, Rameshwari of Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye and Sunayna, ...the list is long. The question is the same. Where are they? What are they up to?

And it's not just those from those days. Even recent ones are fairly infrequent in their appearance- or close to disappearance. Ayesha Jhulka, Amrita Rao after Vivaah (the film), Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Ashish Vidyarthi, and so on.

I saw Bombay Talkies the other day at Kolkata. Nice in a way, but the effect wears off pretty quickly after you leave the theatre. I liked the Dibakar Banerjee film the best, followed by the story of the kid who wants to be a dancer, directed by Zoya Akhtar.