Lonar Crater

Planning a trip to Lonar crater this long weekend. What that is (Indian English), you may well ask. So I will try and explain. Nagpur is in the far east of Maharashtra, a biggish state. It is about 900 kms. wide, the state.

Somewhere to the west/south-west of Nagpur lies a little known town, Lonar, in a district known as Buldhana. There, in or near the town, lies a crater formed by a meteorite that hit the earth some thousands/millions (not sure of the units here) of years ago. This was a huge meteorite, and would have flattened anything in its way. Glad I was not in the way.

Anyway, it left behind a crater, that filled up into a lake. Remember seeing a similar crater in the U.S. somewhere- probably Arizona, where we saw a sign and took a detour. More on this after the trip.

Continued...Hat Tricks

Laxmikant Pyarelal had two hat tricks that I can recall (a hat trick being defined as a movie album with three or more hit songs.

Shagird which had the famous Dil vil pyaar vyaar main kya janu re.. and Bade miya deewane aise na bano, haseena kya chahe, hum se suno picturised on Joy Mukherjee and I.S. Johar. And, Woh hain zara, khafa, khafa,...

Bobby which brought in Dimple and Rishi Kapoor as a lead pair and captured the hearts of teenage lovers in the seventies, had great music from them, almost every song still remembered. HUm tum ek kamre mein band hon, ...Main shayar to nahin, Jhooth bole kauvva kate, Na maangun sona chandi with its Goan twist of Ghe, ghe ghe ghe re, ghe re saiba,.and so on.

R.D. Burman had numerous hits to his credit in the hat tricks department.

Mere Jeevan Sathi, Teesri Manzil, Kati Patang, Aandhi, Ajnabee, Jawani Diwani, The Train, Aap ki Kasam, Namak Haraam, Amar Prem, Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, Yaadon ki Baaraat, were some. No wonder it was tough to forget RD anytime after the seventies. He was all over the decade. Hare Rama Hare Krishna with its landmark Dum Maro Dum, I Love you and the melodious Kanchi re kanchi re, and Phoolon ka taaron ka was in a class of its own.

Hat Tricks- Movie Songs

I have no idea where the hat comes in, but it is customary to call it a hat trick when you have three successes in a row. But the context in which I am using it is that of a movie album. A typical Hindi film had about six songs, at least in the days that I watched them regularly. Out of these, if three were big hits, the album was a 'hit'. And the late sixties and seventies that I remember the most, had several such musical superhits. I shall attempt chronicling a few.

Kismat (1968) starring Biswajeet. It had Laakhon hain yahan dilwaale, and Aankhon mein kayamat ke kajal, and Kajra mohabbat wala..I think it was O.P. Nayyar who tuned the songs. O.P. also had Kashmir ki Kali, and Ek Baar Muskura Do in which he had Kishore Kumar sing most of the songs, unlike his earlier films. Roop tera aisa darpan mein na samaaye, the title song, and a Savere ka suraj tumhare liye hai were some of those hits.

S.D. Burman had one of his greatest musical hits (for me) in Teen Deviyan. The magical songs were-

Arre yaar meri, tum bhi ho ghazab, Likha hai teri aankhon mein kiska phasaana, and Khwaab ho tum ya koi haqeeqat kaun ho tum batlao. Of course, he then had Aradhana in which almost every song (at least five) were great. Roop tera mastana, Mere sapnon ki rani, Kora kagaz tha, bagon mein bahar hai, gunguna rahe hain bhanware were some sterling compositions.

Shankar Jaikishan had Love in Tokyo and An Evening in Paris during this period. Some of the songs- O mere shah-e-khuba, the title song Love in Tokyo, and Sayonara, sayonara from the first, and Akele akele kahaan ja rahe ho, Aasmaan se aaya farishta shot in a water-skiing scene in which Shammi hangs down from a chopper, along with the title song, were big hits.


Laxmikant Pyarelal had two hat tricks that I can recall (a hat trick being defined as a movie album with three or more hit songs).

Shagird which had the famous Dil vil pyaar vyaar main kya janu re.. and Bade miya deewane aise na bano, haseena kya chahe, hum se suno picturised on Joy Mukherjee and I.S. Johar. And, Woh hain zara, khafa, khafa,...

Bobby which brought in Dimple and Rishi Kapoor as a lead pair and captured the hearts of teenage lovers in the seventies, had great music from them, almost every song still remembered. HUm tum ek kamre mein band hon, ...Main shayar to nahin, Jhooth bole kauvva kate, Na maangun sona chandi with its Goan twist of Ghe, ghe ghe ghe re, ghe re saiba,.and so on.

R.D. Burman had numerous hits to his credit in the hat tricks department.

Mere Jeevan Sathi, Teesri Manzil, Kati Patang, Aandhi, Ajnabee, Jawani Diwani, The Train, Aap ki Kasam, Namak Haraam, Amar Prem, Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, Yaadon ki Baaraat, were some. No wonder it was tough to forget RD anytime after the seventies. He was all over the decade. Hare Rama Hare Krishna with its landmark Dum Maro Dum, I Love you and the melodious Kanchi re kanchi re, and Phoolon ka taaron ka was in a class of its own.



Mehdi Hasan

Mubham baat paheli jaisi,bus wohi boojhay jis ko bujhaye
Bhed na paye to ghabraye, bhed jo paye to ghabraye,

Jis ko akele main aa aa kar dhyaan tera reh reh ke sataye,
Chupke chupke baitha roye, aansoo ponchay aur reh jaye

Sari kahani bechaini ki maathay par likh deti hai,
Aisi baat ke ghut te ghut te munh tak aaye aur reh jaye,

Arzoo apni dhoondhta hai patta, thaan chuka hai marne ki
Jaana boojha rog hai yeh to, Samjhe hue ko kya samjhaye

Heard this lovely ghazal written by Arzoo Lucknawi, sung by Mehdi Hasan brilliantly, after quite some time. You can listen in too.

An interesting thing about the first word. It sounds like Mugham when you listen to the ghazal, but it actually is Mubham which means 'ambiguous'. The meaning becomes clear (or, the ambiguity clears) when you realise the meaning.

Friends

A couple of good friends from my IIMB days visited this week. One was Prabhakar Valivati, who came to deliver a punchy lecture on Shakespeare's 7 Ages of Man (As You Like It) and its relevance to managers, as part of our Institute Day at IMT Nagpur. His description of the life cycle of a professional manager using the Bard as a base was fantastic. He was CEO of RelQ, a firm he founded, and then sold to EDS a few years ago. He now mentors start-ups- not upstarts.

Sandhya Sekhar was also a CEO of a research/tech park in Chennai until recently (the number of CEOs we have produced from our batch is not funny). She has also worked at Aptech and Gartner in the past, and written a book on Knowledge Management. A Ph.D. from IIT Chennai to boot, she is here for a guest session in the Strategy course.

Great to reconnect with these two and glad they made time for our budding managers.

Randhir Kapoor

Also known as Dabboo in his khandaan, he was a peculiar guy in the industry. He was a hero in a few films, some of which were big hits, but he never was perceived as a great star or a great actor. However, there was an innocence in his face which contributed to his being very good in the village bumpkin roles that he did very well in Rampur ka Laxman, for instance.

Some of his songs were superhits too. I can remember these-

Bhanware ki gunjan, hae mera dil..
Tujhsa haseen dekha na kahin...pehle milan mein hoti hai kashmakash, ..
Aap yahan aaye kis liye? Aap ne bulaya is liye...
Gum hai kisi ke pyar mein dil subah shaam..
Yeh jawani, hai diwani, ..
Jaane jaan, dhoodhta phir raha..
Saamne yeh kaun aaya dil mein hui hulchul..
Peenewalon ko jeene ka bahaana chahiye..

Party Week

No, I have not joined the BJP, Congress, JD (A, B, C,..U) or any other political party. Nor am I planning to. I am just another aam aadmi and will continue to be. What I am referring to is the mundane act of having a party.

For various reasons (like having important guests) we had through the week, and a colleague throwing one, I had a hectic week of lunches and dinners being thrown (by or at me) and attended. All in all, a satisfying bunch of them, exploring different cuisines from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Also got a chance to educate the waiters of various establishments in town about some wines that they had in stock-wines are tough to keep track of, and I don't blame them. There are literally thousands of wines, made in dozens of countries. Since one guest was a wine aficionado, the waiter ended up learning a lot. Grape names like Merlot, Shiraz, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, etc. will now flow off his tongue like the Ganga flowing all over Uttarakhand this past sunmmer.

Anyway, now there is some respite, and that is also welcome, after all the hecticness (this may not be a word at all). It continues to rain in Nagpur, much more than it usually does.

Rakshabandhan Meetup in Pune

 We had a cousins meetup in Pune for celebrating Rakshabandhan.. multiple sisters tied rakhis to brothers (cousins) present, and we had a ga...

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