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Showing posts from August, 2006

Hrishida – another jewel lost

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Another person, I adored, admired and respected has gone out of the world. It was 1982; At 9 pm, My then colleague, Sudhir Kulkarni and I were waiting outside Bandra clinic of Late Dr. Ashok Tulpule- cardiologist when I saw a man wearing loose khadi Kurta and cotton pyjama briskly walked out of his consulting room. My reaction was instant, “that’s Hrishikesh Mukherjee”. Sudhir’s reaction was “You must be kidding”. As soon as, we entered Dr Tulpule’s room, we confirmed he was indeed Hrishida. Sudhir was surprised that a man of such a fame in so ordinary attire. I felt happy as I could see the man who I admired most. Those were the days, when I would relate to every personality associated with the movie that influenced me. And Hrishida did make a big impact throughout my school and college days with Chupke Chupke , Golmal, Mili, Guddi, Bawarchee, Anupama, Namak Haram, Bemissal, Buddha Mil Gaya, Khubsoorat, Satyakam, Ashirwad, Abhiman. Now that he is gone, the above incident came to my m

Brands I am addicted to

No matter how frequent one travels, it’s not so easy to ensure that everything is put inside the briefcase. This time, I missed out on my new Sony Digital camera bought at Akihabara, Tokyo. This camera wasn’t that lucky purchase once I realized that memory card of Sony was at loggerhead with Toshiba laptop. I was fortunate that my laptop remained intact. But the resultant damage was repurchasing US$50 for 1MB stick. It is surprising that two big Japanese brands don’t work with each other but one from Scandinavian Nokia memory coo coo’s well with Toshiba. I don’t know why these companies can’t declare their compatibility with other devices. Perhaps they do in their manuals but lazy as I am, I never read those and rely on ‘on the job’ playing around with push buttons to grapple with functioning of these gadgets. Camera is not something I missed that much, what it really affected was my Mach3 razor. How important is this ‘astra’ is when I used my backup single blade Gillette razor. Few cu

bismillah khan

Ye jo des hai tera, swades hai tera, tujhe hai pukaara… Ye woh bandhan hai jo kabhi toot nahin sakta Listen This Song on Gayaki A R Rahman so wonderfully captured the essence of Indian spirit by using Shahnai in this song . This song also in many ways relate to Bismillah Khan’s Swades - of his longing for his homeland - ‘Bana- Ras’ his longing for his ‘music’ as a religion in contradiction of his globetrotting and Islam. ‘Sanai’ or ‘Shahnai’ is something I have been used even before I knew anything about music. In my early days, as green band on Philips radio would narrow – the musical notes of Shahnai would follow a signature tune of Akashwani at 6.00 am. The journey with Shahnai continued in subsequent years with – melodious notes of Shahnai accompanied by Drumbeats – Chowgahda would announce the arrival of marriage season, festivals. Ustad Bismilla Khan. with his unswerving perseverance and genius, elevated this ‘King of Bamboo’ afghan double-reeded wind instrument with a eight-nin

Penang: Hi Tech Island of Temples

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When it comes to high density temple towns, Haridwar – a holy place and Kurukshetra –a battleground of Mahabharata, come to my mind. But with the exception of BHEL factory in Haridwar, neither of these two places have anything to do with industries. Penang, probably is the only place in the world that can have Hi Tech silicon industries such as Dell, Siemens, B Braun , Bosch, Panasonic ,Blaupunkt, Osram alongwith host of religious places like Snake temple, Tamil Mariammam temple, Thai and Burmese Buddha temples, Chinese Taoism, Confucianism temples , Anglican Church and scores of Muslim mosques. High technology silicon industry with tourist inflow has transformed this small turtle shaped sleepy, quiet verdant island into business and leisure town. A town with almost 700K residents swells to a million with influx of 600K workers from mainland. Plentiful of rain with equatorial warm, sunny weather with long coastline and economical lifestyle bring tourists. Foreign nationals can buy prop