Rohit's memorable weekend

This weekend must have been one of the most memorable weekend for Rohit. I've mentioned about him in earlier posts, that he is crazy about JS and his music. He had all the plans to meet the maestro on 30th June, but his plans were ruined by the rain gods!

He was very very upset that day. He called me up, SMSed me and when we met for the concert kept on speaking about the lost oppurtunity. I should not forget his kindness, he had included me from the beginning for the meet. I told him however "Waqt se pahle aur qismat se zyada kuch nahi milta". But I was equally sad to miss the opp.

It seems with the "Shani" changing its planetary position on Saturday, time went in his favour! He kept on calling me in the evening and I noticed his call only after 3 missed ones. His voice was filled with excitement. He said that he had talked to Abhinav Upaddhyay, the senior tabla player in JS's team, over the phone, moments ago. This was facilitated by another great fan of JS, Naresh, who was attending the Ahemedabad concert on the 19th. Rohit kept on speaking about the new 'opportunities' that were open for him.

At around midnight, (12:36 A.M) on Sunday, I got a SMS from Rohit. It said that he had just had a talk with JS on phone! In that short textual message I could virtually see what he must have experienced minutes ago. A burning desire in his heart for 10 years, fulfilled!

I know what it means to have such passionate desires fulfilled. I consider myself lucky, that I was probably the first or the second one to whom he may have disclosed this. I have not talked to Rohit, after this episode. I will let him savor the moment some more... and then ask him about the details of the conversation he had with JS.

JS Live

I attended my first concert of Jagjit Singh on 30th June. This was at Siri Fort, New Delhi. Many thanks to Rohit, for arranging my pass. May god bless him!

Hearing the master live is indeed an experience one will always cherish. He sang for around 2 hours excluding the 15-min break. The flights were delayed from Mumbai due to continuous rains, and thus the concert started late by almost 2 hours!

The first 'ghazal' that he sang was 'Der lagi aane mein 'humko''.... and was accompanied only by the flutist and the guitarist. His half team had not yet arrived!! This proved to be a boon in disguise for us, as we could hear his bare voice. His voice is so soothing even at this age!

However he kept his choice of ghazals/songs as per the taste of the larger public. No difficult urdu poetry (in fact, no urdu poetry at all). Only exception was "Baazeecha-e-Atfaal hai". He does not sing this often in his concerts.

At Last, we left at around 11:15 P.M. Our group constantly discussing that he should have sung some "new numbers" and his rare compositions which he used to sing around 35-40 years ago.

Maybe god will fulfill our desires someday!

Just four Lines

I wanted to post these two couplets, which have been all over my mind for the last few days:

Dil gayaa thaa, to yeh aankhen bhi koyi le jaata,
Main faqat ek hi tasveer kahan tak dekhun.
- Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi.

Chand lamhe jo tere qurb ke mil jaaten hain,
Inhi lamhon ko main, sadeeyon mein badaltaa dekhun.
- Iftikaar Imaam Siddiqui.

Paths of Love

I was watching an episode from the serial 'Kirdaar', when this thought came to my mind. 'Kirdaar' was aired on Doordarshan, long time ago. This episode was titled 'Alaan'. This was a short story of a master and her maid ('Alaan') having a liking for each other, but they could not cross over the threshold of their social status to develop it into a full fledged love relationship . As is usual in such cases of relationship, the woman was more expressive in her likeness than the man. The actors were excellent in their performances. The man's role was played by Om Puri and the woman's role by Mita Vasishth.

At the end of the serial, I realized the "Paths of Love" which had been in concept form in my mind for a long time.

There are very broadly 3 paths that a love relationship can progress between a man and a woman.

1. In this path, the either person expresses his or her love to the other. The other eventually accepts the proposal and the lover relationship is established between them. It also eventually turns up into a life-long relationship. This is the only happy situation.

2. In this path too, the acceptance is there. The relationship between the lovers is also established. However somewhere down the line, something goes terribly wrong and the relationship breaks. The reasons could be many. One major reason is non-understandability between the two. I think half of the cases are because of this reason.

3. In this path, the first step itself is not achieved! Just like that it happened in 'Alaan'. It is very necessary for either of the man or woman to explicitly say/ask to the other, "I love you. Do you love me?" or things to that effect. Mere actions and stares are not enough. They act like indicators only. Yes agreed, that it takes a lot of courage, but then love is a game for the strong hearted!

Dil mein na ho jurrat to muhabbat nahi milti,
Khairaat mein itni bari daulat nahi milti.
-- Nida Fazli

Meeting Niranjan P.

Today was a day that I will remember always. I met Niranjan. Well, his full name is Pradeep Niranjan. This was the first time in my life, that I met a person with same name, in flesh.

Pradeep is based in Bangalore. It is not that we were strangers before today. We share a lot common interests, and met in Orkut, in a Jagjit Singh community. Of course, I should not forget, Rohit's contribution in knitting the web together. Pradeep is a music buff. He is also a very good poet. He is learning to play the violin too.

Pradeep, Rohit and I met at CP today afternoon, as Pradeep had come to Delhi to catch a connecting flight to Bangalore. After loitering about the area, we finally found shelter from the scorching heat of the summer inside a "Coffee Day" outlet. Well, it was jam-packed and we had no choice but to enter the smoking zone. It was too stuffy, and the smoke the guys and the gals made with their burning cigarettes was making the matters worse. At last we found a better place, and discussed to our heart's content our favorite topic, Rare collections of Jagjit Singh.

We then made some good purchases of music albums and old TV serial DVDs, from Palika Bazaar. It was six fifteen, when Pradeep boarded an auto-rickshaw for the airport. Rohit and me exchanged greetings and went our way.

All in all, today was a nice day in my life.

Experience with Vista

I am one of those, who love to hate the products from Redmond. I always preferred Linux for Operating system and Open Office for word processing. I am mostly against its blatant use of monopoly over the desktop software. However, frankly I find the GUI of Windoze much more smoother in operation than other OSs. (Never tried a Mac. PC though).

Finally, I went for Vista Home Premium. Got it installed on my PC, and the first thing that I expected it to do was to wipe out my XOSL boot loader from the MBR. It did! But what I did not expect was poor driver support, especially for my Sound Card and Ge Force 6200 video card. The SoundMax driver was automatically updated by Vista, however.

Tragedy struck when I played an AVI file in Windows Media Player 11. The screen went blank, and I received my first BSOD, after the era of Windows 98. It caused physical damage to my newly purchased SATA 250 GB drive. Frantic search on the Internet revealed that this a known problem, as NVidia is struggling to release stable drivers for Vista.

Yesterday, I however stabilized my PC. I purchased a new Barracuda 160 GB hard drive, and configured it as Primary Master. I had to use my existing installation of Vista to format the new disk drive. I re-installed and re-activated Vista.

Today I found a neat software, EasyBCD that provides a GUI interface to modify the Boot Loader of Vista. Now I am able to boot to my Linux partition as well. For video files I will wait for NVidia before they either give up releasing new drivers or release a stable one. In the former case, I will have to choose a different vendor for my next video card.

Now I am in friendship with Vista as it allows me the flexibility to switch to my favorite OS anytime I wish.

Refreshing

After all the hectic work in office last week, I finally got a reward. Some kind-hearted soul mailed me a very rare recording of Jagjit Singh, live in concert.

The master was in full mood in that concert, and often broke away from the normal rendition either to explain the meaning of the 'sher' or the 'baariki' of the 'raag' on which he had composed the particular 'ghazal'.

Especially, I was mesmerized when he suddenly and so soothingly switched to a semi-classical 'thumri' midway from his famous "Hoton Se Chu Lo Tum", to render:

Dekho sakhi humaari piya ki yahi reet,
Humse bair auran ke saath preet....

Marvelous!! He is a gem!
May god bless him!