Very Rare Successful Pair Of Father And Son In The Music World!

R.D. Burman and his father, S.D.Burman or should I say S.D.Burman and his son, R.D.Burman!

Sometime back, I came across this article in 'The Hindu' which was a tribute to R.D.Burman, the Hindi Film music director. His father, Sachin Dev Burman comes from a royal family (mother, Princess of Manipur and father, Prince of Tripura!) who was a trained Hindustani Classical Singer.  The son, Rahul Dev Burman also had learnt classical music. His mother also was a music student when his father married her!

My son is an ardent fan of S.D.Burman, the singer and I wanted to make a list of his songs but after reading the Hindu article and the biographies of his and his son's, I thought I should write about both of them, though one post will not be enough for listing their delightful, melodious cum rhythmic songs.

S.D. Burman is famous for music based on folk music mostly, one is here and this one is sung by himself for the film, Sujatha (I love Nutan!), 'mere saajan hai us paar':




This song is from Aradhana...S.D.Burman's voice is very apt for this folk type song.

The music is slow and haunting. Now, to one of his great evergreen song
from the film, 'Aradhana':

 


His son, R.D. Burman is famous for rhythm based songs. He changed the
Indian Film music by introducing Middle East tunes which became a
craze in those days. But he has rendered very good melodious music
too. Here are two examples. This song is from the movie Sholay. RD
Burman is singing for the famous Helen's dance and the song is, one of his best!




This song is from the movie 'Amar Prem'. Kishore Kumar is singing for
Rajesh Khanna. All the songs of this movie are hit songs which are melodious and soft type.






This song is from Film 'Padosan'. Latha is singing for the young and beautiful, Saira Banu. Slow and melodious song. Her voice is so young and beautiful (again!) and it suits Saira well.  I used to sing this song when I was newly married.  My husband used to listen with a happy face.  You know why? The lyrics go like this: Sharm aathi hai magar aaj ye kehana hoga...ab hume aapke kadmoan hi me rehana hoga... (Saira sits near Sunil dutt's feet and sing this line!).  Will I do it now? I wonder!




It was very difficult to select songs of this father son duo. Both of them have given so many melodious songs of different types. Normally if the father is very famous, the son is shadowed by his fame. It is very difficult to come out of it. But here, RD Burman also bloomed well under his father's guidance/taunting (read the Hindu article!). The father was proud to be called 'RD Burman's father'!
Now, one more song of the father, which is my favourite. I think I must make separate posts for listing more of the songs of this duo!

This is S.D.Burman singing for the movie 'Guide'. And Rafi singing for the same movie.

This is R.D. Burman's song for the film 'Pyar ka mausam'.  Another song for the film 'Rocky' and this is one of my favourites by Kishore Kumar.

This song is by S.D. Burman for 'Yaadon ki baaraat'. The movie and the songs made history in those days. This one is for the famous Amitabh, Jaya film, 'Abhimaan'. Kishore and Latha are singing this song.


This song made history in those days.  We used to hear this song in every street.  Zeenat Aman became famous because of this song which is by R.D. Burman, for the film, 'Hare Rama Hare Krishna'. And his father gave a superhit song for the film Aradhana.

Can you believe this? These are R.D.Burman's song.  One is from the film, Aandhi and the other is from the film, '1942, Love Story'. Both are melodious songs! S.D.Burman is right.  He should be proud of his son!

I think I will stop here! Now, will you mention some songs of these father and son duo, which you admire? It will be fun knowing about more songs of these music maestros..

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School Memories Of A 59 Year Old Mother! (Part - II)

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First, I thought, I will skip the second part of my earlier post, School Memories of a 59 year old mother!...it might be boring.   Then, I thought, I had committed (!) and I have to write now! So, here are some more memories!

As I told you earlier, we had one period of drawing class.  This scrap book is from my VI Std. We used to take colour pencil box and water colour paint box to school on the day of the drawing class.  I had done better drawings, but somehow only this book survived! I had some science record books also! Thank god, I was not able to trace them in my old box...you are saved!

Even now, this is my favourite rangoli! I draw this in front of my house during festival days!

I remember seeing these types of drawings in my grand niece's books also, now!

Water colour! The butterflies look funny!

This is not good, but I remember carrying coloured, polish papers to my class! The green coloured paper is inserted inside the pink one!

My children had beautiful labels with the pictures of cricket players etc.  These labels were got from the shops free of cost, while buying note books!

My parents had 5 children! My mother didn't have time to monitor our school work.  Most of the time, we were on our own! We, brothers and sisters were close to each other and we were in our own world.  Somehow, it was fun! We used to play many indoor games like pallanguzhi, 5 stones, daayam etc.  Then, card games like ass, 'gor kaththe' etc. This 'gor kaththe' game (kaththe means donkey in my language, Tulu! Collecting cards to become a donkey, will be the close meaning!) is interesting! For 4 or more players, we use 2 packs.  Distribute 10 cards each. Place the rest of the card pack in the middle. Start the play with A Spade.  If nobody has that card, then start with A arts or A clubs or A dice.  If you don't have the spade, then pull cards from the pack one by one until you get a spade...it is fun watching people collecting cards! Whoever has the highest denomination card, starts the rounds.  If you have two same denomination cards, whoever drops the first card, should start the next round. After all the cards in the pack are over, then the game is just like our 'Ass' game. In our game, the player who gave the 'cut' plays first after giving the cut! We call it 'Ramesh Kaththe' too because this cousin of mine taught this game to us when we were very small! Now, all my relatives play this game during get-togethers!

I had this habit of drawing faces everywhere...

This is an old cutting of the players of the 1971 India-England match - I had this cutting in my scrap book! I had written the names of the players too! One more link of the players of the same match is here

People were crazy about cricket in those days too but they had to go to the stadium to watch the match or hear the commentary in the radio! The radio commentators were very famous.  I remember watching some clips in the theatre, before the movie started, before the 'Indian Films Division' documentaries! We used to admire Ian Botham - he was a jovial person and interacted with the spectators while standing near the fence during the match! I think we started seeing foreigners in these clips, otherwise we never came across them earlier, no TV and except in Hataari and one or two other English films, we never came across seeing white people! I got familiarised with the rules of the game from a Tamil magazine, 'Tuglaq' - yes, Cho Ramaswamy's magazine (now, he is famous for his role as a 'think tank/adviser' for Jayalalitha!).  The game was explained with drawings!

My teenage hero! He is really very handsome, hmmm?!

Like any young girl, I also hero worshipped a film hero...Dharmendra! I don't know why I admired him...now, he is an ordinary hero for me...better actors were there and are there now (I think so, now!). He is good in comedy than serious acting, I feel so, now! I remember watching his 'Satyakam' (Hrishikesh Mukherji's) and started admiring him! The story was a serious one and a good one! My mother used to take us to movies in those days!  I had a collection of 10-15 pictures of Dharmendra but only a couple of them survived! This one is from an old, famous magazine of those days, 'Picture Post'! I remember getting angry with my mother because she didn't take me to 'Anupama', a Dharmendra movie! That was actually a good movie, I saw it in the TV, may years later, with my mother! My favourite is 'Chupke Chupke'! My sister was a Rajesh Khanna fan! We used to have arguments about our heroes! It sounds silly now!

I had this picture in my collection! The lady on the right looks like Bharathi, but it says Mala Sinha! I don't know why I had Dara Singh's picture ad.!

This is the end of Sandhya's story, for now!

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Seeveli - Elephant Procession At Vaikom Temple, Kerala

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Seeveli at Vaikom Mahadeva temple! Click on the pictures to have a better view please.

A relative of mine is from Vaikom (Kottayam, Kerala) and she had been asking me to attend the famous Vaikkaththu Ashtami festival at the ancient Shiva temple there.  As you know by now, I am a fan of elephants and was happy I attended this festival, because the main attraction of this festival is Seeveli - the procession of the temple deity (Utsava murthy), on the temple elephant.  

The temple is quite huge and the details of the temple is here.

Vaikom Mahadeva Temple.

The temple is believed to be built in Treta yuga. The area of the temple is huge and very well maintained - mainly, it was very clean even during the 12 day festival with so much crowd attending it.  The main deity - Shiva linga is 6' high with ornaments for eyes, nose etc.  The details are in the above link. I went there in the middle of the 12 day festival in November last.  The whole town had a festive look with many pavement shops on the roads surrounding the temple.  The temple had a huge auditorium where dance and music programmes held from morning to night continuously.

Dance programme at the temple. I couldn't get a place even to stand and watch!

I was there for two days and went to the temple three to four times.  I saw the crowd like this, nearly all the times!  In this age of cinema and TV, I was surprised to see so much crowd coming to the temple and watching dance and music (classical music) programmes. My niece also gave a programme of classical music here, her first stage performance, alone (she had performed in her college earlier, though).

The round garbha gruha is covered by this mural paintings of stories from mythology. I took this picture...a better version is given below!

The very very old mural paintings were redone and the details are here.  I got the above picture from here

Vaikom Shiva temple is considered as one of the largest and the oldest of all Kerala temples.  Vaikom Mahadeva Shiva Temple, along with Eddumanoor Shiva Temple and Kaduthuruthy Mahadeva Temple, is considered a powerful trisome! We visited all the three temples before Uchchi Pooja (before noon pooja), which is very auspicious!

As in Vaikom temple, Eddumanoor temple also had round garbha gruha and beautiful mural painting on the wall!

I noticed one more custom here! Normally, we do pradakshina (walking around the temple) in a complete circle.  Here, we were asked not to cross the place where the water from the garbha gruha is let out.  We had to go back and complete the other half of the circle!

This is called 'poram vilakku' (outside lamp).  This is kept in the praahara of the temple.  If we pay certain amount of money, the temple authorities will light the diyas in our name! It is fully booked for the next two years, it seems! Looks beautiful!

The outside praahaara of the temple.  Many people were carrying their footwear in their hands!

All sides of the temple walls were lighted with diyaas like this in the evenings.  It was drizzling on the day of my visit - you can notice it!  So, less lamps were burning.  Simple architecture unlike Tamil nadu temples but clean.  No pesterings from the priests or other employees of the temple too! I was in a very happy mood here mainly because of this reason.

The elephants are waiting here to join the procession, until the main elephant gets ready!

The main elephant, which is the elephant of this temple with the uthsava murthy on it!  I noticed that the elephants were fed often during the waiting period!

Uthsava murthy means, a miniature of the main deity.  Most of the Kerala temples have got their own elephants.  During Vaikkaththu Ashtami festival, the elephants from the surrounding temples too join here. We see around 7 elephants in the picture.  12 elephant procession is conducted on the 12th day, I was told.

Ankush for controlling the elephant!

I noticed the ankush with every mahout but they were not raised/used, even once when I was watching.  I saw many policemen inside and outside the temple.  The policemen who were on duty inside the temple were wearing dhoti and angavastra with a neck band which had a 'Police' tag! They were very polite while asking the devotees to move on!

Most of the people of the town never cooked at home during the festival days, it seems.  The prominent people of the town fed people in different places every afternoon.  Typical temple festival! Once my relatives lost me in the crowd...I was going behind the elephants with the camera and they were worried worried for sometime! I must go back again and watch the 12th day festival of Vaikkaththu Ashtami next year!

Wordless Wednesday!

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Edited to add on 19.1.12: Please don't forget to read my friend, Ugich Konithari's beautiful lines in the comment section! I am overwhelmed!

Noiseless, Pollutionless Holiday Story, Part III - Green, Green, Everywhere, At Munnar!

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This post about our trip to Munnar, is due for the past few months! This is my first post for the new year!

When I said 'Green, green, everywhere', I meant it...you can see the proof in the pictures below!

This is the bungalow, called Nettikudi bungalow, where we stayed! The picture was taken from the backside road, when we went for an evening walk!

View from the Bungalow!

Partial view of the bungalow! The picture of the giant butterfly was taken from the left side roof of this bungalow!

Full view of the bungalow! We loved this secluded place without any interference from the outside world...heaven! Not even street lights were there in the evening!

We went to Munnar, after visiting Aathoor.  I had written two posts on the above title and posted a couple of pictures also from Aathoor and Munnar here.  We didn't visit the normal touristy places (visited Top slip and Kannan Devan tea factory, that is all!) but stayed at the bungalow we had booked and enjoyed the surroundings! Sometimes it was drizzling and quite cold but not unbearably cold. We went for long walks on the narrow roads which were meant for just the jeeps which were taking the labourers for plucking the tea leaves and taking the bags of the day's collection of the plucked leaves in the evening!

This is an old typical English Bungalow, which was built in 1927,  for the Tea Estate Managers.  You can read more about this bungalow with pictures, here!

They have got 3 rooms with old type furniture with clean linen.  Our family and our friend's family took two rooms.  One had renovated bathroom and one had old type bathroom...! The dining room had good cutlery and the food (vegetarian) was quite good! We still remember the taste of the Tea, they served there, which was very good! The staff were polite and seemed to work there from many years from generations! Have a look at their kitchen:

They use this choolha even now! They had a huge boiler in the corner too, which supplied water to the rooms! The light switches were of the old type, in the kitchen... round black one!

This old picture was there at the reception!

The beautiful dining room!

The front lawn of the bungalow! My husband and his friend were exercising here in the mornings!

The 'walking' bird!

The bird in the above picture was walking all the time! I saw it flying only to the beam of the building and started walking there again with a funny sound!

I didn't see much birds except the bulbuls, some humming birds and koyals! Majority were bulbul birds.  I am very fond of them and feel them like members of our family, the reason is here!

Now, to the sceneries! Nature at its best!

 

It was drizzling most of the time.  We saw these clouds in the mornings and evenings and sometimes, in daytime too!

Green, green...!

It looks as if the clouds bit the mountain partially!

Again, the clouds, mountains and valley!

Tea pluckers!

We saw these wild elephants on our way to Top Slip. 

We don't have good photographs from 'Top Slip', a beautiful place at Munnar.  It was cloudy or drizzling and the pictures were hazy.  Went for elephant rides.  Found a Jain hotel for lunch, where the food was quite good. Came back, played cards, had a good chat and slept comfortably! A typical holiday!

Now, have a look at a small clip of the video, we took it there! Click on the pictures to have a clear picture!

You can watch this video in higher quality on YouTube

Edited to add (11.1.12): The video was taken from the front side of the bungalow.  It starts from the narrow lane, which is the way to the building.  As I told you, it is situated in a remote area, pollutionless   area! At 1.26 mts. you can see a beautiful white patch in the right side top corner, which is a waterfall!