Friday, May 20, 2005

Jaidev

I am talking about Jaidev, the talended music director, well known for hum dono (main zindagi ka saath nibhataa, allah tero naam, abhi na jao chhodkar) and gharonda (do deewane shehar mein, ek akela is shahar mein).

Jaidev was a brilliant Sarod player. He was disciple of ustad Ali Akbar Khan. He entered the hindi film industry as an assistant for S. D. Burman. Later he started composing on his own. He became famous because of hum dono in 1961. Though he doesn't have a large number of films to his name, his works are really beautiful; a class apart.

In 1963 he composed music for the movie kinare kinare. The songs jab game ishq satataa hain and dekh li teri khudai can be found on musicindiaonline.com. On the same site, all the songs from the movie gaman are available. Raat bhar aapaki yaad aati rahee sung by Chhaaya Ganguly is a personal favourite. Missing on the site is the beautiful song raat bhi hai kuchh madhdham madhdham sung by Lata (don't know movie name). Jaidev was a true genious and remains one of my all time favourite composers.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Writing style

I never liked my own style of writing. Just when I was trying to figure out what were the problems with it, I came across some other blogs. At least a few simple things I need to follow. Top of them is writing complete sentences! Casual sentences with only verbs, or only adjectives seriously hamper the flow of an article. At least that thing will be corrected from this post onwards.

In Marathi, I love the writing style of Govind Talvalkar, Anant Bhalerao and Vyankatesh Madgulkar. Both Talvalkar and Bhalerao were editors of renowned Marathi dailies. Their styles are simple, but still almost impossible to imitate. Madgulkar also had a very simple and effective style. According to PuLa, when you are reading any of Madgulkar's works, you feel as if he is talking to you. And that's where the success of his style lies.

Another stylish author is VaPu Kale. Though I am not a fan of him (in fact, I dislike him) his style is definitely one of the best. Few other names that should be added to list of stylish writers are Shirish Kanekar, Chi. Vi. Joshi and Mangala Godbole.(I can remember only these name right now). Among other editors whom I have read, Arun Tikekar and Madhav Gadkari are quite impressive.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Dan Brown

Like most of the people, first I read the Da-Vinci code. It was marvellous! Naturally, I started looking for his other works. Laid hands on 'deception point'. This book is also quite nice. But then 'digital fortress' happened. Utterly hopeless one. Reluctantly got "angels and demons". (Now, if I can spend time on those third-rate Sidney Sheldon novels, why not angels and demons? ) Boring and lengthy.

But then, as an author Brown's progress is remarkable. From a terrible book like digital fortress, he's travelled up to the Da-Vinci code. Heard that next Robert Langdon book is in pipeline.

R. K. Narayn

Currently am under the influence of Malgudi.

Sunday Night

Just listened to a sarod recital on AIR in ravivasariya sangit sabha. After that tam songs are coming on FM. Ahem!