SPB – live!!

Friday evening turned out to be an occasion to be filed into the annals of my memories. We had the coveted opportunity to see and listen to SPB singing, live. SPB aka SP Balasubramanyam is a house-hold name down South of the Vindhyas and it would be wrong to say that he is unknown to our northern brethren… his playback for Salman Khan’s earlier movie songs are evergreen… his voice suited Salman to the T… think of mere rang me… from MPK or saathiya tune kya kiya… from Love or pehla pehla pyaar hai…from HAHK and you’ll know why I say so.

Well, I digress… this was the occasion for the inauguration of a play-ground and unveiling of some challenging projects to develop our locality; the local councilor together with the health minister for state had arranged to have SPB perform with his orchestra team. And much to our delight we found that this team was the very same as in the Kannada musical show on E-TV, ‘ede tumbi haaDuvenu’ 🙂 with stalwarts like Praveen Godkhindi on the flute, Venu on the tabla, Arun Kumar on the drums etc. Further, to compliment SPB, we found, ’twas to be Archana Udupa, one of the most promising singers on the Kannada scene today. Additionally, the chorus team was excellent too.

It was an evening to cherish, listening to some of my favourite songs being rendered by the accomplished singer himself in his mellifluous voice, sitting just a few feet away, I was thrilled… the songs selected formed a delectable collection… maamaravellO kOgile ellO… kannaDa naaDina jeevanadi…joteyali jote joteyali from Geeta… lOkave heLida maatidu from Premaloka… his award winning song from Shankarabharanam…mere rang me from MPK… naguva nayana… aMku DoMku daari byaaDa from Aptamitra…bhale bhale ceMdada ceMduLLi from Amrutavarshini…tere mere beech me from Ek duje ke liye…haMge kuNirO hiMge kuNirO from jOgi…and some more…he finally wrapped up with another gem… haaDu saMtOShakke…from Geeta again. As fillers we had the supporting group singing numbers which were equally good. With the matching soulful to tempestuous accompaniment of the flute, drums and other instruments, the ears were enthralled.

What makes the man special is not just his mesmerizing singing… it is also the amazing sense of humility and modesty that he maintains to this day… as he himself revealed, it has now been 40 years that he’s been in the industry! Add to that, the wide spectrum of languages he has sung in and the numerous movies he has acted in… amazing, I would say! The extent of the enjoyment he derived from his singing was evident from the camaraderie he shared with his co-singers and troupe; and his sense of humour came to the fore when he playfully blocked the way of his wife after she was felicitated, who being shy of the limelight wanted to escape back stage 🙂 This was a rare occasion when we actually got to see his wife, who otherwise being camera-shy prefers to stay away from the flashlights, I suppose . Time and again, he thanked the crowd and Kannadigas for the honour, love and respect shown to him… by ‘adopting him, a nomad, as the son of their soil’ he said.

Finally, even as Archana and another guy were getting whistles for ellO jOgappa nin aramane… a white innova zoomed away and soon we realized that SPB had made his silent exit. The crowd trooped back homewards… though the hour was late, the hearts and souls were trilling with the 3 hour- musical extravaganza they had been witness to…

the festive spirit…

Yes, it’s the festive season alright. Being in the IT industry means your festive season gets defined by your clients! With Christmas and New Year round the corner, cubicles round the office are empty with people taking the 2 weeks off for a much needed break and vacation. With no clients to answer to, they can afford to do this.

It’s pretty much the same in our office too… and to coincide with the festive season, we’ve been having some fun activities as well. One of these was the ‘jazz-up your cubicles’ activity – a competitive fun activity for the various project groups representing a particular geography. The project teams had to choose a theme and accordingly decorate and deck-up their cubicles. Ours being the air-travel domain, we decided to jazz-up our bays as an airport area and an airplane. And it turned out to be a highly spirited and well-appreciated fun performance.

Alongside this was played the game of secret-angel. All of us were acquainted with this game, having played it at some point in time – in school/ college. Now the scene was our work-place… and this too got underway very professionally – with a program written to randomly choose secret angels and their mortals! 😀 (what else can you expect from a bunch of IT folks?!)
Most of us got down to the task of knowing our mortals better, creating fake email IDs and sending mysterious emails 🙂 A frustrated few, whose angels were probably too lazy to do any investigation, mailed the project group beseeching their angels to wake up and be heard! This went on for a week after which we were supposed to stealthily drop our gifts into a box kept at a common area… and surprise of surprises! what did I see! by noon of the appointed day, there was quite a good collection of gifts in the box… frankly speaking I didn’t expect people to be enthusiastic about getting gifts et al… I was skeptical and said so… but I was proved wrong, nearly everyone, except for a few who were on leave and others who were the party-poopers-kind, had gotten gifts – some really big ones too.

Finally, it was time for a small celebration yesterday; after the judges came around and were floored by our aero-space-like decorated cubicles. Gifts were distributed; thank you’s and good wishes exchanged. All in all, a good time was had by all and there was bonhomie all around.

As for me, I had a double bonanza, courtesy my angel – a book and a CD with some wonderful collections of Asterix and CnH comics! 🙂
On that happy note, here’s wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season… did you say new years? well that’s for another post 😀

A dark gloomy night…

Remember me telling about those comprehension and paragraph-writing exercises in English that we had to take up in school? Well, the last time I went visiting my parents, I found those exercise sheets at home 😀
Here’s one of them, typed verbatim… 🙂
Mind you, this was when I was still in the 10th class and for these tests, we were hardly given any time to think, it was all written on the spur of the moment – so don’t you dare laugh at me!!

Note: The italicized words within brackets are my present thoughts as I read this 😀

Q. Describe a very dark night with a heavy downpour

My take on it:

It was 12 o’ click midnight (wow! perfect timing!) and it was raining heavily. All the people were asleep in their houses (where else do people sleep, anyway?). Everything was quiet and even the stray dogs were asleep. At such a time a shadow loomed up from behind a building (how imaginative!). It started walking towards the mansion which was at the end of the street. That was the biggest house and it belonged to Mr.Das (wonder why I decided to call him Mr.Das?!). Mr.Das and his family were out on a trip. Even the servants had taken leave and only the watchman was at the gate (how typically Hindi movie-ish!). He also had retreated into his shed because of the heavy downpour.

The shadow silently walked towards the gate. It climbed over the gate and sneaked up behind the watchman. The next moment there was a gasp and he was done with (looks to be a slick shadow! what’s with this shadow-shadow thingy anyway??!). The shadow walked to the porch and stealthily opened the door. It went inside without making a noise. It went straight to the room where the safe was kept. Even as it tried to open the safe, it could hear the rain lashing outside (looks like I suddenly remembered that the paragraph was supposed to be about a night with heavy downpour! :))).

At last the door of the safe opened and all the cash and jewellery went into the shadow’s small duffel bag. Having finished with its work it slowly made its way out of the house. It left the watchman lying as he was in the rain and started walking noiselessly towards its destination. Everything had gone right (obviously it had to, when I was writing it!).

The next morning the shadow once again loomed up behind the building (a pretty predictable shadow, don’t you think?!). But this time there was noise everywhere. The shouts were filled with panic and there were creases of worry on everybody’s face. Mr.Das was a broken man and it was all because of the shadow. Nobody knew about the shadow, except itself, and so it remained a shadowy secret (how pun-ny!!)

ROTFL!! Gosh! What stories I wrote!!
I’m gonna preserve this… will be useful to brighten up a gloomy day and remind me that still there are quite a few things in this world that are worth a few laughs! 🙂