MR & MRS RATHOD - Great Hosts

Hello friends,

22nd June 2008 (Sunday) once again was a musical day for all of us. We all assembled first at the house of Padmanabhan from where we shifted to that of our hosts - Mr and Mrs Rathod. You will recall Mrs Sandhya Rathod had invited all of us for this musical gathering on the 14th itself when we had our last session at Padmanabhan's house. The occasion now was the "marriage anniversary" of the Rathods. Many Happy Returns of the Day to the Rathods echoed all those assembled there.

Chandar rang me up that morning to inform that he will not be in a position to join as his relatives had landed in Hyderabad only the day before. We missed them badly for sure. So also we missed many more - Sunder Rajan, Hasan Ali, Sanjay Kulkarni and Mrs. Kshama Kulkarni and Dhirendranathji and his wife. Mahmood Hafeez, a close friend of Sanjay Kulkarni made a surprise entry which was pleasant too. He is endowed with hordes of knowledge of all the yesteryears music. He is however better known and more endowed for his 'finger-nail sketches' and also drawing etc. While listening to the songs, he was too pre-occupied with sketching figures and names etc. with his finger nails. All such 'creations' on that day were neatly collected by Sweetie (spelled correctly?) a.k.a. Deepika Rathod (the talented singer daughter of the Rathods). This girl Sweety (may be this time spelled correctly) sat through the entire day not leaving the musical hall at all. She sang too. Subramaniam sang some very melodious songs of Talat Mahmood and Rafi Sahab. True to his style, he sings from his heart - totally immersed. NAGMA WOHI HAI NAGMA KE JISE, ROOH SUNE AUR ROOH SUNAYE fits in perfectly on Subramaniam.

NR Padmanabhan, Srinivasan, Padmanabhan, self, Mahmood, Mrs. Seshu, Deepika all sang to one's heart's content. Every now and then Mrs. Sandhya Rathod was serving us soft drinks or tea with snacks and sweets. She was however with us throughout since she did not have any left over work in the kitchen. She had the lunch ready even before we had all reached their house. Sanjay Deshpande, Mrs. Subhada Deshpande and Sachin Deshpande joined us too, though very late. They joined us when most of us had already had our lunch. Soon after the lunch break got over, we had prepared the ANTAKSHRI teams once again. Padmanabhan led one team and was richer in musical might what with all the ladies being in his team. However Deepika saved it all for Sanjay Deshpande who led the other team by joining the 'younger lot' group. Srinivasan, N.R. Padmanabhan were with Sanjay Deshpande. Crossing several bottle-necks in the form of the ever-dreaded MUKHADA-ANTARA round, finally Padmanabhan's team scraped through, but just barely. Actually we could not decide who the ultimate winner was as it was time for me to leave (around 4 pm then). I had thought earlier that my train timing was of 4 p.m. but that morning when I checked up my tickets, I found the train would leave at 5.15 p.m. Hence we could extend the session right upto 4.00 p.m. Subramaniam however had left early as there were guests coming to his house for lunch. Mahmoodbhai also sang two songs. There was a sudden demand for the RAFI SAHAB's song books. I am happy to inform you all that some books promised to some of you have reached Hyderabad and I will be collecting them in a day or two. Samarjit could not come and we missed discussing the visit of Mubarak Begumji. I will give a separate mail on that subject which is the 'on-going' programme.

Mrs. Meenakshi and Padmanabhan brought a lovely gift for the RATHODS on this happy occasion - on behalf of all of us.

The next programme is however a bigger one - that of MUBARAK BEGUMJI's visit. I talked to Chandar and he has agreed for us all to have a deep discussion on this topic this Friday at his Office at 5.30 p.m. Let us all meet there to finalise this once-a-lifetime programme. I am sending by a separate mail later tonight the 'tentative programme' as chalked out so far, for information of all our members.

So long till then, keep the 'musical sessions' going on. We will have the next one soon after the programme of Mubarak Begumji. I will speak to most of you in the course of the next two days also.

Ok then, bye bye.