Ghazals...

I passed out my BTech and joined MTech at REC Warangal. People used to call me/my room as radio station as the songs were always playing. What a coincidence my roomate Maruti Prasad ALSO hated songs while reading!! Story repeat I promised him that I would not put a big volume of music, he agreed but he was never convinced that listening to music will do any good to him so he started to studying in a different room with his friend. I wasnt happy about this though. The first thing everybody used to listen to in the morning was ARR's Maa Tujhe Salaam. It was fun then. I used to get a handsome money as my stipend. Other than paying off mess bills and others I used save bunch of money and guess what this is money and this is the time I built my great collection of all good movies. Ofcourse all tapes which are obsolete now. But I have a history with each of the tape so I never felt like discarding them even though I have CD version of them now.

This is the time I first listened to Ghazals. I have a funny anecdote in this regard. Our house owner in Bhainsa is a lawyer and he had his family in Warangal and my brother Mohan asked me to call him once when he is in town. So that way, our acquaintance grew and I went to their place couple of times and he had 2 daughthers one studying in 7 and the other in 5 classes. He requested little help in giving them some Math lessons. So I was visiting them often to help the girls out in their Math. His wife had a great collection of the cassettes and duly compliemented her on that. And I asked her if I can borrow Marasim - Jagjit/Gulzar album. That is the first time I really listened to ghazals. I liked them with Gulzar's occassional shayari in between songs. I had actually listened to Anoop Jalota in my childhood but I didnt have that maturity then. Now I am big fan of ghazals. Jagjit Singh comes first in the list of Ghazal singers. I have a huge collection of his songs. Of the great singers, I have like Jagjit/ Anoop Jalota/ Ghulam Ali/ Talat Aziz/ Abida Parveen/Asha and many others.

Talking of Anoop Jalota, I remember listening to him for the first time when I was a boy of may be 9/10 years. There was this temple near my house which used to play Bhajans in the evening and I remember "Aisi Lagan Lagi Lagan"- awesome were songs. I didnt make any sense meaning-wise, and ofcourse even today not much I can make out of them, but they always remind me of my childhood. He is aptly called "Bhajan Samrat". I feel his voice is best suited for Bhajans.