An absolutely unforgettable melody…

For more than a quarter of a century, I travelled every month , at least once a month to the underserved areas of the state over a weekend. It started with the iconic cardiac surgeon Dr Ashok V Kanetkar asking me (when such a senior person asks you, does it become a question , a request, a requisition or is it a command?) to accompany his team into rural Marathwada once a month for seeing patients from the region who would gravitate towards Latur. That changed the course of my life and, in a way, helped me discover my role in Cardiology. I continued to travel even after he stopped, and actually expanded the coverage to few other districts, sharing my knowledge and training physicians in the area for 3 decades in Cardiology. It was a mutually beneficial exercise. One of these trips when I wasn’t driving myself (the route was nearly 1100 Km from my home back to my home) I took an overnight bus to Latur. I saw this movie (Willy nilly) on the video coach’s bumpy ride, mainly because the decibel level was just too high to fall asleep. The movie, Vansh, was a remake of a Mani Ratnam movie, Agni Nachathiram. The movie was quite a predictable Bollywood masala film, and I’ve even forgotten Amrish Puri’s villainy. The rest of the cast was pretty much nondescript and the plot utterly predictable. The music by Anand-Milind , Sons of the famous composer of yesteryears, Chitrgupt, was fabulous.

I just can’t forget the one song, an amazing duet between S P Balasubramaniam and Lata Mangeshkar. SPB needs no introduction to anyone with even a passing interest in Bollywood music, but it is fair to see BollyDaWood lost by conspiring against him. They got bleating goats from a neighboring failed state that exports donkeys and daughters (not necessarily in that order or value) to its greatest lender, and foisted them on the movie going audience as “Singers” by strong-arm tactics from the D Gang and by the simple trick of drowning the tortured vocal output of these progeny of Cacofonix in noise that passed for music. It also helped that the gang had all bases covered in shoving their choices down our throats. The exceptional talent of SPB was thus sought to be sidelined by BollyDaWood but of course the legend wasn’t going to genuflect in front of such crooks. He stepped aside, much to our sorrow and continued on his chosen path of soulful singing. The song with lyrics by Sameer is just awesome. Gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. https://youtu.be/0TRkuXsH5Ik

Not a movie I would have otherwise seen by my choosing, but I am happy I heard all the songs, which thanks to the much-too-loud Dolby system, have been etched into my memory.

Stay safe folks, the approaching winter will bring a new wave of colds, coughs and the flu. Stay healthy and happy