Friday, October 14, 2016

Panna Dhai पन्ना धाय the name synonymous to loyality

पन्ना धाय Panna Dhai .does this name sounds familiar to you?  Just uttering this name "Panna" resonates within us what we call as Passion, love, duty, the greatest बलिदान BALIDAAN sacrifice! (In English, I don’t find good words equivalent to words of Hindi? May be due to my education?). 
Thus without going into dictionary, the word Panna is now has a meaning in our mind. This word does not need any dictionary in India… If one thinks that he or she belongs to India (Am I saying anything wrong ? any way we live in a democracy.  that means we are happy to disagree with thought of others-read fellow citizen) Panna means Panna, no other definition. 
The highest form of कर्तव्य duty, balidaan, faithfulness loyality. All embodied into one spirit which is known as Panna Dhai. The dhai maa of Uday Singh ji of Mewar.
If you are on this side of River Sindhu (Indus) then there is no need to tell what Panna is? It is like showing a Deepak to the SUN(?). सूर्य को दीपक दिखाना ? 
I saw the dadi sa दादी सा of TV serial Balika Badhu (बालिका बधु) playing the role of Panna Dhai in a play at their school, KV Jaitsar. And she is the perfect face to symbolize the Panna Dhai, as it comes to my mind.
A lady, working for Rajput kings, have to be loyal to the king (patron). She had a son (actually the history is silent about other details) the name often mentioned as Chandan.  When the Rana Sanga was killed. Few years there was problem. Vikramaditya son of Sangram Singh or Rana Sanga was made the ruler of Mewar. But due to temperament of vikramaditya, loyals of mewar revolted and kept him under house arrest type of thing. One of his relative was made the guardian, Banvir (a distant cousin). He assassinated the Vikramaditya the elder brother of Uday Singh. He then tried to kill child Uday, who was the next heir to throne of Chittaurgarh, Mewar. चितौड़गढ़ मेवाड़ 
People in Palace immediately informed Panna Dhai about this, She hid the child-Uday Singh, who was sleeping. With the help of loyal people she sent Uday outside of palace to safety. When Banvir triumphed and full of anger after killing Aditya, rushed towards the chamber of Uday and aksed where is Uday?. Panna dhai without uttering any word signaled towards a cot, on which a boy was sleeping. The Banvir immediately killed the sleeping boy. The Panna Dhai stood there without being able to cry for death of her own son. As a duty bound राजपूतानी RAJPUTANI she had changed cloths of her son and placed robes of prince on her son. She Sacrificed her son in place of UDAY SINGH. She immediately left the palace and took the young child Uday to several places seeking refuge. Afraid of the BANVIR several chieftains’ refused to save them. Then as it is said at Kumbhalmer, or Kumbhalgarh, The local Jain merchant gave them refuge and help. The Uday lived there in disguise, till he gained education (training). At right time many chieftains combined and recognized Uday Singh as their heir to throne of Mewar.  Today whole of Mewar royal family and we Indians also must respect her dutifulness and be gratefull to her honesty. Due to her couarge only we were able to get Maharana Pratap, for which Mewar held their head high.....

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

#NationalPoetryDay, desire of a flower, Status of Indian Literature? Sanskrit?

                         







These words are echoed in my memory ever since school days. There is a long tradition in our History of literature of such high standard of creations. This is a style of poetry often called as छायावाद। 
But this particular poetry is full of devotion, patriotism and a kind of hammer on the accepted norms in society. The poet asks in form of the desire of a flower. What is the wish of a flower? does any one tries to know before plucking and offering it to anyone as per their wish. What if flower does not want to be decorated in the hairs of a Beauty queen? what if flower does not wish to be offered at the statue of God? 
Thus the poet hits at our conscience. What as a human we are doing?
As the human race began to explore this vast earth from the days of hunter-gatherers, cave dwellers and then to settlements, from there to small habitations that converted into basic villages, in our context we can write Vedic period then (Pre-Vedic and post Vedic??) later the different Janapad and MahaJanpad. Those grew into Nationalities- Magadh, Kalinga, Kekaya, Gandhaar, etc to name few. Then there is a period when we know the time by the names of dynasties?? Gupta, Nand, Maurya, Saakya, Kushan, Hun, Hoysala, Rashtrakut, Pallav, Pandya, Chola, Chera, Pal, Chandel etc.
Later Ancient India, Medieval India, etc.
But in all these ages the most integral part of Human life has been language, literature. Without which there could not have been any kind of communication.
What I mean is that in a nation where the poetry or the rhymes have been evolved many millenniums BC, yes-before Christ, then where our poetry stands TODAY?
Read it in light of the hastag? #NationalPoetryDay? 
Are they pointing towards the Indian Poetry or they are pointing towards the poetry brought from an alien country to India? We should see our Indian literature in light of the development of literature in other nations in world. Where was the literature of those countries when our ancient poets, created such a rich treasure. But now a days people will turn blind when name of #Sanskrit comes. Since most of the ancient works were in Sanskrit therefore those who don’t know Sanskrit cry loud and try to project our Sanskrit as something backward, and cry praise for English?? Irony. When English was born? But do they (people who breathe English) believe that any other language will not take place of English? Chinese or French or German, Japanese? People speaking these languages do not read write or speak English?? Even English of USA and UK are very different from each other.
Sanskrit in this land has played a role of unification of many cultures, faiths, traditions, local languages, philosophy, Music, arts, Architecture etc. How can we forget Sanskrit? It is our Root. Root to many Indian Languages. But due to some invaders and rulers we have been cut off from our roots. Thus new generation do not know about our great Indian rich Literature. Neither they study in school nor they listen or learn in their homes. The past and present generation is to be blamed for that.
If ruling parties can decide that there should be reservation on basis of caste then they could have given the first place to Sanskrit among all our Indian languages. But politicians fought over languages also.
Abhinavgupta went to Kashmir and wrote in Sanskrit. Adi Sankaracharya from Keral went around India and communicated with all and created his treasures in Sanskrit. I mean in those times most of the works were written in Sanskrit. Thus Sanskrit was the easiest mode of communication. What is status of Sanskrit today?
Time immemorial in India we have been hearing about वेद Ved or Veda and वैदिक साहित्य या काव्य Vedic literature. There are four Ved. Rigved ऋग्वेद  is the compilation of the hymns dedicated to various kinds of rituals etc.
मानव बोल चाल के लिए या भावों को प्रगट करने के लिए ध्वनियों को विभिन्न शब्दों तथा वाक्यों के द्वारा ही प्रयोग करता है. 
और यही शब्द स्थान परिवेश संस्कृति और काल के कारण विभिन्न भाषओं का रूप ले लेते हैं
भारत में हम व्यास का नाम सुनते आये  हैं ।  
व्यास भास वाल्मीकि विशाखदत्त शूद्रक आदि प्राचीन नाम स्मरण हो आते हैं | महाभारत गीता रामायण आदि का नाम सुनते आये हैं । 
ved are the oldest literature known in the human history. let anybody accept or reject this. Time they say is about 2 millennium BC? How does it matter for we Indian. We had a tradition of Shruti  श्रुति . A rich tradition of oral knowledge, as we grew up in our homes lots of legends are told by our grandmother and grandfather and later by our relatives, neighbourhood etc. There we don't ask any kind of proof? but since these kind of exchanges continue in our families and in society and thus this kind of rich bank of knowledge remains and continues to remain alive from generation to generation. All that is in form of SHRUTI. श्रुति  स्मृति. Smriti is another kind of literature. First what people hear and then what they remember and reproduce is called as  स्मृति Smriti? am i right?
thus there are Four वेद Ved, उपनिषद Upnishad, Smriti, पुराण puran etc all are forms of our rich literary treasure. There are Shusruti शुश्रुति .


The Vedic texts were orally composed and transmitted, without the use of script, in an unbroken line of transmission from teacher to student that was formalized early on. This ensured an impeccable textual transmission superior to the classical texts of other cultures; it is, in fact, something like a tape-recording.... Not just the actual words, but even the long-lost musical (tonal) accent (as in old Greek or in Japanese) has been preserved up to the present.

— Michael Witzel[5]
Ancient Indians developed techniques for listening, memorization and recitation of their knowledge, in schools called Gurukul, while maintaining exceptional accuracy of their knowledge across the generations.[28] Many forms of recitation or pathas were designed to aid accuracy in recitation and the transmission of the Vedas and other knowledge texts from one generation to the next. All hymns in each Veda were recited in this way; for example, all 1,028 hymns with 10,600 verses of the Rigveda was preserved in this way; as were all other Vedas including the Principal Upanishads, as well as the Vedangas. Each text was recited in a number of ways, to ensure that the different methods of recitation acted as a cross check on the other. Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat summarizes this as follows:[29]
  • Samhita-patha: continuous recitation of Sanskrit words bound by the phonetic rules of euphonic combination;
  • Pada-patha: a recitation marked by a conscious pause after every word, and after any special grammatical codes embedded inside the text; this method suppresses euphonic combination and restores each word in its original intended form;
  • Krama-patha: a step-by-step recitation where euphonically-combined words are paired successively and sequentially and then recited; for example, a hymn "word1 word2 word3 word4...", would be recited as "word1word2 word2word3 word3word4 ...."; this method to verify accuracy is credited to Vedic sages Gargya and Sakalya in the Hindu tradition and mentioned by the ancient Sanskrit grammarian Panini (dated to pre-Buddhism period);
  • Krama-patha modified: the same step-by-step recitation as above, but without euphonic-combinations (or free form of each word); this method to verify accuracy is credited to Vedic sages Babhravya and Galava in the Hindu tradition, and is also mentioned by the ancient Sanskrit grammarian Panini;
  • Jata-pāṭhadhvaja-pāṭha and ghana-pāṭha are methods of recitation of a text and its oral transmission that developed after 5th century BCE, that is after the start of Buddhism and Jainism; these methods use more complicated rules of combination and were less used.
These extraordinary retention techniques guaranteed an accurate Śruti, fixed across the generations, not just in terms of unaltered word order but also in terms of sound.[28][30]That these methods have been effective, is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the Ṛgveda (ca. 1500 BCE).[29]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas
The Rigveda Samhita is the oldest extant Indic text.[76] It is a collection of 1,028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10,600 verses in all, organized into ten books (Sanskrit: mandalas).[77] The hymns are dedicated to Rigvedic deities.[78]
The books were composed by poets from different priestly groups over a period of several centuries from roughly the second half of the 2nd millennium BC (the early Vedic period), starting with the Punjab (Sapta Sindhu) region of the northwest Indian subcontinent.[79] The Rigveda is structured based on clear principles – the Veda begins with a small book addressed to Agni, Indra and other gods, all arranged according to decreasing total number of hymns in each deity collection; for each deity series the hymns progress from longer to shorter ones; yet, the number of hymns per book increases; finally, the meter too is systematically arranged from jagati and tristubh to anustubh and gayatri as the text progresses.[60] In terms of substance, the nature of hymns shift from praise of deities in early books to Nasadiya Suktawith questions such as, "what is the origin of the universe?, do even gods know the answer?",[75] the virtue of Dāna(charity) in society,[80] and other metaphysical issues in its hymns.[81]
There are similarities between the mythology, rituals and linguistics in Rigveda and those found in ancient central Asia, Iranian and Hindukush (Afghanistan) regions.[82]


The Samaveda Samhita[83] consists of 1549 stanzas, taken almost entirely (except for 75 mantras) from the Rigveda.[50][84] The Samaveda samhita has two major parts. The first part includes four melody collections (gāna, गान) and the second part three verse “books” (ārcika, आर्चिक).[84] A melody in the song books corresponds to a verse in the arcikabooks. Just as in the Rigveda, the early sections of Samaveda typically begin with hymns to Agni and Indra, but shift to the abstract. Their meters shift also in a descending order. The songs in the later sections of the Samaveda have the least deviation from the hymns derived from the Rigveda.[84]
In the Samaveda, some of the Rigvedic verses are repeated more than once.[85] Including repetitions, there are a total of 1875 verses numbered in the Samaveda recension translated by Griffith.[86] Two major recensions have survived, the Kauthuma/Ranayaniya and the Jaiminiya. Its purpose was liturgical, and they were the repertoire of the udgātṛor "singer" priests.[87]


from above i wanted to stress that Kavya काव्य existed in our India way back from the period of Ved. But singing and dancing must have been in existence long before ved were created and these are the integral part of human life. But here we are talking about the written form or in form of a structure. That can be referred as Literature, it gives a well structured form to poetry. 
After the Ved came the Mahabharat, Geeta, Ramayan etc. all such things were in form of verses in Sanskrit and in other languages also in India. 




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hindi-language_poets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_poets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_poetry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ancient_Indian_poets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Indian_poets


Thursday, September 15, 2016

57 years of Doordarshan- a journey DD

I knew it as Doordarshan but now it is known as DD. There are various channels of DD at present, DDNational, DDsports, DDNews, DDIndia and DDBharati. 
It has been a journey of 57 years for doordarshan. I don’t know who coined this name for our National TV, but it was perfect choice for national TV.
Often we used to call it as Sanjay ka kaliyugi avatar. lat; dk dfy;qxh vorkjA
egkHkkjr esa lat; dh nwj n`’fV dk o.kZu vk;k gSA
@DD_National twitter handle of Doordarshan twitted these photographs

Then through the years we started liking DD. But we hated it also so much so that its name was coined as #dkoV ds fy, [ksn gS  
In those days it used to happen on almost all Sunday movies that this caption was shown in middle of scenes. 
That time all of us used to curse the doordarshan. Sometimes during telecast of cricket match if this caption came, all students cried loudly.


Luckily, we carried over that period and passed on to a new chapter when there was a Metro channel came. It was for two hour special channel on Doordarshan. Then in 1982 the INSAT thing happened and we got a National Telecast in a real sense. Our late Prime Minister Smt Indira Gandhi ji asked the Capt. Rakesh Sharma when he was in the spacecraft above in the sky, that how does our India looks like? He without any hesitation replied that lkjs tgkaW ls vPNk Sare Jahan se Accha. To this reply Smt Indira Gandhi also laughed. All this happened in front of our eyes. Whole nation enjoyed. Asian, National games-Bhartiyam, CHOGM, NAM, SAARC all started happening on the screen in our houses. Nothing of that sort ever happened before. All this happened in COLORs, earlier all we saw was in black and white screen.

click to see the video
In 1982 TV came to my house. There was this program on Immortal melodies Immortal Men. All stalwarts came on screen, Rajkumari ji, Noorjahan came to India and sang vokt ns dgka gS rw nqfu;ka rsjh tokWa gS Great Naushad sahib conducted the song. As it seems, that time stood still.
Earlier when there was only one TV in whole colony, all children used to hang on to the window of that house. Those who were close to that family were lucky and saw the TV from inside of the room. But I was a weak child, I got the chance to hang in the window iron bars and sometimes I was not even given that opportunity also by the mighty boys of our colony.

Those were bad times for me. I used to think why this TV is not in my house? But then how could we ask such questions to our parents? We did not have tape recorder, not even a camera? But yes we had a Radio. It was a big one named as PIE. It was from UK I think? My father was in Indian Navy. He was in the team that brought INS Vikrant to India. That time my father might have bought that PIE Radio, I think?
Later we used to walk for 1 km from type one in IIT Kanpur campus to type two to watch Sunday movie in house of Mathurs. I am gratefull to Mathur family. They did permit us to watch TV sitting in their drawing room. It was a great thing on their part in those days. Yes it was a great emotional thing. I had been scolded many times in some houses, as to not to touch those sofa covers. While watching TV, in ecstasy sometimes I forgot my poor existence and might have put my hand on sofa cover that gave wrinkles. That was enough to get a scolding from the lady of house. It was quite OK for me. It was not a big price to pay in lieu of watching that idiot box?? Isn’t it? 

But time passed on From 1976 to 1982. But in this journey i came to know lot of great souls of India. Our Bharat Ratna a great soul, a Divine Singer Smt MSSubbulakhsmi one such persona. Smt Rukmini Devi Arundale, Kamala Devi Chatopadhyay, Popul Jayakar, Kanak Rele Mrinalini Sarabhai, Ranjobati Chaki Sarkar, Jhaveri Sisters etc all became know to me

Even in 1982 many households did not own a TV. 
In villages, where i visited during summer and winter vacations not many had even a Transistor. Few enthusiastic youths and few landlords had Transistors. They had nice colorfull covers, nicely woven by the ladies of households. The cricket match was the prime objective for transistors among young. News/Samachar and some film songs were the attraction for rich people. 
Later even rickshaw pullers also had transistors nicely tied on to their handles or specially designed hangers on cycle or rickshaws. In bus also i saw good arrangements were made to hang Transistors. Transistor was must in dowry in those times.

Even during the time of Reshma ji, she did not know much about Radio. After lots of reluctance she was allowed to sing on Radio.

But When in 1982 TV came to our house our sensibilities changed. Prior to that we were depending on Dharmayug, Hindustan, Illustrated weekly, Kadambini, Navneet
Sarita, chandamama, Amar chitra katha, parag, chandan or nandan? gudiya, for various needs of Knowledge, entertainment etc. 
Later i also had Vama, Femina, Frontline, Reader Digest and few other magazines for my reading. 

I used to read books of Gaura Pant who was famous as Shivani ji, Acharya Chatursen, Premchand, AmritLal Nagar etc.
Newspapers were also there- Hindustan Times, Times of India, Aajtak, Dainik Jagran. Smt Shanta Sarebjit Singh, Smt Anees Jung were writers whom i read in these news paper.

Why that was called as idiot Box?
Through Doordarshan really i got darshan of far off places. I got to see films in Malayalam, Tamil, KannadaGujarati, Rajasthani, Marathi, Manipuri, Bengali, Punjabi, Assamese, Telugu, Bhojpuri, Oriya,  i doubt whether there was any film in Kashmiri? back then. Till 1990 i kept watching doordarshan at my home.
I saw Sagar Sangamam, Sindhu Bhairavi, Agni Nakshatram, But i liked the most film Sankarabharnam. 
Then there was my fav star a super star most creative person i have ever seen after V Shantaram ji was NTR NT Rama Rao. 
All of his films shown on Doordarhsan were superb. Daanveer Karna, where he wore most artistic Shoes, and walking in the compound of pandava, he placed foot on the floor. The camera NTR used in that film was most innovative. Sita Rama Raju. where he played role of the fighter. Then there are many such films where NTR played role of Krishna, Vishnu etc. All films were artistically superb, Each Frame of his films were like paintings. Just as most of the films of V Shantaram ji were like a Painted canvas. He was a creator of art. I don't remember how many films were shown on DD in Telugu, but most of them i saw were of NTR. 
Then there were Tamil films, Shivaji Ganeshan, and MGR etc. The film in which Shivaji played a mythological? role where he was fighting with his own son. But he did not know that fact. later somewhere during fight or after that he was told that fact.
Then there was a film in which heroine was staying in her sister's house and during absence of her sister she went to her bedroom. But in Night the hero came and unforgettable thing happened. Hero thought that lady was his wife.
Then in one film the heroine is a district collector and the hero is a simple govt employee. The films of Padmini, the gem of Travancore sisters. this dance sequence where i think MGR was there, and went to see the dance of heroine in disguise, as if nobody could see them. There were so many films. few were of Vaijayantimala in Tamil also. Padmini played a role of a dancer.
There was this film in which i saw Jayaprada and sridevi together. (am i correct?)
The famous film in which Kamal Hassan worked with Jayaprada. He had some dance scenes.
Bombay i saw in Malayalam. But later it was also made in Hindi.
 











With the journey of Doordarshan i came to know about many stalwarts and GEMs of Indian Music. The Gauhar Jaan was the star of her times. She was a Super star celebrity of her times compared to present times celebrity, she was more highly paid and commercially successful.
Nati Binodini was one another star theatre personality in Kolkatta.

There were few good programs on our rich tradition of Music also. Smt Naina Devi ji was the permanent feature in many such programs on Doordarshan. There were many such vidushis. Like Sidheswari Devi, Girja Devi, Rasoolan Bai, Asgari Bai, later Begum Akhtar became the star attraction on Doordarshan also.                             There was Shobha Gurtu, Usha Uthup though apposite genre of music but both captivated audiences through their music, Doordarshan telecasted their programs.

Sunday and Saturday were full of events. Illa Arun brought one program on singing and acting. She was good at both. Neena Gupta also made some programs. Shweta Shetty(menon?) one pop star.
But most captivating were films on sundays. I was glued to screen on these days. Often i had watch without sound in late midnight programs. As everybody used to sleep thus i had to see silent screen. Later my younger brother attached a device through which i could listen from ear plugs.
I was hooked to Meena Kumari, Rekha, Waheeda Rehman Asha Parekh, Mumtaz, most amazing was Helen ji. She was a superb dancer. Vaijayanti Mala Bali, Nutan, were of from another great class.
Pakeezah, Umrao Jaan remained my favourite films.




All through school days i danced on this song- Tahre Rahiyo Banke Yaar Re of film Pakeezah. My class mates used to tell me that when they heard song inhi logon ne or this song of pakeezah on their radio they remembered me and my dance. that was connection of radio with me???
In primary school one song which was famous about me was Najar lagi raja tore bangle par. Smt Nalini Jayawant had danced i think on this song. Everytime this song came of radio people told me that they remembered me?? what a connection?

Tuesday, September 06, 2016

Uday Shankar interviewed by Shombhu Mitra

Uday Shankar Kalpana Part 3

Uday Shankar Kalpana Part 2

Kalpana - Full Movie

Uday Shankar Kalpana Part 1

Uday Shankar Kalpana Part 1

Phoolwanti Episode 9

Phoolwanti Episode8

Phoolwanti Episode8

Phoolwanti Episode 7

Phoolwanti Episode 6

Phoolwanti Episode 5

Phoolwanti Episode 4

Phoolwanti Episode 3