Showing posts with label Durga Jasraj. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Durga Jasraj. Show all posts
Antakshari hosts team up for a virtual revival of the much-loved '90s musical game show
8:07 AM
Brush up on those long-forgotten earworms as Antakshari hosts team up for a virtual revival of the much-loved '90s musical game show
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; April 24, 2020)
Ask any '90s kid and s/he will fondly tell you how Friday evenings were synonymous with Antakshari, the popular game show that aired on Zee TV. It's time to take a walk down memory lane as the much-loved show's hosts — Pallavi Joshi, Renuka Shahane, Durga Jasraj and Rajeshwari Sachdev — have joined forces to revive its magic in the virtual world.
As part of The Future of Life Festival on April 30, the four anchors will come together to discuss how creator Gajendra Singh brought a favourite Indian pastime to the small screen, and recount anecdotes about sharing the stage with longtime host Annu Kapoor. Of course, a chat about the game show is incomplete without a round of antakshari — the foursome will belt out their favourite numbers as they play the game online.
Joshi, who was associated with the series for four years, is thrilled about bringing back '90s nostalgia. "For Renuka, Durga, Rajeshwari and me, acting was the primary profession. Yet, it was music and our wacky sense of humour that brought us together and made us lifelong friends. I am eagerly looking forward to this session with my friends," she enthuses.
(From left) Joshi, Shahane, Sachdeva and Jasraj. Pic/Facebook
Door handles and dining plates..: What celebs do with awards
11:06 PM
Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (above) holds a Grammy he won in 1993 at his Jaipur residence; (below) Bhatt’s son Salil
Top artistes end up with many trophies in their lifetimes, leaving no room for them
Priyanka Dasgupta (THE TIMES OF INDIA; February 3, 2020)
On a December evening that marked the first anniversary of film-maker Mrinal Sen’s death, his Chicago-based son and daughter-in-law opened the door of their Kolkata flat to friends and well-wishers. In an act of unusual generosity, the duo decided to give away the maestro’s possessions, including some of the trophies awarded to him.
Apart from awards like Dadasaheb Phalke, Padma or National Awards, an increasing number of honours — medals, figurines, framed citations — are bestowed on doyens in the film industry. Consequently, celebrity households often run out of storage space and have to constantly devise ways to preserve their prizes.
While trophies awarded to director Buddhadeb Dasgupta were remodelled as door handles of a bungalow he once owned in Kolkata, another veteran director had melted medals to make dining plates. “Preservation of awards is tricky,” said Poulomi Bose, daughter of Dadasaheb Phalke winner Soumitra Chatterjee, admitting the actor — who worked in 14 Satyajit Ray movies since his debut in 1959 — receives 15-odd recognitions a month.
“My father doesn’t like to display or discard them since they’ve been given with love and respect. Many awards are kept in my mother’s almirah or father’s office. We’ve carved out space to keep some at the landing near the staircase. Now he even keeps some underneath his bed,” she said. That seems to be a popular choice of space. Mrinal Sen also kept some awards under his bed.
But Dasgupta, who has 32 National Awards including seven Golden Lotus Awards (Swarna Kamal) to his name, has used some of his trophies for interior decoration. “While some figurines were turned into door handles, others are mounted on the wall,” he said.
The director recounted how once at a party in Raj Kapoor’s house, he found the actor’s awards sitting atop a rotating disc. “I don’t attach much importance to awards and can’t think of displaying them in such a way,” said Dasgupta. His wife and director, Sohini, added she has even given away some awards to relatives and domestic help due to space crunch.
Many other celebrities are also reluctant to turn their residences into a museum of sorts with a “display of achievements” so they put their awards to other uses.
Film-maker Rituparno Ghosh had once narrated how a renowned director served him dinner on plates made from medals he had won and each plate had the year of the award inscribed on it. He had also mentioned that another director — like Dasgupta — had had his awards turned into door handles of his farmhouse.
The celebrities, however, agree on one thing — special awards do get special treatment. Mohan veena player Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt has kept the Grammy award that he received in 1993 in the drawing room of his Jaipur residence along with his Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Global India Music Award. “Initially, I kept my Grammy in an almirah. Later, I made a glass case as so many people wanted to see it. I also have a theft alarm at home,” said Bhatt.
Satyajit Ray’s family has kept the honorary Oscar that was awarded to him in 1992 and the Golden Lion for ‘Aparajito’ from the Venice Film Festival in a vault. But at home, no one is surprised with a trophy popping out of every cupboard.
With his son director Sandip Ray winning awards too, Sandip’s wife Lalita said storage was becoming a problem.
So sometimes the A-listers part with their awards as soon as they are received. “Carrying home framed citations is difficult since the glass is fragile. Sometimes, I give them away to students in the city I am performing in,” Bhatt told TOI.
Durga Jasraj, daughter of 90-year-old vocalist Pt Jasraj, said awards he won have been distributed to music schools across the globe. “Once when heavy artefacts were awarded to performers at a concert in Mumbai, a certain musician mentioned his humble home was too small to keep them. But the organisers took offence and banned the musician from performing at their institute.”
Some organisers are aware of this challenge, but say appearances have to be kept up. “It’s difficult to carry heavy metal trophies past security checks at airports. But as a festival organiser, I can’t give light-weight trophies since they will look cheap,” said Sangeet Natak Akademi winning sarod player Tejendra Narayan Majumdar, who also organises music festivals.
Shawls that accompany awards hardly take up space. And it’s common practice to distribute them. At Sen’s house last month, a shawl had been kept aside for actor Nandita Das while other belongings went to ordinary people, giving them a chance to own a piece of cinematic history.
Khalid Mohamed & Durga Jasraj remember Sitara Devi
7:38 AM
By Durga Jasraj [singer and producer] MUMBAI MIRROR (November 26, 2014)
Kathak queen Sitara Devi breathed her last after a prolonged illness on Tuesday. She was 94. I had almost come to believe
that she would be there for us forever. Even at 94 years of age, she
still had ghungroos tied to her feet and was ever ready to dance to
the song of joy called Life.I was merely 6 or 7 years old when I first watched her perform. She was accompanied by Ustad Allah Rakha's son on the tabla. She was so impressed with the young tabla player, that she gave him her garland and predicted that he will one day become a great artiste. The boy was none other than tabla maestro Zakir Hussain.
The last time I met her was at Zakir Hussain's house. I thought she would have forgotten me and avoided the formality of reintroducing myself.
However, as luck would have it, while returning home, we were in the same car. She suddenly said: “Why don't you come and meet me Durga? You do so much to promote music, but there is so much to do for dance as well...“ I felt really stupid and sheepishly apologised. It is then that I realised how sharp she was even at that age.
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By Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 26, 2014)
Scrunched up on a bed, she was sans her mandatory cosmetic coated face. No moon-sized bindi on her forehead either. She was caught off guard and detested that.
I had sauntered, unannounced, into the first floor Napean Sea Road apartment of her musician son Ranjit Barot, who was using a section of the apartment as a recording studio. Sitara Devi was accustomed to the stream of singers and musicians. A journalist suddenly gaping at her annoyed her.“That's mom,“ Barot said quickly hustling me towards the studio. And she laughed, “His mother and a big star in my time. Do you know of me?“ “Yes, of course. Who doesn't?“ I lied shamelessly.
Emaciated with age but her eyes flashing like torches, she ordered her son, “why are you whisking him away? Let me talk.“
Obviously, she liked borrowing an ear. Sitting up, ready for oration, she gestured, “Sit! I know who you are. My son thinks I'm deaf. I'd heard him saying, a journalist was coming over for an interview. Once they wanted to interview me... and I would mesmerise them. Now they come to interview Ranjit and I'm sure they are bored to death.“
Frankly, time had zipped past for one of the first divas, so to speak. She had oozed stardom and seduction in an era, which was a mystery. Or should I say barely chronicled. For the post-independence generation she was a hell-raiser, bold and brazen, as evidenced in the surviving photographs of the whoopee Holi celebrations at the R K Studios. She was a regular having the time of her life, literally let ting her down. For a kid bred on the Mumbai movies and the magazines, trade papers of the 1960s particularly Filmfare and Screen, I'd wonder, “who's she?“ She had appeared in a palmful of films take, Mehboob Khan's Mother India in which she was Lord Krishna to a coy Radha.
That was her last screen appearance, it seems. No, she wasn't a household name. Kukoo and Helen were. And her nephew, Gopikrishna, could dance up a thunderstorm, landing the lead role of V Shantaram's Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje. She could never grab that kind of grandstanding, which could have us lamenting her loss today at the age of 94. By 'lamenting' I mean according to Sitara Devi, the adieu, perhaps deserved by her.
Yes, there is no doubt that she was the proverbial woman of substance, fiercely independent and the sort who could drive the men in her life, insane, and bankrupt, or both.
The most vivid, and perhaps, the only pen-portrait of Sitara Devi was authored by Saadat Hasan Manto. It is not a flattering one; Manto makes her out to be a predator, a cougar. The very fact that Manto chose to write about her, indicated that she was not an ordinary citizen of showbiz. What Sitara Devi wanted, Sitara Devi got. Apologies? Forget it.
Her inflexible personality would inspire a spate of biographies in Hollywood, as they did of Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe. Besides Manto, no other dared to cross the path.
That day, at the studio-apartment, she wanted to talk about her passion for kathak, about her lust for life perhaps. She saw my eyes go blank, perhaps, as she elaborated on kathak. “You're not interested,“ she said correctly. “Go, go talk to Ranjit about music.“
I bolted from the bed. Ranjit Barot wasn't embarrassed. Clearly, he adored her, but wasn't going to let her hold forth, on kathak, for hours. “Get him a cup of tea,“ Sitara yelled out to the kitchen. “And lage haath mere liye bhi chaai le aana.“ That's the last I saw or heard of her.
Judiciously, Ranjit Barot has never discussed his star mother, rewinding to her glory days. Wikipedia talks about her brief marriage to the movie moghul, K Asif, about her transition from a child artiste to a woman who led her life on her own unwritten terms. Rabindranath Tagore had praised the child dancer. Manto had disparaged the woman, painting her scarlet. And when I pass by that apartment on Napean Sea Road, I feel guilty. Sitara Devi's story from her point of view will remain untold.
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