Sometimes, an idea gets stuck in your head. It’s like that fragment of a tune or those staggered images that continues to play in a loop – and refuses to budge unless you do something with it. A musician will probably create a symphony out of it; an artist will paint his heart out; a performer will throw it at his audience.
For me, I write.
Gautam Chatterjee’s Videogaan is like that chord progression stuck in my head.
I have to write about it, to move on.
I have already told you, in part one of this blog, that Videogaan was a series of music videos shot for Calcutta Doordarshan in 1995. Which makes it roughly a year before MTV came to India, and much before the concept of Bangla Band became a neighborhood craze. There wasn’t much of a local reference to follow and the whole exercise was a limited budget affair; hence everything was freshly thought and implemented, from the scratch.
I really don’t know if those videos, shot in U-matic if I remember it right, are still lying in Kolkata Doordarshan archives; extremely unlikely.
But in spite of the fact that not many have seen them, I would like to talk a bit about them here, while remembering Gautamda. I do have a distinguished line up of his students from SRFTI, but this happens to be my blog, so I get the first chance to speak.
I start with a set of pictures that Minoti boudi shared with me, from the shoot of Videogaan. This should ignite some fond recollections.
If I joggle my memories, you have Chiro there, setting up his drums before the recording of either ‘Prithibi-ta naaki’ or ‘Aamar dokkhin Khola Janlaa’ ; you have one photo each from the field shoot of Arnab Chatterjee’s song ‘cricket’ and Lokkhichhara’s ‘Porashonaay Jolanjoli’; there’s Surojit blowing the clarinet for ‘Aami Daandike Roi naa’ ; and there’s Dibya-da, singing behind a glass painting his hypnotic song ‘Akashe Chaorano Megher Kachakachi / Dyakha jaay tomader baari…’
If I remember it right, there were over 30 hand-painted glass paintings specially created for that song. It was shot at the Indrapuri studios – and the entire video was about shifting focus from the images on the glass painting onto the performer, which was Dibya Mukhopadhyay.
I will tell you more about that, but first let me bring you the memoirs of one of his direct student’s from SRFTI, without whom this blog post might not have been possible. Yes, it’s Tapas Nayak; he is a great well-wisher of my blog, and I eagerly await his comments on the topics I choose every time.
It’s just that this post was special for him as well, not just me.
THE MAN WITH THE GUITAR
TAPAS NAYAK
FROM CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU
When we joined the institute it was almost like a battlefield. With rudimentary infrastructure, and fights with the bureaucracy, there was so much of crisis going on. Our entire first year was loaded with pessimism, and so much of negativity.
In that context arrived this man; the man with the guitar, I will say. Almost like a character from a Latin American film. Not a cowboy coming down from a high-horse or something, but a simple man, almost like a zen monk, who is somewhat away from worldly attachments. His priority was not to get into the political scenario, of what the institute was going through; rather, his aim was to bring in something to the students that were positive.
So within that negative atmosphere of pessimism, here comes a man with his guitar and his bucket full of songs – to entertain us.
We have not been exposed to those kind of songs. Maybe the Bengalis have heard something of him, but to the outsiders coming from different parts of India, we had never heard anything like that. And then, there’s the man. You can sit and talk to him, you can say anything that you feel like and not necessarily about the struggle that was going on at the other side. Since with other people you were sitting across the table, but with him you are sitting along with him.
What I remember the most are those mist filled winter evenings, or those sultry summer evenings, either way; he would come with his guitar and start playing. All the students would gather there. It was like whatever negativity might be there, let us celebrate life, and celebrate the positive energy that this person has brought in.
And once he starts playing you can’t stop him – song after song he would just keep on and on; we may not understand the words, but that grainy timber of his voice and the guitar – it felt like magic.
See it was somewhat like a full course meal; invariably, at the end came the dessert part – that was always those two songs ‘Kichu toh holo naa e jibone’ and ‘Telephone’. That would be maddening. I remember his voice reverberating through those tin-shed roofs of our makeshift hostel.
So those are my fondest memories.
You know, a great teacher is not someone who teaches you; a great teacher is someone who inspires you to find your own way. It’s almost like a sailor who has gone through the seven seas, and now he is standing at the shore and pointing out at the variety of boats that you can take. He won’t necessarily take the journey with you – the voyage is yours. It will be the voyage of your own self-discovery. So as a teacher he was never pushing himself on you, rather guiding you to find your own course.
That was Gautam-da. His classes were exciting since they were not very full-bound classes – where he taught A B C. Having said that, I would also say that he had a very methodical madness to his teaching; when it comes to his work, his compositions, he was very meticulous, like a perfectionist. But there was also that madness that you need to retain as an artist – only then something great will come out.
Of course he insisted on the fundamentals – but he had different ways of teaching them. Of course this consisted of analyzing the sound-tracks of a film, or trying to see a film focusing on the sound-track, and difference between dramatic music or atmospheric music and most importantly the functionality of music – it should not exist just for the sake of it.
I had the opportunity to be in one of his recordings where he was doing a background score. So I could see – he didn’t want to cram the music pieces. Most music directors want to go beyond the image and try to attract attention; but in this case he was trying to do the reverse. He was trying to supplement the images by keeping the music in a place where it should be. That’s what I think is the hallmark of a great artist.
Gautam-da had a firm belief that music or art could bring a change in the mindset of people. You see, all those songs didn’t come out of nothing. It came out of lot of struggle, and him being part of that sixties-seventies movement. I think rejection makes you stronger. I feel he emerged as a much stronger person by the time he reached the nineties – and mind you, the struggle was not over. It was still on.
I think we should be grateful to someone sitting above that he got the opportunity to record all those songs – and keep it for the posterity.
Otherwise, imagine what a loss it would have been.
The same doesn’t stand true for Videogaan.
At least to my knowledge, those videos are well and truly lost. There might be some half-inch VHS copies – but their quality will be suspect. But allow me to try and recollect some moments that I spent with them, so that others can at least know about them.
So when Dibya-da was singing about the ‘badami beral’ – there was actually a badami beral grinning on the glass painting behind which he was lip-syncing; there was a ‘chaai ronga pyancha’ as well; Dibya Mukhopadhyay even tried walking along the (virtual) ‘ajana laal surkir poth’ while singing those lines.
That exercise asked for a large number of takes, because what he was trying to do was much like a rope-trick – walking along a chalk-mark across a pitch dark studio, with multiple directional spots straight on him, while trying to act normal, strumming a guitar all along while facing the camera.
All that while Vivek Banerjee, the cameraperson, was trying to keep the focus shifting between the far-away him and the ‘surkir poth’ on the glass painting right in front of his camera. Dibya-da had to be far enough to make it feel like that he was part of the painting.
Tricky, yes; but Dibya-da did manage somehow; and that video came out really well.
This is now sounding a bit ridiculous even to me, despite my ardent wish to write about it; can’t talk in such detail about music videos that most people who will read this blog have never seen, and will probably never see.
So let me just give some brief pointers, for now. Correct me, my readers, if you were part of those video shoots – because all of these were 25 years back.
Look what I found from the net.
This looks like to me one of those hand-packed cassette covers that I was talking about
in the first part of this post – ones we distributed from the A Mukherjee stall at the book-fair of 1995.
Definitely not machine-packed – this one.
Many of those songs were shot outdoors. If my memory serves me right, ‘Ganga’ and ‘Ghenna Koro’ was shot in Nalban – which was quite new then; ‘Cricket’ was shot in Mohammedan Sporting Ground; ‘Porashonaay Jalanjoli’ in Indrapuri Studio annexe gardens and ‘Prithibi taa naaki’ at New Digha.
Each song video was treated differently – and there was something in each of them to bring out the thematic premise that the song alluded to.
Even after 25 years, after many seasons of afterthoughts, I still have first-hand reasons to believe that each one of them entailed a heady mix of structured innovation and cohesive spontaneity – and that’s what always defined the work of Gautam Chatterjee.
I think Tapas Nayak meant the same when he referred to his ‘methodical madness’; another of his students, Sayandeb, calls it his ability of being ‘vehemently constructive’, while also being ‘wide open to experimentation’, at all times.
“MUSIC IN THE FLOW OF EVERYDAY SOUNDS”
SAYANDEB MUKHERJEE
FROM HYDERABAD, TELANGANA
Gautamda – the most unique teacher of my life; because, for the first time, a teacher placed learning beyond the four walls of a classroom.
It is like saying – ‘I met my teacher in Mashir Dokan’.
I wonder how the classes were seamlessly extended to the theque in the Tea shop, a get-together with my batch-mates and Gautam-da. His presence was awe-inspiring not because of the immense talent that he had as a musician or as a filmmaker, but because he believed that a teacher teaches something beyond his subjects and he transmitted that belief in us.
He would also simultaneously propagate the values embedded in a subject; seek opportunities for his students to practically experience a subject. It was as if the topics are in the air that wonderfully rustles the thatched roof of the tiny Tea shop, in the clinking of the small tea-glasses, in the baritone voice of one of my batch mates, and in the rhythm of the Adda itself.
The interesting fact about his personality is the paradox that being a Music Teacher, he didn’t limit our knowledge to the seven notes of Musical system, but he was the key person to ignite the concept of seeking music in the natural flow of everyday sounds in our life. He therefore sermonized- seek pleasure in not only listening to Toccata and Fugue of Johann Sebastian Bach but also while analyzing the beauty in the finer timbral qualities of a bird or a frog or while deciphering the intricate rhythm of their occurrences, or while perceiving the perspective of their distant calls in a marshy land.
I gradually realised, it is not that Sound is inside the world of Music, but the entire world of Music is a micro-version of Dhwani or Nada. The world of Sound is vast and extra-cosmic, where Music is just a conscious act of combination of certain refined sounds called tones being structured and formalized as ‘compositions’.
Eventually, his innovative teaching tore my hardwired knowledge of the kind of musical instruments that we usually listen to – piano, violins, cellos, saxophones, mridangam and few folk or tribal instruments. We learnt about the new kinds of musical instruments which doesn’t belong to the conservative formal system, one of the classifications is called idiophonic instruments like cymbals, xylophones, gongs and amazingly even bells, spoons, vessels, tables and chairs; this opened the conservative myopic vision that we had about instruments.
As his students, we felt extremely fortunate because Gautamda himself was a versatile musician (could play several instruments at ease) besides having eloquent singing capabilities. Witnessing him as composer, conductor, arranger and one of the key performers was an overwhelming experience for us.
The exclusive Music recording sessions that he organised with the wide repertoire of folk musicians, singers and modern musicians was one of its kind experiences for us -and we have always been in awe of that.
What inspired me the most was his inexhaustible energy and dedicated attempts to lift our practical understanding of the subjects: Music as an Art form, its Cultural Heritage, its Historical nuances along with the Aesthetics of Music Recording and Music Mixing.
I distinctly remember a day when we got busy in the studio with some other projects as we awaited his arrival, he rebuked us staunchly stating that while his session was scheduled, he would not prefer any other work to go on. This became a principle in my professional life where I tried to avoid working on multiple projects on a single day – a kind of professional commitment that one need to imbibe.
Gautamda’s other self as a filmmaker and film music composer got revealed with his semantic analysis of soundtracks of films made by great filmmakers like Robert Bresson, Rittwik Ghatak and Andrei Tarkovsky where we got an idea of his intense aural sensitivity of deciphering the intricate layers of sound elements and interpreting their multi-dimensional relationships with the film-narrative.
Through these intriguing sessions, our ears became choosy to the pristine tonal quality of sounds, our ears became critical to perceive intrinsic details of a sound source, our ears became discerning to go deeper into the subterranean layers of sound elements in the total mix of the film’s soundtrack.
He was not just a Music Teacher, as he was officially called in SRFTI; he didn’t just teach the theory of Music, but clearly won our hearts through those unforgettable vibrant sessions bringing in his entire professional and life experiences in a very lucid and simplified version for the then young minds to decode.
Music and its visual translation percolated to us through a very unique and ingenious jamming session which he specially designed for us where a veteran Painter painted and his band performed live – and both blended marvelously with each other. Like this, he used to propagate his view of being vehemently constructive, being passionate and being open to experimentation – giving way to new horizons in whatever subjects we are dealing with.
This is something great from a teacher. I continued following this throughout my career. Now when I have become a teacher, I encourage my students to continuously experiment while they discover interesting, innovative outcomes by which it becomes a lifelong self-learning experience for them.
I feel his legacy lives on through our dreams and recollections of him, in the tunes he created and in his collections of recordings.
And now, in my lonely afternoons, whenever I play his songs, I remember my mentor with a somber sense of solace. I could never fully express the kind of emotions that I experience – may be the irreparable loss caused by his untimely demise, may be the overwhelming emptiness like a barren runway or may be the ecstatic feeling of listening to the lullaby of birds swaying a transcendental air through the windows of my room.
Even then, much before ‘Bhoomi’, he used to play multiple instruments.
I also fondly remember some of the Videogaan videos that were shot indoors – like Antara Choudhury’s ‘Elo ki e asomoy’ and Surojit’s ‘Aami daandike roi naa…’
More so since they gave me the opportunity to understand studio lighting and certain other tricks that have helped me in the long run. Antara’s song, for instance, was an exercise on how to turn a limited space into a horizon with staggered depth – the song was shot much like a Bunuel dream sequence (with Antara chasing rather uncontrollable and desperately clacking live swans during the song interludes – a scene that still remains etched in my mind).
Surojit’s song, on the other hand, was my first exposure to Chroma key. If you are from this industry, take a look at that picture above, and you will see the blue backdrop against which it was shot. Yes, back then, Chroma clothes used to be blue, not green. All sorts of things were inserted later onto that background.
Ritika Sahni anchored the show, besides lending her voice to ‘Aamar Dakkhin Khola Janlaa’, which was a studio shoot as well. Her anchor links were also shot against chroma. I specially remember their background, mainly due to its innovative stylization.
We took a large slab of glass and applied glycerin on it, rather lavishly, while staying careful that it shouldn’t affect the transparency of the glass. The glass pane was kept horizontal to the ground, with a slight tilt. Colours were poured slowly from all sides, and allowed to freely mix over the glass and glycerin. This entire set up was hard-lighted from below, and the camera captured it from the top angle- directly above.
The results were magical. All those primary colours were coming together and jostling for attention, while talking to each other to create myriad random hues. Nobody could predict how those colours would interact with each other. No one knew what the final outcome would be. It was all a spontaneous, free-mix of diversity, but within controlled conditions, under the ambit of the strict guidance of Gautam-da.
That’s how Gautam Chatterjee created his music as well.
Anyone who has ever been part of one of his song-composition sessions would agree with me on that, including his students from SRFTI .
SRFTI re- recording studio. Standing from left Rupesh Kumar, Anirudh Garbyal, Late Aseem Seth, Sudeep Chakravarty, sitting Julius L. Basaiawmoit.
Taken on one of the practice sessions for a fund raiser concert in SRFTI campus in 1998 .
Picture courtesy Rupesh Kumar.
That picture above was taken during the rehearsals of a fundraising concert held at SRFTI – during the time when Gautam-da was a teacher there. My next two back to back memoirs reveal a barrage of unknown facts about what went behind the scenes in that concert.
Hope you enjoy them.
“HE WAS LIKE A PIED-PIPER TO US”
SUDEEP CHAKRAVARTY
FROM DELHI, NCR
The first time we met Gautam-da was as a teacher in SRFTI; we had some classes in the first semester, on music and painting, so Gautam-da came down to take the music classes. And, as it was common with him, immediately became like our friend.
During the course of his teaching Gautam-da realized the need to introduce us to some instruments. Many of us were from remote places and so might not have seen many instruments – and Gautam-da having stayed in Cuba, and having worked with a large variety of Latin American instruments, had in-depth knowledge about a large variety of musical instruments. That apart, we also faced a genuine issue – say he was conducting a practical session in the studio, and that becomes easier if we had some basic instruments in the studio.
So one fine day he said – come, let’s go buy some instruments.
So he took some of the students to Lal Bazaar. That was the first time we saw something that grand – an entire bazaar dedicated to musical instruments. Being a musician myself, I was simply gawking at the immense variety of instruments all around me – that too in the heart of Kolkata.
We bought a large number of small instruments – maracas, tambourine, mainly Latino rhythm instruments. He also bought a Roland XP 50 keyboard. I think SRFTI still has it. That was the beginning of our studio recording.
Later, we arranged a show to raise some funds for a faculty, who had to go through a health procedure. Gautam-da participated in it quite actively. He in fact gave us an idea – he asked us to create a collage out of the continuity films made by our previous batch, which was the first batch of SRFTI. He told us to take random snippets from around 10 films – and stitch them into a collage. Then he told students of our batch, say around five of us were musicians – to place background music on it.
So that was very interesting and challenging as well – since those shots didn’t have any continuity. Say a man running is followed by someone sitting and crying somewhere and immediately afterwards someone entirely different was saying a dialogue – like that.
I remember, we used to record our tracks and place them on this video in our sound studio; we requested Gautam-da to come and see our work, and he did come often, but just listened to what we were doing, without interfering. He had just one response when asked – what you guys are doing is great, no need to worry.
So during the prelude, this collage was projected – and we performed live. It was a great show, where Gautam-da also performed.
After this program, he became really close to us. I even gathered courage to ask him if he would teach me how to play the flamenco guitar, and he said, why not?? He said he was just about to go off to Karbi Anglong, so when he returns, he will teach me.
That never happened. After he came back, one day, we heard that he has left us – while at work. Maybe that was the best way to go for someone like him – while at work. I can’t really say.
You know, he was like a pied-piper to us.
When he came to our hostel and strung his guitar, we sat there listening to him, in a hypnotic daze. There were so many of us students, but none of us were talking – all listening, mesmerized. He knew so much, but he never made us feel insecure. A son of the earth, he sat there, often on the ground, cross-legged, singing for us till the wee hours of the morning.
One of those days, Gautam-da was singing his composition, Telephone. That song is composed on Raaga Bhairabi. So I don’t know what came upon me, I also struck upon an alaap on the same raga.
He was in the interludes then – and he looked at me, quite amused. You know anybody else in his place (and of his stature) would have been offended – but not Gautam-da. He rather encouraged me, with a smile of appreciation.
You know what I feel. I feel that Gautam-da didn’t get his due respect during his lifetime – for whatever reasons. Maybe because he was so ahead of his times, that people took time to warm up to his kind of music. Or whatever! The space that he deserved – he never got while he was still alive. He should have got it.
When I met him, I requested Sudeep to play a little something on his Mohan Veena in remembrance of Gautam-da. I requested for ‘Kotha Diyaa Bondhu’ – since I have a lot of fond memories around that song, including a ‘situation’ when I had to sing its harmony section at the Jadavpur University Union room, with Gautam-da. People who are aware of my singing voice will be shocked, I know – but he was like that. He was probably the only person who ever thought I can sing.
But Sudeep insisted on ‘telephone’; and he has already told you why.
Now for the recollections of Julius, another excellent musician and sound artist from the second batch of SRFTI. You have already seen his picture up there, holding what seems like a percussion instrument, during that rehearsal shot.
“LOOK AT THE MOON, SHINING SO BRIGHT”
JULIUS L BASAIAWMOIT
FROM SHILLONG, MEGHALAYA
Being from Shillong, Meghalaya, I was always considered by Gautamda, as one up when it comes to music; though, to be honest, my musical journey, apart from western, started with him.
He would bring to the classroom, these instruments that he collected from his travel; I was introduced to a mini-marimba for the first time in my life.
My memories of him are his personality defined by his style, his dressing sense. I remember his Hawaiian prints, his tantric designs. His persona would change with every visit to the classroom. He would look like a travelling musician in one day, and as a music scientist, at another, especially when he would put on his frame, tied by a thread to his neck.
‘Ashay ashay.. boshe aachi’… someone or the other, would scream at the top of their lungs. These few words would resonate from the old hostel area, into the pond nearby and reflecting back-n-forth, slapping into the Open air theater, which was being constructed at that time.
The peak of that song, ultimately, would reverberate the whole of EM Bye pass, Peerless hospital and nearby Ajoynagar – when a fund-raising Concert was organized for one of our ailing Lecturer at that time. The newly finished Open Air Theater was filled with students, fans and well wishers of Gautam-da.
At one point in time during the peak of the concert, Gautam-da shouted ‘Look at the moon, look at the moon shining so bright ‘…
Till now, whenever I think of that moment… and I look at the moon, I would remember our beloved Gautam-da.
Julius found this invitation card of that show, from twenty years back, in his closet.
This was probably the first and the last time Chandrabindoo shared the stage with Gautam-da. I am not too sure. Their relationship, however, was far more deep-rooted. The fact that one of their key band members Chandril Bhattacharya was a first batch direction student of SRFTI might have further cemented this relationship.
About five years back, when I was planning to write a bangla book on Gautam-da, I interviewed Anindya Chatterjee and he shared a lot of fond memories with me. That book never happened – since I started feeling only a qualified musician should write such a book. I was, and I still am, just a ‘ghodaar dim.’
For now I really think this post will remain incomplete without a brief mention of Amitabh Chakraborty, director of the art-house classic Kaal Abhirati. This maverick FTII editing maestro was a close friend of Gautam-da. He edited Videogaan.
Those couple of months spent with him in the ice-cold confines of Focus Studios will forever be my lighthouse on editing techniques.
Amitabh is a master craftsman – intent on giving every frame its due position. I remember his instructions vividly – ‘give two frames from the left’ he would say… and then say, ‘nay, I think it should be 4 frames from the right’, and then, ‘can you just add two more frames to the fifth shot…” – and finally, “Naah, hochche naa, let’s take the whole thing from the top again…”
Well he was a film editor.
And if you have ever known what linear video editing was like in those days, then you will realize the challenge of doing all of that using a RM 250 remote. Those editing set ups were not designed to behave like a Steinbeck; every new insert meant a fresh tape, and every dissolve meant going a generation down.
But it was done, meticulously. It was pure abstraction, those edit sessions.
Talking of abstraction – let me tell you my reader, that I have kept the dessert for the end. Just to test your patience, if I am allowed to do so, at times.
I now bring you Aparaj Sharma from Assam, first batch SRFTI, with his poem on the ‘Gautam-da’ mystique. Curiously, like all abstract works of art, this too is an open window. You can own it the way you want to.
But yes, if you knew Gautam-da, this will start owning you.
Let me mention here, that this is the second and concluding part of the therewillbetime tribute post on Gautam Chatterjee. Many thanks to all the first and second batch students who participated in this. I am sure this opened up a floodgate of memories.
In case you have come here first, you might consider visiting our first part.
That’s all, as of now.
I will find an opportunity to write about ‘Nagmoti’, talking to its key team-members and performers – but I don’t know when that will happen. For that, I need to go to Kolkata.
As of now, I really needed this post, like I said, to move on.
I am again at that critical juncture of my life, when this need to rediscover myself has become a dire necessity. I am feeling like what Tapas said about the sailor of the seven seas and his interns; here I am, standing by the shores of a limitless ocean once again, waiting for the master sailor to point out to the boats that I could take.
It will be my journey, yes.
But now, I think it will be with your blessings Gautam-da, always my master sailor.
From the sets of ‘Nagmoti’, Gautam Chatterjee’s National award winning debut feature.
Someday, I will write about it – but I have to watch the film first.
Thanks for the pictures again, Minoti Chatterjee.
Excellent post…
Thanks a lot Gautam.
Excellent writeup. Never knew Putu (Minoti) had kept those few invaluable pictures with her. The contributions from the other students have strengthened the blog to a large extent. Wonderful !
Thanks a lot Vivek-da. In fact they are the ones who pushed me into this, and I am grateful to them for that.
Will earnestly look forward to a write-up on Nagmoti. In case if I am of any help, please feel free to involve me. Nagmoti was the film when both, Gautam and I began our journey together in the film arena
Haan Vivekda. I will when I come to Kolkata, that might take some time – but I definitely will.
Excellent write-up, while reading it I felt like, as if I was present at all the occasions that you mentioned. I could imagine the pains? and sincere hardwork that you all had to put to get the desired output.. those days were hard but those days had the passion which was raw and genuine.
Thank you for taking us down memory lane.
Thanks a lot for reading Chandra Shekhar.
Fascinating
Thanks Nishi.
Loved reading through the students’ precious memories!
This is beautifully written, Rana. Thankyou!
Thanks a lot boudi. That’s one chapter about which I always wanted to write, being his student himself. And you do know he didn’t like it when I didn’t join SRFTI.
I loved Sudeep’s rendition of ‘Telephone’ on mohanveena and Aparaj’s poem.
Will tell them that, in case they don’t read this. Sudeep stays just a few blocks away.
That Bochhor Kuri album cover is my contribution to the Internet. Back in 1996-97, I started building a Moheener Ghora webpage and scanned all their covers . I told about this to Gautam da but unfortunately he passed away before I could show him my work. The website no longer exists but these album covers and some song booklets I uploaded still survive in the Internet.
That’s lovely. If you find some time please assemble them at one place again – it would be lovely. It’s encouraging to know that you were building web pages in 96-97, when we didn’t even have access to personal computers. It would be fascinating to take a look at those song booklets you mentioned, especially that of ‘Abar Bochor Kuri Pore’. Thanks for responding again.