Sunday, May 8, 2011

Balgandharva

The Akashwani, a radio station used to air a programme on Natyasangeet every afternoon / at night, when I was a kid. Since my grandmother and grandfather were fans of Akashwani, the radio was always ON in our house, as I remember it. Since then I have been hearing about some plays and some great songs sung by great people at the time and who made the Classical music in India very famous and a layman started appreciating the classical music in the plays.. I did not really listen to any of the songs by choice then, since I guess I did not understand it at the time and did not develop any interest. But I definitely used to hear those songs on radio or in my grandfather's humming.


Yesterday I saw the latest Marathi movie, 'Balgandharva' by Nitin Desai, with my family. I could not stop my self from writing that experience, after seeing such a great man and his life story in a movie form. The film surely is a big budget film in Marathi. The story is filmed fantastically, the songs written and sung are great, and the actors have presented the characters so passionately that even a person like me who does not really know who and what was Balgandharva, can feel overwhelmed by the movie. The life story of Balgandharva is so touchy and it really feels sad to know how his life became later in his elder years.

I definitely regretted not listening to Natyasangeet in last 27 years of my life, especially when I had people around me who appreciated those people and their songs, for their entire lives. But after seeing the movie, I kept wondering how can an intelligent and gifted man like Balgandharva can never think about business and how could he believe in everyone around him. But I guess due to his love for music and the motive of serving art, people and country made it possible for him to view everything and everyone around to be great and himself as only a character in the god's play.. I think that love and clear views about what he wanted made him a very great and honourable man, we know him to be.

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