Offtrack: Vadodara, Gujarat; Musical Memories


	Feb 21, 2000

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Vadodara, Gujarat
Musical Memories

A lecturer's passion for discs keeps voices alive.

By Uday Mahurkar

People passing by the inconspicuous house in a modest middle-class locality of Vadodara often stop, halted in their tracks by the scratchy tunes and voices emanating from within. The house belongs to Narendra Shrimali, 30, a lecturer in civil engineering at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. Walk in and you find a most amazing collection, old records -- 78 rpm as well as other records -- from 1902 onwards, the year records were commercially introduced in India. The collection boasts of recordings of some of the rarest songs of past Indian classical greats, rare dramas, folk music and speeches by prominent people, relics of a bygone era lovingly preserved by the mild-mannered lecturer.President of the Vadodara chapter of the Society of Indian Record Collectors (sir), Shrimali calls himself a discographer, a person who researches the history of discs. His collection, which he started at 16 after a friend presented him with a few old 78 rpm discs, consists of nearly 8,000 records, collected over the years from the kabadi and chor bazaars of Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Nashik and Delhi.

A lecturer's passion for discs keeps voices alive. Consider the contents of his treasure hoard: songs by the great Vinayakrao Patwardhan from Madhuri, the first Hindi film to have its music released on a record, songs of the legendary dhrupad singer of Bengal, L.C. Bural (from 1904), the only Gujarati garba ever sung by Bal Gandharva, performances of sitarists Imdad Khan (1904) and his son Inayat Khan (1925-26), the voices of Dinanath Mangeshkar and Bhalji Pendharkar, and the first record cut by the one time thumri queen of Calcutta, Gauharjaan (1902).

He also has records of speeches by Gandhiji, Subhas Chandra Bose, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, John F. Kennedy and the cricketer C.K. Nayudu, and a poem recited by Sarojini Naidu. The disc containing Mujib's speech, one of the fiercest by the founder of Bangladesh and delivered just before the 1971 war, has an interesting history. An Indian soldier bartered his violin for the record after the Indian Army entered East Pakistan in 1971. Impressed with his devotion to his collection the soldier later gifted it to Shrimali. Says Shrimali: "My records are a veritable feast for researchers." Something proved by people from diverse fields who have used the collection while doing their doctoral research on subjects ranging from cinema to history and political science. Says Kaushik Bhaumik, who is doing a doctorate on silent movies at Oxford University: "Shrimali's collection is unique in many ways. It's a researcher's delight."

Shrimali also has recordings of Parsi theatre, the oldest theatre in India, which started in the 1850s and continued till the 1920s. The 100-odd discs of Parsi plays, as well as records of some of the oldest Gujarati and Hindi dramas, shed light on an era when a drama began with a ringing bell followed by burst of potash on stage. A proclamation made by George V, king of Great Britain, on May 9, 1910 at Buckingham Palace is present too, along with a message from the king to the children of the British Empire.

Then there are records of the dramas of Jaishankar Sundari, a Gujarati stage artiste who taught Bal Gandharva to sing while playing a woman. Sundari, whom Prithviraj Kapoor revered, stopped acting in 1932 to produce and direct dramas. Sundari's family were ignorant of these recordings till Shrimali unearthed them from Ahmedabad's kabadi market and brought them to their notice. Another attraction is the commentary of Zaverchand Meghani, who wrote a series of popular books on the history of Saurashtra, and whom Gandhiji held in high esteem. In this case too, Meghani's family members came to know of the disc in question from Shrimali. Says Professor Anil Kane, vice-chancellor of Maharaja Sayajirao University, who has extended a great deal of support to the discographer: "Shrimali is a man of frugal means with a costly hobby. He needs the support of society to sustain his hobby. After all society itself is being enriched by his efforts."

Shrimali has kept his growing collection in a small room in his house all these years, but he dreams of a museum to preserve it for posterity. He is trying to convince the Vadodara Municipal Corporation to gift him a piece of land. Given his tenacity, the chances of his succeeding are good.

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