Techie co-authors Burman book
By Suneetha

With dizzy numbers like ‘Dum Maro Dum’ and ‘Mehbooba’ to melodies like ‘Tum Aa Gaye Ho’ and ‘Tere Bina Zindagi Se’, music maestro R.D. Burman spun his magic in a number of Bollywood hits. IIT Kharagpur alumnus and SAP expert Anirudha Bhattacharjee and banker Balaji Vittal re-create his magic in a superb, new biography "R.D. Burman - The Man and Music". TG speaks to Anirudha.

Techgoss (TG): Do give us an intro, especially of your techie self.
Anirudha Bhattacharjee (AB): I grew up in Patna. I take pride in calling myself a Patna Michaelite, and went to do engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. Work wise, I was mostly in domain (manufacturing), till I changed over to IT in 1999. Currently I am with IBM, working out of Kolkota as an SAP consultant & a Project Manager.

TG: How musical are you? Was it music or writing or did both happen to gravitate you towards writing about Pancham?
AB: I live, eat, sleep and dream music. I was into music from a very young age, though I never did learn music formally. My younger years were mainly spent in long hours of compulsive listening and discussing music. Especially in Kharagpur, we had a very nice music group of 7 people, and the best part of the team remained that our areas hardly overlapped, as a result of which there were no ego problems. I picked up the guitar in Kharagpur from my friends Pankaj Sinha (Architect, presently posted in Patna) and Sudipto Neogi (classmate, working with Intel out of San Jose, USA) and tried to impart my own analyses to compositions which I heard. My fascination for quizzing was also there. I wrote my first article in The Illustrated Weekly of India – in the form of a quiz on Hindi film music in 1986 – taking the cue from my senior Sandipan Deb (journo, one of the founders of Outlook and also the Open Magazine) who had published quizzes on Hollywood and Western contemporary music. So that is how the journey started – listening to music, appreciating the same, gathering trivia and also writing about all the three.

Regarding Pancham, I grew up in a family where SD Burman was God. Fortunately my impressionable years coincided with the best years of RD, and it did not take me much time to swear by the RD sound. One discernable feature of his sound remains that it hardly had any clutter –it was a very complex sound mixed with such finesse that it sounded so deceptively simple. By the time I was 15, I had, more or less, heard most of RD’s compositions till that time.

TG: How did the book happen? How did the co-authoring materialise? Is Balaji Vittal a pal from the good old days? You live in different cities, was the coordination on the authoring smooth?
AB: This book was on the cards for quite some time. I had co-authored a book of lists on Amitabh Bachchan published by Derek O’Brien in 1992, and my next intent was to write something on RD, maybe a series of essays. I had dropped the idea due to paucity of time, but in 2004 when I met two netizens Srijit Mukherjee (presently a well known film director in Kolkota) and Archisman Mozumder (a telecom person working out of Bombay), the idea was rekindled. But nothing progressed till Balaji, a friend who I know for the last 23 – 24 years, floated the idea of writing something. As I already had a story scripted in my mind – the musical story of R D Burman, the project kicked off in July 2008.

Balaji was a friend, co-quizzer and music maniac from my days at Jadavpur Univ – where I did my masters. He was also into writing – mostly fiction and sketches. We coordinated mostly through mails, though my wife would make me refer the old cell phone bills – which ran into a few thousands every month.

TG: How long did the book take to do? How did you go about the task? Did you the divide tasks between you both?
AB: Two and a half years. We both are project managers cum hands on consultants (: D). Project Management skills helped us plan the work, and hands on skills did help us immensely in actually doing the work. Balaji being the more mobile person did most of the interviews in Bombay, Chennai, Hyderabad (where his family stays) and Delhi (where he is posted). I interviewed people mostly in Kolkota. I also did some telephonic interviews. We had a readymade database on RD – in the form of a library of material and songs. Our quizzing experience helped us immensely. We also tried doing our own analysis of the song – why a song is good / bad, why RD composed using some particular notes and how the same was relevant to the script and / or the shot divisions. The task of writing was via multiple iterations – he wrote something which I edited and vice versa. The task of writing and editing was an arduous one.

TG: Any interesting incidents connected with the data gathering days of the book?
AB: Lots. That could be documented as an essay, if not a book. Manohari Singh, one of the finest woodwind players India has ever produced, was RD’s friend and chief assistant. Now Mr Singh was a very tight lipped individual, in fact he opened his mouth to only play the English flute or the Alto sax (:Chuckle) . I could make him speak by actually singing some songs and trying to make him listen to the songs. There is an example in page number 183, you can check it out.

TG: Tell us about the book now, how did you find a publisher? Was the odyssey from research to writing to publishing easy?
AB: Shantanu Ray Chaudhari is a well known figure in the editing world – and he has edited some very well known books on cinema. We approached him with 25 pages of the first draft – the pilot – and got the thumbs up signal in almost half an hour. So it was quite fast. Hence we were spared of the dilemma that most authors face – running from publisher to publisher without any result.

TG: Any responses to the book yet?
AB: Touch wood, we are already receiving very good reviews of the book. The book is also being launched on April 26 in Bombay. Here is a link to a review.

TG: Do you plan any more biographies? Are the day job and the hobby horse easy to handle simultaneously?
AB: There are plans for many more books. It’s difficult to manage work, house, family, and then a hobby – but there is only one life.

TG: What would you like to add as a parting word?
AB: Well, the name R D Burman gives rise to 2 distinct feelings. Some regard him as God, whereas there are people who think he is all noise. (Also there are journos with hidden agendas and try to bring him down; I have pointed out at one among this lot in the book). This book is a humble attempt to go deep under the skin of the man and his music. I feel that even the RD fanatic should read it with a neutral point of view as our attempt has been to bridge the gap between the listening fraternities, and present an unbiased, realistic evaluation of the person who has been my musical God for the last 35-36 years. Amen

The book unravels many a rare glimpse of Pancham’s musical odyssey and is rich in snippets which any Pancham fan would lap up in delight. A collector’s item definitely.