Uncanny how much Ajay Shah looks and acts like Joy Bhattacharya. Both of them appear to be in absolute control of their respective subjects and give the impression of warm, humble and approachable people. Simply put, like that one highly revered yet affable and approachable professor in college.
My favourites were #1 and #3. The Khudai Khidmatgar would be wonderful to see and Haimabatis story if made correctly would move the audience to tears. The narration already kind of did.
Amazing episode. So many stories which are lost in time but are an important part of our history. Thank you for making this. Also very insightful topic - blending stories with history and movie making!
There's this story about VC Shukla and Bhimsen Joshi. Emergency time. Bhimsen Joshi is performing in Delhi. VC Shukla is supposed to be attending but there's no sign of him. Everyone assumes he's not coming. Bhimsen has tuned his tanpura to the raga he plans to sing that evening. Tanpuras have two notes - one, the Sa which is common and the second is either Ma or Pa, depending on which raga is going to be performed. So everything is set. Tanpuras are being tuned for one last time. Suddenly, there's commotion. VC Shukla has arrived! He walks in, organisers pay obeisance, then he sits in his seat. Bhimsen Joshi immediately asks for the tanpuras from his disciples who were to strum them and changes the tuning. It's evident that he's decided to sing a different raga from the one he planned. And then, he sings a raga whose cheez is "Jis nagari mein nyay dharm nahin us nagri mein kya rehna". There's an awkward silence and then an explosion of applause. VC Shukla sits through the performance quietly, if sullenly. And, perhaps because of the spontaneous audience response, decides not to do anything. Bhimsen Joshi had enormous cojones. I tried looking for Bhimsen Joshi performances with this cheez, found nothing. I don't even know what raga it's in. But a heck of a story, no?
The name of Thumri is 'soch samajh nadan' and this story was featured by Kafila Collective titled 'A Memorable Evening with Vidya Charan Shukla'. The bandish goes like: Soch samajh nadaan, Aashiq ho kar sona kya re! Jis nagari mein daya-dharam naahi, Us nagari mein rehna kya re!
Brilliant episode. If there is a winner here, it has to be Amit with Haimabati Sen.🙂 My random submissions on a Tuesday morning. 1. A film in the Adam McKay style on the (alleged) Nikhil Gupta story. A tale of international intrigue, and monumental stupidity. 2. A limited series based on Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. 3. A semi fictional film on how the show about nothing came into being (David and Seinfeld) in the Jay Roach style.
The Missing sounds fantastic. Partly because the second strand of the film/story, where the boy wakes up in a world without a single soul around is story I have had with me for a while now. Exactly the same. The thought was to set it in one of the institute towns such as Kotha or the Telugu Institutes such as Narayana/Sri Chaithanya. The other thought was of a huge film star waking up in his vanity van, irritatedly stepping out into the studio lot to discover his assistant wasn't late with the coffee, but in fact, there was no coffee, there was no assistant, there simply was nobody in the world. Everyone had vanished. Having said that, the juxtaposing of the first strand - how people miss parts of themselves or as Amit so poignantly put it, how somebody's absence becomes our presence, complements the surreal idea of strand two wonderfully. I think it will make for a rare composition and an incredible amalgamation of the real and the surreal within the same film. I would so love to give writing this screenplay an honest shot.
My favourite story would be : The intrigues of Kingmakers in 18th century India - Syed Brothers and their political neutralization at the hands of Asaf Jeh. Who later turns disillusioned with a king who is more interested in wine and women, he leaves off to establish Hyderabad - a state which became much more prosperous than Delhi (which was by then declining)
I had not heard about the Tatainskaya raid until I heard this episode. Fascinating indeed. Could Ajay please recommend some reading material on ancient and modern warfare/military history?
Loved this episode! I learn so much every time! The story of Dr. Hemabati Sen gives me hope for art and cinema. Especially in the wake of the movie Animal that was just released.
Great stories! As always, I was eagerly waiting for this episode and it paid off! One suggestion: Add some cover or something at the start of the episode. It starts abruptly and doesn't prepare the viewer.
Can't wait to go through the episode, commenting even before I have started it. I have been reading Indian History post Independence lately and astonished that we have so many great characters wise stories needs to be out there but unfortunately they are buried in some books read by even less people
How are you guys so holistic, I mean you guys can articulate the hard core economics and yet be these creative movie-writers! I also want to be like this 😢
Story of Hema bai will make a fascinating web series. The way Amit is putting the plot... beginning shot and end shot and other things I am sure we will have a series directed by Amit Varma
Hey Amit! Since through these episodes, we don't just enrich our views on the world and other things but we also get to know the kind of guys you are, so why don't we have an episode where you guys can recommend top 10 films that you want everyone to watch or your favorites or anything!? At least, I'll be hands down crazy for that episode! And as usual, what an episode this was!
Great show. I'm amazed at Ajay's capacity for imagination. One small correction: "Behan ko President..." was Bansi Lal not Shukhla, although VC was as despicable.
Warm and lovely episode! Brought me many smiles; hope it does the same for other "gentle readers" as well. One of those rare days when I managed to watch it on the very day of its release. Looking forward to re-watching it again. On a separate note, I do have a query for Ajay and Amit. I have recently started reading Don Quixote (Penguin Black, the John Rutherford translation) when I came across the curious phrase "gentle reader" in the prologue as Cervantes addresses his reader in the last paragraph. Is this where Ajay acquired the phrase? Or does it have a different origin; would love to hear more about it from you two. Cheers.
Nice freewheeling!😅🎉❤ Frontier Gandhi ended up as a tragic greek hero 😢 gr8 to know Gandhi himself acknowledged that he was the better physical version of his ideals! Ajay's bridges remind me of two movies: "Bridge on the river kwai " & "A bridge too far" His storyline of how a crack team of soviets shot 70 German planes with a tank or two will make for a great movie❤ The headline "babu beats Bobby" Is awesome when U know the context❤ I would like to share a headline during the Iraq War Or the CNN Gulf War! Saddam had the better of the fight @ battle of Al-Khafji! & launched soviet manufactured scuds into Saudi.. Evening Herald (Deccan Herald brought out an evening edition during the war!) Whose screaming headline was: "Saddam'S ScudS SlamS SaudiS" That's as good a headline that ever was😅 ❤🎉 The previous episode on "Firms" was awesome to say the least Bit by the time i could string a comment this one landed with a bang 💥 Thanks for both the episodes🎉
What an episode ..brilliant .. The idea though most likely to be made into a webseries is the one on emergency .. BJP will happily fund it and inflict Akshay Kumar upon us.. oh, what have you done, Amit
If we look at the premise of this episode the other way, then one web series that should be a book( or book series) is The Decalogue - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decalogue_(film_series)
@@ajayshah5705 It's a beautiful semi fictional book tracing the journey of a Marwadi patriarch - Harilal, thru his boyhood and into his old age as he makes the journey eastward (Disavar) as lacs of my fellow marwadis did in that age. For a better future, a better life.. sharing someone's review which does the book some justice below - It is the year 1899. In the northwestern corner of British India, the Chhappaniya famine stalks the desert region of Shekhavati. A despairing shopkeeper turns to his young son and says, ‘This land has nothing to offer us but sand dunes and khejra bushes.’ Soon after, twelve-year-old Harilal Tibrewal, recently married to eleven-year-old Parmeshwari, sets off, alone, for the densely populated plains of Bengal in eastern India-travelling on camelback and by bus, train and boat to arrive in Calcutta, two thousand kilometres away… In his new novel, Sujit Saraf takes readers on an epic journey from Shekhavati in Rajasthan to the Calcutta of the early twentieth century, to Bogra in East Bengal, and to a village in Bihar in newly independent India. A sprawling, compulsively readable narrative, it follows the story of Harilal as he sets up Harilal & Sons, a shop selling jute, cotton, spices, rice, cigarettes and soap, that grows into a large enterprise. It is also the sweeping tale of his two wives and ever-burgeoning family of sons, daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren-the two strands of family and business inextricably fused because a Marwari’s life is defined by what he ‘deals in’. The novel ends in 1972, as eighty-five-year-old Hari lies dying in the great mansion that he built but never actually lived in. Surrounded by his vast family he wonders why he is still so attached to them. Why has he not reached the third stage in life, the stage of detachment, that his schoolmaster had said he would? Spanning seven decades of an era that saw great tumult in India and Bangladesh, Harilal & Sons is a wonderfully evocative, powerful and capacious narrative-overflowing with a profusion of characters, events and places-contained within the singular life of one man who ‘dealt in jute and grain’.
@@ajayshah5705 I tell you, he seems to just pop up everywhere, wherever intelligent conversations happen....FSLRC, a weird little tome called ISTR, even a book on China. What next? How should government procure to create the next generation scientific institutions? Oh give me a break! I tell you, some people are just "know-it-all"s!
![Chino Pacas - Modo Capone (with Drake & Fuerza Regida) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zjv8TQ0gBkg/mqdefault.jpg)
Can't believe we get to watch this for free. Such consistency of quality and depth. Keep it going!!
Uncanny how much Ajay Shah looks and acts like Joy Bhattacharya. Both of them appear to be in absolute control of their respective subjects and give the impression of warm, humble and approachable people. Simply put, like that one highly revered yet affable and approachable professor in college.
My favourites were #1 and #3. The Khudai Khidmatgar would be wonderful to see and Haimabatis story if made correctly would move the audience to tears. The narration already kind of did.
Amazing episode. So many stories which are lost in time but are an important part of our history. Thank you for making this.
Also very insightful topic - blending stories with history and movie making!
There's this story about VC Shukla and Bhimsen Joshi. Emergency time. Bhimsen Joshi is performing in Delhi. VC Shukla is supposed to be attending but there's no sign of him. Everyone assumes he's not coming. Bhimsen has tuned his tanpura to the raga he plans to sing that evening. Tanpuras have two notes - one, the Sa which is common and the second is either Ma or Pa, depending on which raga is going to be performed.
So everything is set. Tanpuras are being tuned for one last time. Suddenly, there's commotion. VC Shukla has arrived! He walks in, organisers pay obeisance, then he sits in his seat. Bhimsen Joshi immediately asks for the tanpuras from his disciples who were to strum them and changes the tuning. It's evident that he's decided to sing a different raga from the one he planned.
And then, he sings a raga whose cheez is "Jis nagari mein nyay dharm nahin us nagri mein kya rehna". There's an awkward silence and then an explosion of applause. VC Shukla sits through the performance quietly, if sullenly. And, perhaps because of the spontaneous audience response, decides not to do anything.
Bhimsen Joshi had enormous cojones.
I tried looking for Bhimsen Joshi performances with this cheez, found nothing. I don't even know what raga it's in. But a heck of a story, no?
What a remarkable story! That should be an episode in the web series for sure. 🙂
The name of Thumri is 'soch samajh nadan' and this story was featured by Kafila Collective titled 'A Memorable Evening with Vidya Charan Shukla'. The bandish goes like:
Soch samajh nadaan,
Aashiq ho kar sona kya re!
Jis nagari mein daya-dharam naahi,
Us nagari mein rehna kya re!
Brilliant episode.
If there is a winner here, it has to be Amit with Haimabati Sen.🙂
My random submissions on a Tuesday morning.
1. A film in the Adam McKay style on the (alleged) Nikhil Gupta story. A tale of international intrigue, and monumental stupidity.
2. A limited series based on Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland.
3. A semi fictional film on how the show about nothing came into being (David and Seinfeld) in the Jay Roach style.
The Missing sounds fantastic. Partly because the second strand of the film/story, where the boy wakes up in a world without a single soul around is story I have had with me for a while now. Exactly the same. The thought was to set it in one of the institute towns such as Kotha or the Telugu Institutes such as Narayana/Sri Chaithanya. The other thought was of a huge film star waking up in his vanity van, irritatedly stepping out into the studio lot to discover his assistant wasn't late with the coffee, but in fact, there was no coffee, there was no assistant, there simply was nobody in the world. Everyone had vanished.
Having said that, the juxtaposing of the first strand - how people miss parts of themselves or as Amit so poignantly put it, how somebody's absence becomes our presence, complements the surreal idea of strand two wonderfully. I think it will make for a rare composition and an incredible amalgamation of the real and the surreal within the same film. I would so love to give writing this screenplay an honest shot.
Ajay Shah's parents'story will make a nice romantic story. It must include the growing up years of great intellectual Ajay Shah.
I think we need a series of episodes on Armies and War fare by Ajay Shah. The tatainskaya raid story was awesome!
My favourite story would be :
The intrigues of Kingmakers in 18th century India - Syed Brothers and their political neutralization at the hands of Asaf Jeh. Who later turns disillusioned with a king who is more interested in wine and women, he leaves off to establish Hyderabad - a state which became much more prosperous than Delhi (which was by then declining)
Good one!
These videos make my day. Just saying but i would not mind even 2 hours or more of videos like this. I hope this reaches to many more people.
Thanks for doing this show. The content is very interesting and engaging.
I had not heard about the Tatainskaya raid until I heard this episode. Fascinating indeed. Could Ajay please recommend some reading material on ancient and modern warfare/military history?
Loved this episode! I learn so much every time! The story of Dr. Hemabati Sen gives me hope for art and cinema. Especially in the wake of the movie Animal that was just released.
Great stories!
As always, I was eagerly waiting for this episode and it paid off!
One suggestion: Add some cover or something at the start of the episode. It starts abruptly and doesn't prepare the viewer.
Can't wait to go through the episode, commenting even before I have started it. I have been reading Indian History post Independence lately and astonished that we have so many great characters wise stories needs to be out there but unfortunately they are buried in some books read by even less people
Beautiful stories, lovely episode. Thank you.
Amit loves his parallel narratives ❤
How are you guys so holistic, I mean you guys can articulate the hard core economics and yet be these creative movie-writers! I also want to be like this 😢
Story of Hema bai will make a fascinating web series. The way Amit is putting the plot... beginning shot and end shot and other things I am sure we will have a series directed by Amit Varma
Beautiful
Hey Amit! Since through these episodes, we don't just enrich our views on the world and other things but we also get to know the kind of guys you are, so why don't we have an episode where you guys can recommend top 10 films that you want everyone to watch or your favorites or anything!? At least, I'll be hands down crazy for that episode!
And as usual, what an episode this was!
Noted.... though we kinda do that through our reccos in every episode...
this Episode❤❤❤❤
Great show. I'm amazed at Ajay's capacity for imagination.
One small correction:
"Behan ko President..." was Bansi Lal not Shukhla, although VC was as despicable.
Warm and lovely episode! Brought me many smiles; hope it does the same for other "gentle readers" as well. One of those rare days when I managed to watch it on the very day of its release. Looking forward to re-watching it again.
On a separate note, I do have a query for Ajay and Amit. I have recently started reading Don Quixote (Penguin Black, the John Rutherford translation) when I came across the curious phrase "gentle reader" in the prologue as Cervantes addresses his reader in the last paragraph. Is this where Ajay acquired the phrase? Or does it have a different origin; would love to hear more about it from you two.
Cheers.
'Gentle reader' was a standard way of addressing readers in that age. Ajay is revealing his age when he uses the term!
@@amitvarma Thanks for your reply. For some reason I do find that phrase quite endearing.
Nice freewheeling!😅🎉❤
Frontier Gandhi ended up as a tragic greek hero 😢 gr8 to know Gandhi himself acknowledged that he was the better physical version of his ideals!
Ajay's bridges remind me of two movies: "Bridge on the river kwai " & "A bridge too far"
His storyline of how a crack team of soviets shot 70 German planes with a tank or two will make for a great movie❤
The headline "babu beats Bobby" Is awesome when U know the context❤
I would like to share a headline during the Iraq War Or the CNN Gulf War!
Saddam had the better of the fight @ battle of Al-Khafji!
& launched soviet manufactured scuds into Saudi..
Evening Herald (Deccan Herald brought out an evening edition during the war!) Whose screaming headline was:
"Saddam'S ScudS SlamS SaudiS"
That's as good a headline that ever was😅 ❤🎉
The previous episode on "Firms" was awesome to say the least Bit by the time i could string a comment this one landed with a bang 💥
Thanks for both the episodes🎉
What an episode ..brilliant ..
The idea though most likely to be made into a webseries is the one on emergency ..
BJP will happily fund it and inflict Akshay Kumar upon us.. oh, what have you done, Amit
Kangana is already making a movie out of it.
defence of Srinagar airport in 1947 as the main evwnt, but revealing the events of kashmir 1947. and Operation blue star
The Crucible can be just like Oppenheimer, instead of scientists it will be about Indian leaders.
If we look at the premise of this episode the other way, then one web series that should be a book( or book series) is The Decalogue - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decalogue_(film_series)
My submission for this topic would be a series on the book Harilal & Sons.
Tell us more.
@@ajayshah5705 It's a beautiful semi fictional book tracing the journey of a Marwadi patriarch - Harilal, thru his boyhood and into his old age as he makes the journey eastward (Disavar) as lacs of my fellow marwadis did in that age. For a better future, a better life.. sharing someone's review which does the book some justice below -
It is the year 1899. In the northwestern corner of British India, the Chhappaniya famine stalks the desert region of Shekhavati. A despairing shopkeeper turns to his young son and says, ‘This land has nothing to offer us but sand dunes and khejra bushes.’ Soon after, twelve-year-old Harilal Tibrewal, recently married to eleven-year-old Parmeshwari, sets off, alone, for the densely populated plains of Bengal in eastern India-travelling on camelback and by bus, train and boat to arrive in Calcutta, two thousand kilometres away…
In his new novel, Sujit Saraf takes readers on an epic journey from Shekhavati in Rajasthan to the Calcutta of the early twentieth century, to Bogra in East Bengal, and to a village in Bihar in newly independent India. A sprawling, compulsively readable narrative, it follows the story of Harilal as he sets up Harilal & Sons, a shop selling jute, cotton, spices, rice, cigarettes and soap, that grows into a large enterprise. It is also the sweeping tale of his two wives and ever-burgeoning family of sons, daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren-the two strands of family and business inextricably fused because a Marwari’s life is defined by what he ‘deals in’. The novel ends in 1972, as eighty-five-year-old Hari lies dying in the great mansion that he built but never actually lived in. Surrounded by his vast family he wonders why he is still so attached to them. Why has he not reached the third stage in life, the stage of detachment, that his schoolmaster had said he would?
Spanning seven decades of an era that saw great tumult in India and Bangladesh, Harilal & Sons is a wonderfully evocative, powerful and capacious narrative-overflowing with a profusion of characters, events and places-contained within the singular life of one man who ‘dealt in jute and grain’.
It is one of the most incredible books I have ever read. Even better than 'Shantaram'. I may be biased.
Sounds great
Will get.
Tell us about Shantaram
Would love Amit to do a episode on palestine and current Isreal war on palestine
Wtf! Ajay Shah has given lectures to Generals/Colonels on military strategy???
😮
Wtf!
There are rumours that his PhD thesis was on women in Malaysia having children.
@@ajayshah5705 I tell you, he seems to just pop up everywhere, wherever intelligent conversations happen....FSLRC, a weird little tome called ISTR, even a book on China.
What next? How should government procure to create the next generation scientific institutions?
Oh give me a break!
I tell you, some people are just "know-it-all"s!