The concept of hiring an artiste was prevalent from time immemorial. However, the rate chart varied with different houses hiring the artiste and paying the premium by houses showcasing their grace. For example if one house hires artiste for 1 lakh rupees the other house will dole out 1.2 lakhs for the same artiste in same time. The business process have however gone for an entire change in present circumstances with more of organizers and event managers offering discounted rates for the same artiste hiring today. So more and more the artiste’s performance is measured on cost benefit analysis. Therefore a singer when he or she performs the organizer and the house both open their debit credit accounts and the recall value is determined on the said analysis. To stand out of the crowd of this run of mill entertainers, the idea of generating a niche market was the concept of branding. An entertainer is known for the brand he or she creates and commands. His or her competition is not ...

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After devoting a great deal of time and thought ultimately the musical event “Parampara & Beyond” was presented with thumping success and phenomenal positive feedback. The intent was clear with us, we need to give tribute to the masters of yesteryear music composers, but, the selection was herculean task. To a large extent judgements are a matter of personal taste conditioned by one’s intellectual or cultural background. After lot of debate we could derive at consensus on a common list of music directors who had a proper sense of values in music and whose efforts deserve praise. Music in our country is associated with religion and we live with great composers when we listen to their compositions. The Saints and the Seers pour out their feelings in the language of music which is language of unity and harmony. This program is with objective to bring together musicians of different parts of India on same platform and to be frank our efforts did achieve the required quality ou...

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Living in a big city often is a disadvantage. Here we need to interact with so many people day in day out, sometimes meaningless encounter that I find it difficult to interact with myself. Moreover in profession of singing many often we are asked to sing songs which never touched my soul. It is just singing for masses without a purpose, where my intrinsic rhythm gets lost in the crowd. The village girls going distance to fetch drinking water stops by the tree shade to collect the fallen fruits, some ripe some unripe but yet never stray from their objective of reaching the destination. The world so wonderful with beautiful creation is the manifestation of the creator. The creator loves, he creates and he also destroys. If we have a chance to ask the creator why you created such beautiful creation he will simply reply “my wish”. In fact this internal wish is the only source of creative art presentation. It is this internal force that has inspired me in my experimental projects o...

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In personal life of every individual, I believe two persons have immense influence on overall growth, development and progressive thought process. If the numero-uno position is the Mother, the next best place goes to our guide or Guru. Though unlike the place of mother who is very subjective and unique to each person, the place of our universal Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore is more of a personal role model and companion for every person linked by common chain of Bengali literature. The widely separated Bengali diaspora across globe is united by versatile Tagore’s philosophy in different space and time. I pay tribute to both these leaders on this Happy Mothers Day and also offer “Kabiguru loho pronam” on his birthday. The invigorating works of Tagore is more acclaimed in expressions of Rabindrasangeet, but, unlike the poems and songs the most intriguing part of Gurudev’s work is the poetic expression in his letters and essays. The meaning of his phrases with literary embelli...

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In times when the world is torn apart, with divisions so many, we all cherish the little bit of compassion remaining in us to bind us together. We must break the barriers of differences and bridge the gap with bondage of cultural trust, which we have inherited from our rich heritage. In this scenario, I thank Ragranjani, who has come forward to take this drive in making us once again come together, to replenish the lost heritage and resurrect our souls with good soulful music of great music directors of yesteryears. The transcendental musicians like Hemant Kumar, Salil Choudhury, Sudhin Dasgupta, Nachiketa Ghosh, Madan Mohan, Ilayraja, Ravi and SD Burman will be relived through an event showcased by the initiative of Ragranjani at GD Birla Sabhaghar, on 28th May 2016 on the theme of "Parampara" thereby preserving cultural heritage as well as imbibing each others in our rich traditional bondage. We believe in your support so that we may march forward making the world a be...

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Woke up today morning with another sad news in Kerala. Religious fanatics will defy the public order always. It's over 100 and still counting. Only wonder at what number we will all agree that it is too much to enforce the rules over beliefs. We are too entangled with the religious beliefs that we forget the real intent of our religion. All the religions teach us the path of truthfulness and truth is the only way of maintaining the balance between our individual and the nature in natural way. The natural way of living, the simple way of living is the most beautiful and godly means of maintaining peace and harmony among human beings. In Upanishad it is well said in simple terms in Sanskrit “Satyam Sivam Sundaram” which explains the path to “Satyam, Sivam Adyitam”. This is why the old saying goes “the unity of law and love is the social welfare”. Although, whatever is beautiful may not necessarily turn out to be genuine. We do not judge the quality of any painting or any...

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The celebrations of Easters and Holi is not yet over when I woke up to the news of terrorist attack in our neighboring countries. The hatred and intolerance today chained our thinking and broken the world into fragments. The sky overhead is covered with black cloud almost all over the globe. The only sunshine of hope that used to see the entire world one day, is concerned on fragmented smaller issues now. Those who does not have any self belief cannot create anything. The only objective then remains to amass the wealth around. The difference between creation and the collector is that the creator always is remembered in history, while the collector is fighting the bloodbath battle. Before I could forget the trauma of this terrorized attack another human engineering failure led to the collapse of a bridge in Kolkata. The people who lost their lives, their family grieving in my neighborhood, have overshadowed the other sufferings happening in the greater world. The only prayer thi...

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The southerly wind is blowing steady over my garden today and the molten sunrays kisses the mango inflorescence signaling the new beginning of nature spring with brand new life. The long weekend holidays after Holi and Good Friday are over as we are all back to work and so is life in my garden. The bees are busy as ever, the sparrow is back on my window seal, making me feel “what a beautiful world” it is. I take this opportunity to wish all my friends and loved ones that this feeling of spring be everlasting in your life. I sometimes wonder whether God is in all those many multitude beautiful creation around us. The spring flowers, the birds switching branches, the honeybee busy on the mango blossom, everywhere there is happiness however only when there is harmony among all these activities. The butterfly fluttering wings are a treat for our eyes, but, once the wings are dismembered from the body it loses the beauty. Similar is the case with cut flowers in vases compared with ...

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The season of spring, the season of romanticism and the festivity of colour, Holi is just round the corner. We may or may not play the festival Holi but we cannot stop loving this festival of colour. As we all know this spring season is best enjoyed in Bengal in Shantiniketan the blessed land of Gurudev where Holi manifest a different fabric of enjoyment. This time love is in the air and our minds dance in the groove of Bihu with Tagore songs …”Aha aji e basante..” In this facebook generation when the quantity of “likes” determine the quality of the status update, we misconstrue the meaning of like perse. Although liking and loving are synonymous but are widely separated as the river separate the banks. In common parlance we like someone when he or she satisfies our emotions, whereas we love someone when we sacrifice ourself to satisfy his her emotions. So the direction of emotion is towards the other side in case of love and directed to self in case of like. It implies ...

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Today as I look around Blog writing has become a natural fashion today. Starting from celebrity to the freelancers, everyone has overnight turned a blog writer with varied thinking and ideology, sharing ideas, articulating with the world in a modern tech savvy way. Sometimes I think of those era when there was no newspaper, there was no reporter, how people used to share their information with the world. Maybe yesteryears people used to look forward more to the visionary leaders and get engrossed, inspired through their speeches. Then there were reformative writers who revolutionized the society through their storyline in novels and novellas. Wonder how the modern day writers and leaders would love this modern day blog writing art. There is however considerable difference from yesteryears “diary-writing” culture and today’s “blog-writing” fashion. The most important of them is the information overload. Too much information is a vice and ignorance is the bliss, the saying...

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