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Published: 07 January 2024

Last Updated: 07 January 2024

Last time I saw him was when he visited us in San Diego in May 2013. Again we talked about things of mutual interest. I brought my laptop and flash drive for stuff to give to him. He brought his laptop. He generously let me copy whatever I wanted from his laptop.

I promised to meet him whenever I would visit India next time; it was not meant to be.

His contribution to the history of Indian gramophone record industry is immense.

Will be sorely missed.

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Published: 09 January 2024

Last Updated: 18 May 2024

On the 25th anniversary of RMIM, I wrote a book about it; Late Suresh Chandvankar played a role!

From the Preface:

      A few years ago, Suresh Chandvankar, the Honorary Secretary of the Society of Indian Record Collectors, asked me to contribute an article on RMIM for the Society’s magazine, The Record News. I started to write slowly and carefully taking my own time, but soon realized that there was no way to write briefly about RMIM. So I asked him if he could devote a whole issue of the magazine to RMIM! He said that magazine was no longer being published, but why don’t I write a book on RMIM. It was an excellent suggestion, because so much original valuable content has been generated by RMIMers that it should be collected before it disappears. So on the Facebook RMIM group, I started to collect pdf files of various posted articles. It is a work in progress and is continuing.

In the meantime, January 1, 2017 was the 25th anniversary of RMIM. I thought about writing a mini version of the book to go with the Silver Jubilee meet being planned for Bangalore, India. But there was not enough time and I was discouraged. Then, Pavan Jha asked if I was going to attend and Anup Pandey mused that it would be great if I could release the book during the meet. That was enough incentive to get to work. There was no way to include everything, so I had to select. Result is in your hands. The big book is called Omnibus, I decided to call this version the Minibus :)

I decided to keep the book a surprise. I had to have an accomplice from Bangalore to distribute the book at the meet. I chose Chetan Vinchhi, he agreed readily. But when I finished the ms on April 2 and asked my US and Indian printers if they could print and deliver 50 copies to Bangalore by the 7th evening, they said no way. Again Chetan came to the rescue, and he, along with Ashok Dhareshwar, was able to keep the secret and deliver the book on time. Amazing people we have in RMIM!

Chetan, Pavan, guri (and the book), Ganti.

Now You Know!

New A86

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Published: 19 July 2024

Last Updated: 19 July 2024

Har Mandir Singh 'Hamraaz' and I are happy to report that the work of amending, updating and checking of the Hindi Film Geet Kosh Volume I (1931-1940) has been completed, for now. This a major update since September 1988 when the First Edition of this volume was published (almost 36 years ago!) and incorporates all the information available to us as of now.

We had already updated the Censor Certificate information on June 25, 2024. Now, we have updated the Filmography. Here is a summary of the new information added.

• Many items such as the Producer, Director, Music Director were missing or incomplete, they has been updated.
• Cast information has been updated from newly available booklets, magazines, films etc.
• The comment section has been updated and expanded with new information.

Books based on the filmography and Song information will follow in due course.

The database website is

The Database Website

Now You Know!