Chaupal

CHAUPAL : For the first time I attended Chaupal at actor Rajendra Gupta's home . Its being organised by Atul jee ,Ashok Bindal and Rajendra Gupta .Think its once a month though i am not sure .I was invited to talk about photography , the other two invitees were Seema Sahegal who sang Faiz Ahmad Faiz nazm while Dr.Deepak Chaturvedi spoke about anti aging and harmones.I was pleasently surprised to see this gathering of about 100/150 people who heard us in apt silence .

I spoke about my association with Times of India ,Pritish Nandy,Ayaz Memon,Bachi Karkaria,Malavika Sandhvi to Raj Khosla ,Vinod Khanna,Rajesh Khanna and many such incidents which even these people may not remember .

I had exhibited about 15 images of mine at Gupta jee's aangan and spoke about these images of Shabana Azmi,Bal Thackrey,Amitabh Bachchan,Medha Patkar ,Prahlad Kakkkar ,Waheeda Raheman ,Hariprasad Chaurasiya .

I also spoke about Hindi litrature and on writers like Upendranath Ashq,Yashpal ,Neeraj and Manohar shyam Joshi, Sumitranandan Pant and others .The best part was when we had a tea break an elderly gentleman walked up to me and said he was my father's ( Jnan Chandra)collegue at one time at Navneet Hindi digest which is being edited by Vishwanath Sachdev now .

About my work on Kashmiri Pandits ,Shekhawati and its havelis fresco paintings .I really had great time at this gathering and I plan to attend such many more Chaupals in future.

A big thank you to all of you .

pradeep chandra

Pic .2 :I missed of Mr.Amitabh Bachchan

Maqbool.....Not the film but HUSAIN the painter

MF Husain ...wont say the barefoot painter ,have got tired of reading and writing this .Had an amazing day reading and writing about this great painter .Vikas Sinha had come over to help me
and have really given me some great imputs .
Am worried ,have crossed my deadline and still some more work left to do .Think another 10 days and the book goes to the publisher .
I was just thinking about some of the pics I was to do but missed ,like once I told him Husain saab I want to do a pic of you in a AKHADA with young guys doing Kushti or somthing similar .
He got very exicted and said chalo karte hain ,but as we were about to leave he met a close
friend of his and told him about the shoot .
His friend said nahin nahin ajeeb lagega ,karna hai to track suit main kareeye .We went togather
and bought a trek suit from Colaba market grey coloure and went to this local akhara near VT
but the manager of the place didnt give me permission said aap letter deke jao kal aana permission leke rakhoonga .
By next day Husain saab had changed his mood .Said nahin nahin kahaan leke jaa rahe ho ,Kuch aur socho .What a picture if I had shot . Some more news on HIM may be tomorrow .