Happy Turnout

Exercises in progress today morning

Bijoy Gupta (in striped t-shirt) emulates Dilip Kumar with dramatic flourish

Belying general apprehensions, nearly 20 of us turned up for the exercises today. The rigors of fasting during Ramzaan did not deter the likes of Yusuf Rassiwala, Khatoon Baig, Naseer Putani Shah and Nahid Khan from reporting to the Garden. Over and above, Siba Prasad Maitra (who was away for nearly a month) and Shanti Singh (who had gone visiting relatives and childhood friends in Nepal) resurfaced today, looking fresh and upbeat.
One reason for the heartening turnout was a sudden improvement in weather conditions this morning. The sky was overcast for a major part and it even drizzled for a while before the exercises began. The cloud cover did raise humidity levels, but with occasional gusts of wind blowing across, we did not have to sweat it out much. Even after the sky had cleared and the sun came out, discomfort from the humidity was minimal. Exercising was a breeze.
In keeping with the unusually pleasant atmosphere, Bijoy Gupta was in his elements, regaling us with selected (read popular) dialogues from Dilip Kumar’s films. We have always known Gupta to be a good mimic, but not many are aware that he is also an ardent Dilip Kumar fan, having watched all his films many times over. His account of the “first and last meeting with his idol in flesh and blood” at his Bandra home by itself makes for a hilarious story. But that can wait.
Today, Gupta focused on the thespian’s lines from the 1960 historical epic, Mughal-E-Azam. It was astonishing how, more than half a century later, Gupta still has every scene from the film committed to memory – together with the exact dialogues, nuance, inflection, pause and words uttered by the principal characters. So much so, he went on to also deliver Prithviraj Kapoor’s lines, tone perfect, much to our infinite amazement.
Incidentally, Gupta is not Net savvy and does not even know how to source film clips from You Tube.
Karun Sharma:
Bijoy Gupta is our star performer. I missed his performance today. I wonder if he delivers those romantic dialogues to Pushpa-ji -- his Anarkali.
Lt Col Angad Singh (retd):
A number of colleagues who were away for quite some time have come back from their sojourn. This is a healthy sign. It proves that people are enthusiastic about their attendance these days.