Songstress Lata Mangeshkar has a taste for raw green chillies, one that she acquired while in Kolhapur. And maestro Pandit Bhimsen Joshi had a fondness for fast cars. Indira Gandhi had a special technique for honing her memory that her father Jawaharlal Nehru taught her.
Interesting, quirky details like these that sometime never make it into newspaper spreads or on television screens are what veteran journalist and interviewer Sudhir Gadgil has been privy to. And he was in Auckland recently where Marathi speaking Aucklanders enjoyed his simple form of traditional and informal storytelling or gappa in Marathi (or kisse in Hindi) at the Mount Eden War Memorial Hall.
Mr. Gadgil shared select anecdotes from his cache of 3270 interviews and the narration in simple, untarnished Marathi, that delved into the unique facets of people and not just the famous ones. Mulkha Vegli Manse evolved from his curiosity, a love for people and the ability to listen, says Gadgil.
The event was organised and hosted by Migrant Heritage Charitable Trust and was supported by Auckland Marathi Association in Auckland.
“It is about how you ask as well as about what you want to know,” says Gadgil of his style. His work is as much about people as it is about personalities. “You scratch the surface and really see people. When I met Madhuri (Dixit) at her Denver home, I saw that here was someone who had seen success as a star.
But at her home, she only had two kittens, her two babies for company and I asked her when she planned to come back to India?” recalls Gadgil. “I felt she must obviously miss the vibrancy of her life before she moved to the US."
After a pause and a long sigh, she answered with a date. And sure enough, she is back in Bollywood today.” Gadgil incidentally was the first one who interviewed Madhuri at the start of her career.
There are stories and unexpected gems all around us Gadgil says. Like Baburao, a raddi seller in Pune who participated in the Olympics or the bhangar walli who imparted Gadgil with some sound business principles built around her daily trade of creating value through buying and selling junk.
The introduction to this narration does tend to become a bit longwinded, albeit peppered with familiar jibes at Punekars, Mumbaikar and Nagpurkars. True to its promise, Mulkha Vegali Manase is successful in scratching the surface to reveal the undiscovered facets that make-up people.
