SDB - Centenary year Celebrations

I am a huge S.D.Burman fan.2006 is the centenary year of the celebrated hindi film composer - S.D.Burman. Hats off to Ritu, Maajid,Chowdhury for organizing a S.D.Burman musical night in Delhi last month. The three come from different nationalities and have put together the wonderful website sdburman.net (having worked together for the last 3 years, they never met until last month end). Read this extra-ordinary tale of passion and true love for music.

From TOI, " PASSION KNOWS NO BORDERS

Maajid Maqbool is a computer professional in Rawalpindi. H Q Chowdhury runs a private science and technology laboratory in Dhaka. And Ritu Chandra is a software engineer located in Philadelphia.But a common passion binds this unlikely trio from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India: the music of Sachin Dev Burman.

Maqbool, 52, possesses 650 of the 670-odd songs composed by Dada Burman for Hindi films - a collection built assiduously over four decades rummaging through shops in Karachi, Lahore, London and New York. Along with Chowdhury and Chandra, he has spent considerable time and money to set up a Burman website ( sdburman.net) that includes snatches of his early classics. ''We are upgrading the website and hopefully the job would be complete by October 1, the day he was born 100 years ago,'' says Chandra, 33, the youngest among the three. All three are in the Capital to celebrate the birth centenary of the masterclass singer and music director.

It's a tuneful act of South Asian regional cooperation. The three,who chanced upon each other on the Internet, don't discuss Kashmir or Teesta river-water sharing. ''We have no political agenda."It's just our shared love for Dada's music that brings three individuals from three different countries together,'' says Chowdhury, 56, who grew up listening to SD Burman's Bangla songs in his childhood home in Barisal, before discovering his Hindi film repertoire. Of the three, Chowdhury is the researcher whose old film magazines carrying rare photographs and articles of the music maestro now find a place in the website. ''Now many fans have also sent photographs to us,'' says Chandra.

She is the buoyant spirit behind the group who helped organise a musical evening of Burman's songs here on Friday. Maqbool and Chowdhury also flew in from their countries.''We have known each other for so long. But we saw each other for the first time on Thursday,'' says Maqbool.