There is a desperate attempt to get to bed early and bring some timings in order. The next film is exertion personified. Not that every film is not, but I get the feel that this one would. So the tread mill and the weights and the stretches and bends increase substantially. And if night is late, the effort to comply is missing in large doses. Hence ….

I think listening to a script idea for film is a most exciting moment for any artist. The delight in shifting yourself into the mind and realm of the writer and maker. The visualisation of the way each scene would be enacted and how one would accomplish it. The other aspects of the score, the co artists, the publicity, all go along in making that experience something that you would wish would never ever stop. Equally exciting is the time spent with the music directors in creating the music of the film - an ingredient that shall identify you long after you are gone. It is strange, but somehow it is the music of the film that outlasts all else. It is that particular song which reminds you and others of your association with cinema. Individual scenes and dialogues yes, but music … eternal and forever !!

At least here in Indian Cinema, that refrain remains ..

And the time and energy spent with the creators of this eternal element in our lives, is divine. Some of the most eloquent moments in my rather sketchy career with music, have been with its creators.

The hours of absolute bliss spent in time with the maestro SD Burman as he sat cross legged on the floor of his apartment on the Link Road, in a building called the JET ! One would never associate JET with his calibre and genius. But there he was, his equally talented wife and Mother of RD Burman, by his side singing in his unique quality of voice, the songs of Abhimaan - each one a melody that has lived beyond time and place ! For his accompaniment a harmonium and that is all. The simplicity of the bearing, the intensity of his compositions in its rough bare form and the purity of its rendition, was unmatched. Somehow once you moved into the realm of technology and the recording studio, that aura of its quality evaporated. Yes, we documented it for posterity, but I doubt if ever those moments spent in his preparation were ever recorded and kept. A real pity ! For those are the moments that truly demonstrate the creative genius of the greats. The Americans are exceptional in this. Perhaps the age of their country as a country has prompted them to do so, but they seem to have every bit of documentation of almost every moment in their history on record. From the early lives of Presidents to the most accomplished sportsmen and musicians and artists, they have it all. And what surprises me the most is how ever do they assuage whether Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth or a Muhammed Ali in their teens, would become what they did. Or an Elvis or a Brando or JFK and a Nixon or Obama. Amazing !! Absolutely amazing !!

But back to music and SD Burman and musical sittings with other greats - Kalyanji Anandji, Laxmikant Pyarelal, RD Burman and so many others … all those evenings spent in their music halls, just pfaffing and relaxed and then suddenly out of no where comes a piece and it is developed and put down and recorded and performed to and it becomes history in the annals of cinema.

What a long way we have come from the time when we had singing actors and actresses, who sang live on set to a live orchestra. And those wonderfully exquisite footages we have seen in the archives, of the leading lady and the leading man, singing a duet in the opulence of a garden or a forest and as they moved and danced and sang, the live orchestra moved along with them just behind the camera, or if they were under a tree, to find the live orchestra sitting on top on the branches, violins drums cellos being played with equal dexterity. I think the much repeated expression used cynically even in todays times of ‘running round the tree’ when criticizing our song and dance routines, came about from those early shooting experiences. If the leading man were to be under a tree, a not too undesired location for romance, and his lady were to be on the other side of it, the mobile live orchestra had to quickly run around the tree to keep out of the frame, if the hero decided to reach out to his heroine on the other side with some rapidity ! Ha ha ha !! Those were the days !

I was narrating this to some of the younger generation stars on set one of these days and they all thought I was being ridiculously funny ! Until they realized it was all factual.

And now we have such advanced recording devices and computerized equipments, that make a ‘phata baans’ and a complete non singer like me, sound like the Great Caruso !!  Caruso ! wow ! how did I ever suddenly think of him ? many among you may not have heard of this legendary singer - Enrico Caruso, the greatest tenor singer of his time, and perhaps the greatest of all time ! There was a film made on his life too around 1951 I think, acted by Mario Lanza, if I am not wrong ! Amazing ! Brought me back memories of Sherwood in Nainital around 1956 and the small 8 mm projector that showed the entire school these ‘meaningful’ films every Saturday !!

The continuity of recording has long since been abolished. The times when a song had to be recorded without a break in one single take - orchestra of large proportions and several instruments, singers in their cabins, recordist on his manually operated knobs to get the depth and tone right for the large spool of film that ran alongside in the recording room, to be printed and then transferred to those 33 rpm discs or even earlier on the 78 rpm’s. All gone.

Now a rough track is composed on one single instrument - a key board that emanates all the required sounds of all possible instruments. The singer comes and sings piece meal a line or words and they have the ability to be transposed or cut and pasted in place on the track. Later additions are made sounds put and pasted and valla ! we have song ! At times the playback artist does not even know which film he or she has sung for !!!

The recording studios have all been converted into shooting floors or malls or business real estate complexes. The size of room required earlier would match the inside of a cinema hall. Now .. I could compose entire music in a 6 by 5 ante room ….

Science is desperately trying to shrink us all, in all walks of our life. In distance and speed to get there, in time conservation through internet and communication .. yet … one small little quiver in the vast ocean destroys and causes a calamity which man kind has no answers for !

We have just the prayers for those that suffer in Japan, day after day … and now perhaps in its spread to the rest of us …

Amitabh Bachchan