Since 1999
My friends
People who have helped me one way or the other
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His interview with Ameen Sayani in Feb 2008.
Listen to AbhayInterweingAmeenSayani-02-12-08.mp3
I got acquainted with Abhay on RMIM and then met him in RMIM meetings, including one in his home. I found out quickly that he loves to restore, clean and improve old, damaged and noisy audio recordings. He has been doing that for songs in my collection in along time. I am sure people enjoyed his versions of the late Hem Chandra Jain collection. Here is his brief bio and some pictures.
Born in 1948 at Bareilly UP and grew up at Indore.
Great grandfather used to play many instruments. But no one else in generations had any interest in music. Always wanted to play tabla but due to emphasis on studies, never pursued it.
While walking to primary and middle school in the morning, used to pass through many hotels on a three mile walk and enjoy all the music playing on the radio. 40s music always stayed appealed. Once got into college, watching movies, enjoying movie songs and remembering song statistics became a passion. Moved to US in 1970 but music became less of interest. One day at work, found that productivity increased and made less mistakes if songs were playing in background. It rekindled passion for music.
In late 90s heard of a music group, RMIM and attended RMIM meet at late Satish Kalra’s place and got in touch with die hard music fans. In 2003 organized a meet at own place where late Ravindra Jain was a guest. He became close to Ravindra Jain visiting him at his place few times.
Music interest took another turn when joined Srinivas Rao in his radio show on a local FM station in New Jersey in late 2003. This was a voluntary effort doing a community service. In 2010, moved to radio station Radio Dil doing a two hour weekly show called Geet Ganga. Radio shows have been unscripted and based on a theme or birthday/death anniversary of an artist. He had appeared on All India Radio Indore station in early childhood five times on a weekly children’s program, Bal Sabha earning Rs 25, Rs five per show.
Through an ardent listener, Rupa Dore (sister-in law of music journalist Raju Bharatan), got in touch with Ameen Sayani and became friends with him in 2008 and interviewed him in his studio. He met Ameen Sayani many times at his place in Mumbai. Ameen Sayani got him in touch with many film personalities. For his radio show, he interviewed many movie personalities –music directors Ravi, Ravindra Jain, Anandji of Kalyanji Anandji, Usha Khanna, Pyarelal; Ameen Sayani, Shamshad Begum, actress Shyama, journalist Raju Bharatan, Suman Kalyanpur, Rakesh Bakshi (son of Anand Bakshi), singer Hemlata.
Passion is to listen, collect Hindi film songs, clean them and try to keep accurate information for them.
With Ravindra Jain
With Amin Sayani
With Shamshad Begum
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Good News! Sheo Khetan is making available his books for downloading.
His Autobiography
1-From Jhunjhunu to New York Story of My Life, Part 1.pdf
2-GROWING OUR FAMILY, NY AND PA Sheo Khetan, Life Story, Part 2 .pdf
3-GROWING OUR FAMILY, NJ Sheo Khetan, Life Story, Part 3.pdf
4-GROWING OUR FAMILY, NJ Sheo Khetan, Life Story, Part 5.pdf
His work on capturing the pictures of the cast
C1-Hindi Films Pictures of the Cast (1933-1937).pdf
C2-Hindi Films Pictures of the Cast II (1938-1940).pdf
C3-Hindi Films Pictures of the Cast III (1941-1942).pdf
C4-Hindi Films Pictures of the Cast IV (1943-1946).pdf
C5-Hindi Films Pictures of the Cast V (1947-1949).pdf
C6-Hindi Films Pictures of the Cast VI (1950-1951).pdf
C7-Hindi Films Pictures of the Cast VII (1952-1953).pdf
Read more about him here
Mad About 30s 40s Stars
Sheo Khetan was born in Sitamarhi, Bihar in July 1949. He did his High School from Netarhat School, Ranchi and then did B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur in 1970. He came to Stony Brook, NY in September 1970 and finished MS in Mechanics. He started working in Semiconductor Manufacturing, rising to VP of manufacturing. He finished M.B.A. in Finance from Temple University in Philadelphia.
Unfortunately, in 2005 he had a stroke. It took 6 months to recover and he retired. He was an avid player of Bridge, Tennis, Golf and Ping Pong. He still plays Bridge (some 80-100 deals a week) online.
After retirement he took to watching Indian Movies. He was always a fan of both Indian (filmy) music and movies. The earliest movie he saw was Durgesh Nandini (1956). N S Vishwanath first introduced him to Saigal movie Devdas. Since then he has been watching all available movies
He is still searching for films of Master Vithal and D Bilimoria's movies.
He has been married to Nirmala since 1976 and they have 4 boys and 2 daughters-In-law.
Sons' names are Sanjay, Saurabh, Sameer and Sudhir. The three daughters-in-law are Deepa (Mrs Sanjay), Pavitra (Mrs Saurabh) and Sarmili (Mrs Sudhir). He has six grandchildren, Jaiden (11) and Dilan (born in Covid), Deepa's children and Shreyashi (8) and Kaushik (born in Kovid), Sarmili's children, and Shaan (16) and Krish (11), Pavitra's kid.
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I first read about him on Greta's blog. He seemed to be quite knowledgeable about Indian and Pakistani films. Later I learned about his expertise in VHS/VCD restoration. I saw a few samples that he used to distribute as multi-part ISO files. The difference between the quality of the original VHS tapes and his final DVD-quality videos was magical. We became friends and, later, I also contributed a lot of videos that I had from my own collection and the collections of Dr Manohar Lal Kapur and late Amarjit Singh Anand.
Also I would like to mention here that although I ended up writing the book on Edwina, Tom is the one who actually interviewed her and graciously allowed me to use his material in the book. Thanks Tom!
He posts his videos on YouTube, focussing on early films, for which the copyright has expired. For a while now he has been having problems with his YouTube channels. Here is a statement from his channels.
Description
This channel features films from classic (all public domain) Indian and Pakistani films.
I can prove commercial use rights for all elements of the films. Each film has undergone - on average - 40 hours of heavy editing and restoration. An example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwb-4G0jl_8
Please read its Video Information. No video in this channel 'duplicates' or 'reuses' any video found on YouTube or elsewhere. Any copyright claims found in the channel are 'mistaken' and are dealt with. Added value is provided by:
1. Better quality as compared to other similar videos on YouTube
2. Videos at film speed resulting in more natural movement and songs in tune (not a semitone too high, no PAL speedup, unlike other channels)
3. Original aspect ratio (not 'widescreen' as in most other channels)
4. Heavily edited and retimed English translations provided when available
Here is the article about him in the Business Standard
Article in Business Standard Download pdf here
Click on the image to magnify and then top right to make it full screen
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