तुम मुझे यूँ भुला ना पाओगे

I entered his office and enquired about him. He had gone out for some work. However, they gave me his cell number. I rang up and heard this melodious song (title of this post) as a hello tune. After a few seconds he came on line. I asked him a question " was that your voice that i just heard ?". He said no, it was Md Rafi's voice but in the same breath he enquired as to who was calling. I said "guess". He offered to apologise. I told him that there was no need to feel sorry because i was talking to him after a gap of approximately thirty five years. And then, after a brief silence, he hit the bull's eye."is it Balvinder " he said and i laughed aloud on this side.

Hari Sandhu, my class mate from fifth standard onwards as well as my music mentor. I had rediscovered him through my blog post " My Exploits on Stage" just a month back. It so happened that his son was surfing the net and did some search on the search engines. As soon as he keyed his father's name the search engine opened my blog post where i had mentioned his name. He later told me that their family slept at one in the night after reading all my blog posts in one go.

And now since i was at Delhi to celebrate Dipawali festival with my family, i made it a point to meet him. He rushed back from where he was and there we were, hugging each other after thirty five years or so. He took me to his place to let me meet his family. On the way he made me talk to one of our school teachers, Mr. R.K. Gupta, with whom he was still in touch. We were together in the school from class five to class eleventh (we had ten plus one plus three system) and then in differnt colleges at Shimla, singing and acting in almost every cultural programme of the school, college or the town, sometimes together and some times as rivals.

So next two hours or so we just relived the memories of our school and college days in addition to enquiring as to how the life has been behaving with us during this gap of thirty five years or so.

Hari Sandhu, an ardent fan of Md Rafi, had made it quite obvious in the fifth standard itself when Rafi saheb had visited Shimla for live performance in the summer festival. He had entered the function enclosure and got as close to the stage as possible to have a closer look at his idol. Later he wrote to Rafi saheb and the legendary singer sent him his autographed picture as a compliment. And he would flaunt it quite often in the school. That picture is still embellishing his drawing room shelf. Hari Sandhu has been endowed with the voice closest to that of Rafi saheb. And some times i envied him for that because i, my self being a fan of Md Rafi, would try his songs but would never get that effect which Hari's voice had.

Hari works for FM Gold at Delhi and he also gives live performances singing Md Rafi songs at various places across the country.

So folks if you are looking for any of your long lost friends then keep searching for him/her.
And don't forget to try the net itself. You may discover your friend and may hear the hello tune on the other side of the line : "तुम मुझे यूँ भुला ना पाओगे"