At 74, three childhood buddies recall growing up with the Sawai

In the last 56 years, not once have Sudhakar Purushottam Dhaygude and Ganesh Bhalchandra Joshi given the Sawai Gandharva Music Festival a miss.

In the last 56 years, not once have Sudhakar Purushottam Dhaygude and Ganesh Bhalchandra Joshi given the Sawai Gandharva Music Festival a miss. At the age of 74, it has always been like a ritual for both Dhaygude and Joshi.

Friends from school days, they used to mark the dates of ‘Sawai’ in the calendar. “When I joined CWPRS, even my boss used to remind me about the leave I need to take to attend the festival,” says Dhaygude.

When the list of anecdotes grew, they penned down their festival memories in a Marathi book, Bharalelya Ya Swaranni, Bharalela Janma Ha.

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A common friend Vinayak Laxman Divekar, who used to work in Madhya Pradesh, could not attend the festival every year. So Dhaygude and Joshi used to write him long letters detailing the festival happenings. “We wrote about the best and worst performances,” says Dhaygude.

“In 1965-66, violinist N Rajam was performing at the festival and suddenly the electricity went off. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi intervened and electricity was back in half an hour. At that time, Rajam had said, ‘If it happened in Kolkata, I doubt if any woman would feel safe. But the people of Pune are so cultured that the women here did not even budge,’ says Dhaygude.

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