A visit to Shirdi- Meeting with harmonica lover Shri Kiran Parikh

From Mumbai, I visited Shirdi for Baba’s darshan and I came in contact with Shri Kiran Parikh, a businessman from Kopargaon 10 km from Shirdi. The moment I contacted him from Shirdi, he welcomed me to his residence inspite of his busy schedule and played a good host.
Shri Kiran Parikh, a brilliant harmonica player has been playing harmonica for over 30 years. He began playing the Chinese make 'Hero' instrument. He is a great fan of Shri Bhanu Gupta, who was an assistant to legendary composer R D Burman. He also went to Mumbai to meet harmonica maestro Firoze Damri and learnt some techniques of harmonica from him. He has a good collection of various kinds of harmonicas. He also has some customized harmonicas suitable for playing some Indian ragas. I'm very fortunate to see some of the rare harmonicas in his collection. We had a great musical session for about 90 minutes in his music room which is fully equiped with Karaoke CDs. Though he plays all kinds of effects like tongue slap, Octave etc he loves to play clean single notes on a Hohner 270 harmonica. He prefers to play semi classical and rare old Hindi melodies. He says he is now going to perform about 200 stage harmonica shows in and around Maharashtra state. Even after leaving his place, he called me to know about my welfare I am very happy to meet this harmonica lover and love to meet him again at the earliest. He has also promised to visit Hyderabad to share his passion with all the Harmonica Lovers of Hyderabad.

Meeting with Harmoni-Kats

Most of us not aware of this Indian harmonica Duo called Harmoni-Kats who are Mr Sarosh Sanjana and Darius Engineer. Sarosh Sanjana a post graduate in Nuclear physics and retired as Chief Marketing Manager from TATA SSL has been playing harmonica since late 1950’s. Darius Engineer a graduate in Physics and MBA from Bajaj Institute of Management, currently the Hon.Secretary for Indian Acadamy of Model Aeronautics, Mumbai has been playing the harmonica since late 1960’s.

Both learnt to play harmonica under the legendary harmonica player of India-Late Shri Phiroze Damri at St.Xavier’s High School, Mumbai. They took part of in many music shows and competitions. Both have formed as a duo called Harmoni-Kats which performs at select musical shows. They are regular contributors for at the shows organized by B.P.Salon orchestra. At this show Harmoni-Kats performed a medley of Ten songs and it was a quiz for the audience. The person who recognized the maximum number of songs was adjudged the winner of this quiz. I could recognize 9 songs but had not participated in the quiz because the answers had to be filled up behind the ticket and submitted to the jury but it is my interest to preserve all the concerts tickets which I attend. J Harmoni-Kats further rendered two numbers- Hava Nagila,Spanish Gypsy Dance which received standing ovation from the audience.

HaLoH conveys its fond regards to Shri Rustom Karwa and the Harmoni-Kats.