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  Lekh Tandon
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  Sudhir Mishra
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  Kanwaljit Singh
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  Shashi Ranjan with Rumi Jaffery
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  Roop Kumar Rathod
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  Talat Aziz
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  Neena Gupta
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  Anu Ranjan
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On 20th February, ’13, a unique event was held at the Club Millennium, Juhu. It was unique for literary firmament of Mumbai, because the Metro has not seen anything like it in a long, long while.

Organised by Shashi Ranjan, Producer/Director/Publisher and Roomi Jafferi, Write/Director, the ‘Tehzeeb-e-Gango-Jaman Mushaaira’ was a salute to the multifarious Culture of India, particularly the common Ganga-Jamni heritage of Hindi & Urdu. Hence, the poetic soiree was a blend and confluence of consummate poetry in both the languages, recited by some of the most acclaimed poets that there are.

The roster of participating poets had such renowned names as – Waseem Barelawi, Rahat Indori, Javed Akhtar, Hassan Kamal, Qausar Siddiqui, Ashok Chakradhar, Nazar Bijnori, Maya Govind, Barkha Singh, Swanand Kirkire.

The Chief-Guest for the evening was Honourable Shri Kapil Sibbal, Union Minister for Communication and IT.

The Evening also saw two Awards being instituted in the name of Shri Rajendra Pradeep, an eminent Scholar, Educationist and Urdu Academy, Haryana Awardee. The two ‘Rajendra Pradeep Eizaaz’ would be given annually to a veteran Poet of eminence and another to an upcoming Poet of great promise.

Says Shashi Ranjan, ‘This is a step in the service of India’s great literary traditions as embodied in Hindi & Urdu that have a shared heritage, historically. We have been obsessed with the creation of a platform that would be a ‘Sangam’ and a collective mirror of the finest contemporary Verse in both the languages. In these days of alarming indifference to Literature and Poetry all across, we hope to rekindle a passion for the same through this endeavour. And really, we are overwhelmed with the response and participation of so many eminent people here, today!’

Rumi Jafferi elaborates, ‘You know, the fact is that if you are looking for someone who has been constantly serving Hindi and Urdu, you have to go no farther than our Film Industry. People have learnt these languages because of our Films. Since, Shashi Ranjan and I both belong to this industry, we wanted to salute the glory of Hindi & Urdu on another platform and this Mushaaira is a big stride in that direction!’

Those present at the Evening comprised:
Ramesh Sippy, Shatrughan Sinha, Praful Patel, Jeetendra, Nida Fazli, Shabana Azmi, Zeenat Aman, Boney Kapoor, Sridevi, Rahul Rawail, David Dhavan, Javed Siddiqui, Sunil Lulla, Prem Sagar, Ramesh Talwar, Satish Kaushik, Salim Suleiman, Raj Babbar, Alka Yagnik, Roop Kumar Rathod, Salma Agha, Sameer, Raman Kumar, Prem Chopra, Mugdha Godse, Rakesh Bedi… to name a few!