GEETanjali - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is GEETanjali all about?
What are the guidelines for posting?
Who can contribute to this series?
How can I contribute to this series?

What is GEETanjali all about?

GEETanjali is a series of postings on the RMIM (rec.music.indian.misc) newsgroup. The series is intended as a supplement to the ITRANS Song Book or ISB. The ISB is a collection of Indian-language (mainly Hindi or Urdu) song lyrics in the ITRANS transcription scheme devised by Avinash Chopde. The main ITRANS Song Book site is maintained by Anurag Shankar, and the Forthcoming Additions to the ISB site is maintained by Rajiv Shridhar. These sites are conveniently indexed together at Navin Kabra's Archive of Hindi Movie Songs.

Check out the latest release of the ISB at http://members.nbci.com/isb_archives/ being maintained by K.Vijay Kumar. We all owe him a lot for taking up and carrying to completion a project which is of immense value to all of us. The Consolidated ISB, as it is called, has all the songs available at different sites, plus innumerable updates and corrections, removal of duplicates and better cross-referenced indexes.

The GEETanjali series was started by U.V.Ravindra to add songs to the ISB. Here is his introductory post. The series aims to provide a ready collection of songs missing from the ISB, for inclusion in its next release. A parallel series called Fill In The Blanks (FITB) on RMIM is coordinated by Surajit Bose. The primary goal of FITB is to update the lyrics of the existing songs in the ISB by providing missing stanzas.

Both GEETanjali and FITB also hope to foster discussions about the songs on RMIM.

What are the guidelines for posting?

A song can be posted under the GEETanjali series if:

• it is NOT included in the Consolidated ISB
• it has not been posted in the GEETanjali series already

Apart from these two essential guidelines, there are a few rules-of-thumb that are followed for posting. These are:

• The Subject of the post should begin with GEETanjali - , followed by the opening line of the song, or at least the first few words of the opening line.
• Songs should be posted in the format defined in this template.
• It is a standard practice to include p-stats for a song. Even partial p-stats would be welcome. The usual p-stats included are:
  
  Film: (Non-film songs can be added to the ISB as well)
  Singer(s):
  Music Director(s):
  Lyricist(s):
  Actor(s)/Actress(es):
  Comments: (Info on picturization, any anecdotes related to the song/film, etc. can be added here)
  
  
  
• As far as possible, the lyrics should be given in ITRANS. If you are not comfortable writing in ITRANS, or not familiar with the ITRANS transliteration scheme, you can ask for help from any of the RMIMers.

You can look at previously posted articles to get an idea about the format.

Who can contribute to this series?

Anyone can contribute to the series. All contributions are welcome. This is an excellent opportunity to share and talk about your favourite songs with others. ISB contains non-filmi songs also, so you can post lyrics of ghazals and geets, and any oher form of songs that you may like.

How can I contribute to this series?

You can post directly to RMIM (rec.music.indian.misc) using a newsgroup browsing services, like DejaNews . You will have to register as a DejaNews user (the registration is free) and subscribe to the newsgroup (also free) before you can post to it. You may also have newsgroup access through your mail client at work. AOL users will find it easier to post using the Newsgroup service on AOL itself.

If this seems like too much work, you can always e-mail your contribution to me at indianlyrics@yahoo.com for posting.

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