The Sawai Gandharva Music Festival of Pune, which is celebrating its golden jubilee in December 2002, is perhaps a unique phenomenon in the annals of Hindustani classical music. Over the last 50 years, generations of Pune's connoisseurs have grown up savouring the unforgettable performances at the Festival by great Hindustai masters. This important event, however, has not yet been properly documented. The need for such documentation is self-evident. First, it is a worthwhile idea for its own sake. Secondly, Pune's large and ever-increasing Diaspora all over the world undoubtedly comprise a large number of connoisseurs who surely never missed the Festival when they were in Pune, but now that they are away, surely do.

When I thought of developing this website, the first job was to collect the basic year-wise data about the Festival. For this purpose, I approached the Kesari and Sakal news paper libraries. I express my sincere thanks to the staff of both these libraries, and especially Mr Ravindra Lele of Kesari and Mr Suresh Jadhav of Sakal, for readily making their relevant back issues, right from 1962, available to me and permitting me to take notes from them. Yet, some gaps remained. At this point, my friend Mr Shrikant Chaphalkar, who was taking keen interest in my work, introduced me to Mr Govind Bedekar, who, in turn, introduced me to Mr S.V. Gokhale, Secretary of the Arya Sangeet Prasarak Mandal who helped by readily provided the remaining data (data before 1962 is unfortunately not available anywhere or with anybody). Mr Bedekar also introduced me to Pandit Bhimsen Joshi himself. It was a pleasure to interact with these senior friends, who also made numerous constructive and useful suggestions as my work progressed. I am deeply grateful to them.

I have been able to include the photo gallery entirely because of the kindness and generosity of Mr Satish Paknikar, the ace photographer, who has permitted me use some of the choice photographs from his collection. Similarly, Mr Anand Deshmukh, who has been most ably compering the Festival for well over a decade, was good enough to help me with the video clippings; Ms Avanti Punde helped with designing and Mr Sharad Panse with the text. I express my sincere thanks to all of them.

I should also like to pay my homage here to the memory of another senior friend of mine, Mr Vijay Nene, who suddenly passed away two years ago. I have been fortunate to receive some great audio recordings from his priceless collection, some of which I have used here.

Mr Bhaskar Shere and Mr Sudhakar Dhaigude, who have just written a comprehensive book on the Sawai Gandharva Festival, have appreciated my work and constantly encouraged me, as has Mr Dilip Inamdar in various ways. Mr Shere readily lent me an earlier book on Sawai Gandharva, which proved very useful. Similarly, Mr Sandip Shevde, who taught me web designing in the first place, has helped and guided me in numerous ways. To all of them, I am deeply grateful.

Last but not the least, the 'Living Legend' himself. When I called on Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the revered and beloved Anna to his bhaktas, to tell him about my work, he enthused, encouraged and blessed me with his customary magnanimity and graciousness. It is perhaps not possible to express adequately my gratitude for Bhimsenji; in any case, we all are, and would like to remain, forever in his debt for the joy that he has given us all these decades and, indeed, continues to give even today.

Finally, it is my pleasant duty to express my sincere gratitude to my parents for their constant encouragement and support and invaluable blessings, not to mention their boundless love, for me-- although I know for a fact that they would not exactly like this formality on my part.