SUCHITRA MITRA PASSES AWAY

THE LAST LEGEND OF AN ERA IS NO MORE

The rulebook was sacrosanct, the poet her god. Yet, through a unique voice that weaved many a memorable rendition of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs, captivated generations of music lovers and earned worldwide acclaim, Suchitra Mitra was her own cult, singing with powerful abandon in a style both inimitable and matchless. Her passing away on Monday marked the end of an era in Rabindrasangeet, robbing the genre of the last of its holy trinity — the others being Kanika Bandyopadhyay and Debabrata Biswas.  

If unique described Suchitra Mitra best, so did unusual. She was born a premature baby on a running train, became an exponent of Rabindrasangeet without formal training till the age of 17, and took lessons in leather technology, batik and pottery at Santiniketan, where she was a music scholar. Her principle was simple — she loved her work. And the world loved her.  

That was evident on Monday in the sea of tearful people gathered near her home, Swastik, on Gariahat Road, where she had been living for nearly 30 years. Despite the fact that Suchitra Mitra had not performed in public for several years due to failing health, she hadn’t faded away.

Her indomitable spirit didn’t desert her even in her final moments. Attendants said she was sitting at the dining table and had even gulped a spoonful when they heard a gasp. That was the how the end came, a little after 1pm, short and sudden. Son Kunal, who lives in the US, was informed and her adopted daughter, Sudeshna Chatterjee, was called in. 

Suchitra Mitra would always describe her life as “extremely well lived”. She preferred to live alone, and had just one regret — that she could never come face to face with Tagore. As fate would have it, she joined Visva Bharati on student scholarship exactly 20 days after Tagore passed away, a fact she grieved all her life. But it was perhaps this loss on which she built the foundation of her music, her longing for the genre’s creator resonating in her songs.  

In 1945, her first record was released by HMV with two unforgettable renditions — ‘Hridayer Ekul Okul Dukul Bheshe Jae’ and ‘Maran Re Tuhu Mama Shyam Shaman’. She was one with her songs. At one moment, she was ‘Krishnakali’ in Tagore’s immortal ‘Krishnakali Ami Tarei Boli’, in the next, one could recognize her as that gust of wind in ‘Ei Udashi Haoar Pathe Pathe’, and then as the selfless mendicant in ‘Amare Tumi Ashesh Korecho’. “She was inimitable in her realization of Tagore’s songs, which speak of a higher philosophy of life and transport you to a higher level of existence,” said Rabindrasangeet exponent Dwijen Mukhopadhyay.

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S U C H I T R A M I T R A | S E P T E M B E R 1 9 , 1 9 2 4 — JA N UA RY 3 , 2 0 1 1 )

THE LAST NOTE

Suchitra Mitra was not only one of the last living Rabindrasangeet legends, 

but also a teacher to countless others

Everything about her was out of the ordinary. She was born prematurely on a running train. She became an exponent of Rabindrasangeet almost without any formal training. Suchitra Mitra was truly extraordinary in every sense of the word. From music to theatre, films and even politics, she dabbled in many things—and excelled in most. And she always described her life as “well and fully lived”. Suchitra was born on September 19, 1924, on a train at Gujhandi near Dehri, as the family was returning to Kolkata after a vacation. All that her helpless father could do was write a note and drop it on the platform from the train, hoping it would be spotted and help would arrive at the next station. That actually happened. The premature baby had to be kept with utmost care and her parents believed she was a little “short” in the head because she was born before time. Suchitra was the fourth of five siblings. Her father Sourindramohan Mukhopadhyay was a lawyer but writing was his passion. He was so engrossed in it at home that he didn’t notice that his daughter had turned 10 and should be admitted to school. She should have been in Class V, but as she didn’t know how to do fractions, she was placed in Class IV in Bethune Collegiate School.

It was not till she was 17 that Suchitra got any formal training in music. That doesn’t mean that she was not introduced to music at all. She was, in fact, addicted to it. Right since she was a toddler, her mornings would begin with her mother singing Rabindrasangeet, the tunes of which she picked up. Even as a child, she was a great fan of Pankaj Mullick and would devour his songs, Rabindrasangeet or otherwise. Every Sunday morning, she would tune into All India Radio’s ‘Sangeet Shikshar Ashor’, a training programme by Mullick that had attained cult status in those days.

Her father was surrounded by doyens of the culture circuit all the time and so, it was common for Pramathesh Barua, Debakii Kumar Basu, Sisir Bhaduri and Mullick to spend hours with the Mitras at their home near north Kolkata’s Mitra cinema.

Suchitra did not formally learn Rabindrasangeet, or any kind of music for that matter, till she went to Bethune School. It was here that she started learning Tagore’s songs from Amita Sen, who was a music teacher there. She was also briefly tutored by Anadi Dastidar.

In 1941, she won a scholarship to study at Visva-Bharati’s Sangeet Bhavana. Exactly 20 days after Tagore passed away, Mitra went to Santiniketan as a music scholar. By then, Tagore reigned supreme in her conscious and subconscious world. She trained under Shailaja Ranjan Majumdar, who was the head of Sangeet Bhavan, but in her own words, it was Shantideb Ghosh who inspired her and was her real guru.

In Suchitra Mitra, Sangeet Bhavana found an indomitable spirit that could sing, dance and act with the same fervour. So when ‘Balmiki Pratibha’, one of the most popular plays among students of Santiniketan, was staged, she played and sang different parts. But it was Ghosh’s direction that she enjoyed the most. Mitra became close to Kanika Bandopadhyay, the other doyen of Rabindrasangeet, when she acted with her in ‘Balmiki Pratibha’. She also found a close friend in Arundhati Guha Thakurta, who later married filmmaker Tapan Sinha. She made friends easily and would often hop over to Kala Bhavan, where she was loved by all—right from Nandalal Bose to Ramkinker Baij. The renowned sculptor, in fact, would make her sit and prepare a clay model of her face. “He found my face interesting, he would often tell me,” Suchitra later wrote in her autobiography. 

 Suchitra Mitra being taken out of her home for her final journey and 

(above) a student breaks down in her apartment

Suchitra’s freewheeling spirit made her take up lessons in leather technology, batik and pottery, at Santiniketan. Though a music scholar at Santiniketan, her name was not struck off the rolls at Bethune, from where she passed her schoolleaving exam in 1943. She had a passion for Bengali literature, too, and enrolled for undergraduate classes at Scottish Church College.

Though best known for her rendition of Tagore songs, Suchitra sung a large number of ‘adhunik’ (modern) songs, too. For a long time before and after her Santiniketan days, she was closely associated with Leftist movements — she sat in dharnas and walked with flags in rallies—but she would vehemently protest if people tried to associate her with any political party. “Politics requires a passion and tenacity that I do not have. My passion lies in Tagore’s music, which is my only religion,” she would say. It was her Left leanings that made her a member of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). She sang many of their songs, some written and put to tune by Salil Chowdhury. She sang some adhunik songs to Chowdhury’s tunes as well. Some of them are still available as records. It was her activism at IPTA that brought her close to Debrabrata Biswas, whom she called George all her life, and Hemanta Mukherjee.

In 1945, Mitra’s first record was released by HMV with two unforgettable renditions on two sides—‘Hridayer ekul okul dukul bheshe jaye’ and ‘Maran re tuhu mama shyam shaman’. She won accolades and awards all her life, but it perhaps started with the award by the UK-based Tagore Hymn Society in 1945.

In 1946, after she had completed her training in Santiniketan and returned to Kolkata, Suchitra started her own music school, Rabi Tirtha, with Dwijen Chowdhury. It was then that she realised that she would have to learn to play harmonium if she were to teach students, something that, by her own admission, she found difficult to master till very late. At Santiniketan, harmoniums were considered too lowly and students were taught with the tanpura. But that was a rigorous affair that students in Kolkata found difficult, hence the compromise.

Suchitra’s involvement with IPTA brought her close to Dhrubo Mitra, another activist, whom she married in 1948. But the marriage lasted just seven years. Suchitra would say the divorce happened because of personality clashes. Her son Kunal was born in 1950. Mitra also mothered another child — her niece, Sudeshna, who lost her mother when she was 21 days old.

Later in her career, Suchitra became the head of the music department at Rabindra Bharati University and was a prominent member of the music board of Visva-Bharati. Till the time V-B held the copyright to Tagore’s songs, any Rabindra Sangeet record or cassette made by any music company had to get the approval of the music board. A huge controversy raged when Debabrata Biswas’s record was rejected by the VBU music board. The media almost crucified Suchitra for this. Though she had never publicly reacted to this, in her autobiography, she said it had hurt her deeply as it had created permanent fissures in an age-old relationship. “I didn’t reject George’s music,” she would insist. ‘Tumi robe nirobe’ and ‘Ami chanchal he’, the two Tagore songs immortalised by Biswas, remained her favourite forever, by her own admission.

George was deeply affected and he never recorded music again. However, the only photograph that graced his room till his last day was the one where he was with Suchitra, his “Didmoni”.

From aam admi to music stalwarts and great minds, she inspired one and all. Poet Bishnu De wrote a poem on her — ‘Suchitra Mitrar Gan Shune’.

Despite her achievements, she lived a very lonely life. Her children are settled in the US and she lived alone on the 10th floor of a Ballygunge highrise, spending long hours on the verandah, watching life passing by. When sadness and dejection gripped her, she would take to doll-making, an art she picked up at Santiniketan.

With Debabrata Biswas and Kanika Bandyopadhyay gone, Mitra was the last of the living legends. With her passing, it’s the end of an era.

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She filled joyous moments with song

SOMENDRANATH BANERJEE

(The writer, a former teacher at Visva-Bharati, is a noted scholar on Rabindranath)

That was a golden period of Santiniketan. Suchitradi, Mohordi, Manikda (Satyajit Ray), Dinakar Koushik, Prithish Majumdar and a number of other students were in different departments of Visva-Bharati. But there were no divisions between students of various departments.

Suchitradi came here in 1942. She was a year senior to me. I was a student of Siksha Bhavana. Suchitradi and Mohordi were in Sangeet Bhavana. On a number of occasions, we shared our joys. Suchitradi and Mohordi filled those joyous moments with their songs. Whenever I went to Kolkata, I made it a point to meet Suchitradi. She, too, always yearned for Santiniketan. Kinkarda (Ramkinkar Beij, the famous sculptor) once told me that he thought Suchitra’s face was very in teresting. Kinkarda not say that the face was beautiful, just ‘interesting’ He made a portrait of Suchitradi with plaster of paris. Suchitradi kept the sculpture with her. One day after her marriage, she came to Kinkarda and informed him that she herself had broken the sculpture following a quarrel at home. She begged Kinkarda’s apology. He told her that she should be punished. The punishment was that she would have to sing a song. Kinkarda was an ardent admirer of the singing of Mohordi and Suchitradi. He used to say, “Rabindrasangeet oder galai basa bedheche”.

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Her songs became her statement

KABIR SUMAN

(The writer, a singer-songwriter, is MP from Jadavpur)

Suchitra Mitra is no more: I just heard these searing words. It’s like losing my mother once again. For, she was foremost among the ones I grew up listening to since my birth. 

One day in particular shines bright in my memory. It was May 7, 1961. The entire nation was celebrating the birth centenary of Rabindranath Tagore. To me, the event was epitomised by one timeless song, ‘Jakhan porbe na more payer chinha ei pathey’, in Suchitradi’s voice. She brought Tagore straight into our hearts. The dawn turned into dusk, but the resonance of the song would not leave us. And that was entirely due to her singing.

What was it about her singing that made her stand out in an age that was overcast with the austere manner of ashramik singing of Tagore? Her straightforward recital, no doubt. She had nothing devious about her, nor was there any sentimentality about her singing. No excess of emotion, nor of exuberance — she elected the straight path of enunciation. Her songs, therefore, became her statement. She stood fully behind her songs, and this appealed to one and all.

So many memories come rushing by as I speak to you of Suchitradi. There were occasions when I had the opportunity to share the stage with her. I felt small in her presence, but she never belittled anyone. She was full of life, and she treated others around her as equals. If we erred on any occasion, she’d hold us in a glare and say, “Well! What went wrong?” or “Never let this happen again!” That was all. Then she’d go back to singing. 

That was her life. It will continue to live on. And it will continue to inspire us.

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Three For Joy

 Suchitra Mitra with Hemanta Mukhopadhyay and Debabrata Biswas

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I often get goosebumps hearing her singing

SUNIL GANGOPADHYAY

(The writer is an author)

Suchitra Mitra with Sunil Gangopadhyay and (right) with her guru Shantideb Ghosh

 

Suchitra Mitra’s robust singing still rings in my ears. And it will, for the rest of my life. She could carry off most Tagore songs with ease and elan. When she started singing, her style was unique — very unaffected, yet extremely rivetting. Listeners would be almost compelled to stay tuned or sit attentively as she belted out one Tagore song after another. It never changed through all these years.

I remember when she came on to the stage, there was a joke that went around in literary circles. Suchitra’s father Shailendramohan Mukherjee was an author. He would use a lot of dots to round off his lines. So, people would joke that Suchita was Shailendramohan’s “dotter”. Jokes apart, none ever doubted her talent. 

I can’t recall when I heard her first but it has always been a pleasurable experience. She could make you sit up and sing along. I would often get goosebumps listening to her in an auditorium. None could sing “Krishnakoli” or “Tabu mone rekho” the way she did. In fact, I would say that none other than Tagore himself — whose rendition of the song we have all heard — could sing “Tabu mone rekho” as well as Suchitra Mitra did. 

Through the Fifties and the Sixties, Suchitra and Kanika almost came to symbolize Rabindrasangeet. Each had a loyal set of fans who would argue endlessly on who was better. This had probably led to their so-called “rivalry” which Rabindrasangeet listeners seemed to enjoy, nonetheless. 

I have always loved listening to both and never indulged in any comparison. While Kanika’s rendition of the love songs by Tagore was unmatched, Suchitra’s strength was the slightly more high-pitched numbers with a theatrical element. She had almost stopped performing for the last decade. But still, her presence was extremely reassuring for, as I have said, she represented the best in Rabindrasangeet. 

At a personal level, I have had the chance of interacting with her on numerous occasions. She came across as a straightforward, right-thinking individual with strong views. Suchitra Mitra will be missed but she will continue to live through her songs.

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(Compiled by Sauvik Acharyya)