Nostalgia
Chinmoy . . . and that Shudha Bar
I don't believe it," I yelled at the TV set in front of me. My mother, sitting next to me, turned her head in my direction…. Let me backtrack.
The year was 1972. The place: Hotel Purbani. The time: afternoon, sometime around 4 o'clock. The month: of that I am not sure, but possibly it was just prior to the onset of winter. We were sitting in the hotel lobby, my longtime friend and I, in the early flushes of our youth, just lounging about, spending an idle afternoon, talking about everything and anything and making sense of very little. We had all the time in the world, and we had decided to spend a portion of it in the lobby of the hotel owned by our friend's father.
As we sat talking, we were distracted by a deep voice coming from close by. We both looked towards the direction of the voice, and saw two figures coming down a narrow stairway covered by a lush green carpet matching that of the lobby. The voice was still talking to a man next to him as they reached the bottom of the stairs. They sat down next to each other on a sofa conveniently located a few feet away from ours. Convenient because we could eavesdrop on their conversation! Not that we would deliberately do that. But the deep sonorous voice of one of the gentlemen could not but be heard by anyone but the deaf within hearing distance. Especially if the topic of conversation was rather interesting.
The guy he was talking to I do not remember, except vaguely, and, that too, purely restricted to his apparel of white pyjama and punjabi. Besides, his contribution to the conversation was in monosyllables, or silence, or, in one instance, multiple words. The deep voice, though, had a certain air about him. A rich yellow silk punjabi covered his fairly well-built frame, while a very white pyjama complemented it. He was light-skinned, with a broad forehead and a receding hairline, with slightly wavy jet-black hair brushed back from a pointed peak. I remember mentally transforming myself into a movie director typecasting, and thinking, "That man could play a Bengali zamindar!" After all these years, and with a firm conviction developed quite sometime back against the idea of typecasting for a particular role or character (not that the practice would change anytime soon in the Bangladeshi or Indian cinema or even TV drama worlds), I would still think, "That man would be a perfect fit for the role of a Bengali zamindar!"
The voice arrested my thought on typecasting him. To me, his accent sounded like that of a Bengali from West Bengal (now Poshchimbongo). From the few words he spoke, I was left in no doubt that the other man was a Bengali from Bangladesh. From a few preliminaries the conversation, marked by prolonged silences, turned to a topic that had both my friend and I listening with rapt attention. One of those silences was broken by the imagined zamindar-type:
"Do you get any maal-taal (read: hard drinks) in this country?" Confirmation that he was an Indian Bengali.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Here."
"In this hotel? Bolo ki!" ("Really" would be a poor English representation of his actual feeling when he uttered the words.)
The Bangladeshi pointed towards the sign that said "Shudha Bar". The nectar-seeker screamed:
"Wonderful! What are we waiting for? Let's go. Golata bhijie nei." (I am not even going to try to translate this one!)
"All right."
And they got up and slowly walked up the way they had come down. My friend and I looked at each other. I broke the silence:
"What does he think of us? That blankety-blank! We don't live in the Middle Ages (forgetting that they drank in that era, including in the territory that is now Bangladesh!)."
"Now he will find out."
We hung out for a while, and then left for some more chilling to do with other friends in a different location. When I returned home, it was around eight o'clock, with darkness having settled in some time back. And, after freshening up, made straight for the living room and the TV set. I flopped down next to my mother, who was quite the TV addict. Those days, for those who are not aware, there was only one TV station, BTV, which broadcast a variety of programmes for only a few short hours in the evening. Then it was housed in the DIT (now RAJUK) building, and served up some decent programmes from home and abroad. If memory serves me right, it went off the air before midnight following the late night news. And, oh, that is black-and-white TV we are talking about.
At some point, the announcer (those days, an announcer would broadcast the programme that would follow), in a pleasant voice, informed us that so-and-so would present Rabindra Sangeet to the viewers. I had heard of that name, but had never even seen his picture. Then the face loomed into view on the TV screen.
And I yelled, "I don't believe it!"
My mother was a touch vexed, "Why are you shouting? What don't you believe?"
"I saw that man this afternoon! That man on TV!"
At that moment, we fell silent, because the man had just started to sing. The first notes reached my ears, and I listened entranced. What a voice! The man was Chinmoy Chattopadhyay. He sang, as far as I can recall, a number of songs, each with the same magic as the first. He was singing his heart out. Because of the afternoon encounter, I also paid close attention to his face. Whether the camera held him in mid frame or closed in on his face, the droopy eyelids told their story. At the end of the programme (no ad interruptions), I turned to my mother and said, "I saw him only a few hours back." And proceeded to tell her the story.
No, I am not an avid Rabindra Sangeet aficionado. I have an eclectic taste in music, and the genre does not figure among the very top in my list. That list includes classic rock-and-roll. I was, am, and will remain, a Beatle maniac, but I also love Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jim Morrison (The Doors), The Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, and a whole lot of others. I am also enthralled by reggae in the form of Bob Marley. That great group of Bengali singers who were contemporaries, give or take a few years, I continue to savour (with Hemanto Mukhopadhyay, Manabendro Mukhopadhyay, Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, and many others), as I do those from Bangladesh like Ferdousi Rahman, Sabina Yasmin, Runa Laila, Shahnaz Rahmatullah, and others. I adore the ghazals of Mehdi Hasan and Talat Mahmood, as I do of the Hindi songs of Mohammad Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar (equally her songs in Bengali). And, when the time and mood are right, I get entranced by the peerless classical Indian music exponents, from Bade Ghulam Ali to Nazakat Ali.
I listen to music for pure joy. If I like something, I just like it, for varied reasons, but primarily because it touches me inside. I cannot, and will not, analyze musical renditions from any technical standpoint. That, I will leave it to the experts to do. That night Chinmoy Chattopadhyay moved me. I was enthralled by his voice and the obvious love and care that he imparted to his singing. And the thought has never quite left my head (and if someone thinks this to be sacrilegious, well, I am only giving my perspective, and will respect that person's opinion): maybe his visit to the Shudha Bar gave a strong fillip to that captivating performance!
Shahid Alam is Head, Media and Communication Department, Independent University Bangladesh (IUB).
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