Ashoketaru : A Giant of Tagore’s Rabindrasangeet
This narrative recounts a poignant childhood friendship between the author and Manishi, whose family left for a new city. The story unfolds in South Calcutta, where the author reflects on the emotional impact of this departure and the unexpected joy that follows with the arrival of Ashoketaru Bandopadhyay, a renowned Rabindrasangeet singer.
Manishi left. His father was a big man in some multinational company. They used to live in the house situated at the corner of the small street that ran from the Manohar Dacoit’s Kali Temple to Vivekananda Park in South Calcutta. But then one day, Manishi and his family left when his father was sent away on promotion to a different city. I was heartbroken, because Manishi and I were bosom friends since childhood.
So from my first-floor veranda in the J-Block of the large, walled Income Tax Quarters with ten blocks, I cast forlorn glances at that corner-house and cried for a full day. I did not know, however, that that house around the corner of the small street that ran between the private houses and our government quarters would soon become the biggest source of joy for the rest of my life.
I was then in Class Four in St Xavier’s Collegiate School, Calcutta, a dangerously naughty boy, with a highly melodious voice and an avid singer of Rabindrasangeet, the body of around three thousand songs written and scored by India’s first Nobel Laurate, Rabindranath Tagore. My first teacher, Debabrata Biswas (about whom I have written earlier in these columns, lived a street away from us. Then one day, Maa told me: “Do you know who has come in Manishi’s house?”
I did not care, for since Manishi left, that house had no meaning for me. But what Maa told me changed that house to a place that would mean everything to me, almost, most like pilgrimage. “Ashoketaru Bandopadhyay has come there.” I was shocked and ran to the veranda to look at the house, whose rear courtyard was visible from my house. I saw a biggish lady putting some washed clothes on the clothes line to dry. “Maa, do you think he will teach me to sing as well?” I asked. “I do not know. He is too big a singer, but may be I shall ask.”
Then one day Maa took me to Ashoketaru’s house. As the two of us were waiting in the oddly shaped rectangular living room of the family, the big man, utterly handsome but in a very different way, entered. I did my pranam, the touching of his feet to seek his blessings. “Okay, so sing a song for me,” he said. I did. I had always been a really very good singer. And he heard me out quietly. As I finished the song, his wife, Anima Bandopadhyay entered the room by pushing away the curtain that separated the living room from the rest of the house.
“I was coming with the tea for you,” she told my mother, “but he was singing so very well, that I kept standing behind the curtain, so that he might not get distracted.”
That day I learned what respect for music and singing and a singer really meant. I learned about the polish in Bengali culture and I have never forgotten that till now.
Since I was so small, Ashoketaru Bandopadhyay became my uncle and his wife, Anima, my aunt: Ashoke-Kaku and Anima-Kakima. After my singing was over, and as the elders were having tea, Kaku said: “ Theek achhay, tui taholay robibar thekay aye (Okay, so you come from my classes from next Sunday). I teach on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the evening two classes each day, and on Sundays from eight in the morning, I teach three classes. But,” he rather sternly looked at my Maa and said, “he will have to stop going to “Dakshini”.
I was delighted. “Dakshini” is an iconic famous music school of Calcutta in Rashbehari Avenue, and I was a student there, but had always thought it was a pretty mediocre school. So when Maa agreed to Kaku’s term, my joy had no end.
***
Learning begins
From the next Sunday, my singing lessons under the second of the two giants of Rabindrasangeet, Ashoketaru and Debabrata Biswas, started. (I have already written about Debabrata Biswas in these columns earlier.) Of course, there were many other singers of Rabindrasangeet, like Hemanta Mukherjee (aka Hemant Kumar of Bollywood fame), Chinmoy Chatterjee, Sagar Sen, Dwijen Mukherjee and Binoy Roy among male singers, and Kanika Bannerjee, Suchitra Mitra and Nilima Sen, Utpala Sen among the prominent lady singers.
Two things must be told here, especially keeping in mind my non-Bengali readers as well as those from the west, who need a context. First, what is the big deal about Rabindrasangeet.
You see, Rabindranath Tagore was one among the eternal and unsurpassable intellectual giants, now known as encyclopaedists, whose range of works was huge. Truly, there were only two of them in human history: Rabindranath Tagore and Leonardo da Vinci. Tagore’s body of works ranged from writing plays, dance dramas, novels, short stories, large, small and micro poems, his notes on religion and philosophy, his body of letters sent from the ships he travelled across the world, the hundreds of paintings, and even a film he had made with Eisenstein. The other body of works was his 3,000 songs, which he wrote and put them to tune, and he even created a particular dance form – Rabindrik Nritya ‑ based on Manipuri classical dance. Tagore was just too big.
The second point is why do I call these two singers, Ashoketaru and Debabrata, as the only two giants of Rabindrasangeet: you see, out of all the singers till date of Rabindrasangeet. These two were the towering figures, unsurpassable because of the kind of thought they put into singing Rabindrasangeet and the kind of revolution they brought into this singular culture of Bengal. All the others I have mentioned all had terrific voices, no doubt, but they never knew how to innovate, to emphasise certain words, so their singing was at best “okay”, but timid in front of these giants. The way Ashoketaru and Debabrata sang Rabindrasangeet infused a terrific, vibrating, throbbing life into each song.
I do not know of any other person apart from me who had learned Rabindrasangeet from both the giants.
So that first Sunday, I was there for Kaku’s first class that started at eight in the morning, He played the harmonium (he was a south paw) and sang two lines of the song and we, the students, all sitting on the floor, like him too, sang those two lines. And over half an hour of a class, he would teach half of one song. Being a perfectionist, he wanted each student to sing the songs very correctly, so after teaching half of a song, he would ask each student to sing, and keep correcting them. That took time.
Kaku usually swayed a bit from left to right while singing. That was because he himself, a direct disciple of Tagore, was moved from deep within. Besides, he preferred singing the songs from the “Prem” (love) section of Tagore’s tome, Geetabitan, such as bol golap moray bol, tui phutiibi shokhi kobey (Tell me Oh Rose, when will you blossom) and while uttering the word tui (you), Kaku would sway a but more and add a surprising stress which gave an altogether different connotation to the song.
And because of his stressing on certain words and swaying quite energetically, a rumour had gained currency that Ashoketaru was always drunk. But in eight classes per week multiplied by six years, or nearly 3,000 classes that I attended, I saw him ramrod straight, never stuttering, nor talking irrelevantly. He did drink, I got to know from my Maa, who was told this by Anima Kakima, but two pegs of Scotch every night, after the classes were over, and never met anyone during that time.
Ashoke Kaku sang all types of Rabindrasangeet, but certain songs were at the level or worship and a few others were so terrific, that even someone like the journalist, late Shankar Ray told me that he was sitting in the audience of a music festival and heard a song and he felt the earth shaking below his seat. That song was Pinakatey lagay tonkar, boshundharar ponjoro tolay, kompono jagey shonkar. When I told him that I had learned that song sitting in front of Ashoketaru, the father-like Shankarda said unabashedly: “I am jealous of you!”
Kaku used to sing the song, with a huge emphasis on the word tongkar of Pinak (that tremendous sound coming from the string of Lord Shiva’s bow), and it seemed we could visualise that bow strig being drawn. By the Lord.
There were many other songs, such as Maranarey, tuhu mama Shyam saman, a song written in Maithili language by Tagore, and Prakhoro topono tapey, batash trishay kanpay, bayu kore hahakar. A few other singers had also tried to sing these songs, but none came near him, and I must be honest, that even my other guru, Dababrata Biswas, to my mind, failed to create that magic of the word hahakar. The word means a heartbroken outcry… “when the scorching sun causes the air to feel parched and the wind lets out a heartbroken hahakar”. And the emphasis on the word hahakar rendered by Kaku was such that one who heard that song felt a trembling in the chest.
The first day I attended the class, Kaku was teaching that love song, bol golap moray bol, tui phutiibi shokhi kobey. One of the students, a middle-aged man (there was no other child that Ashoketaru taught) tried to emulate Kaku and tried to sway. Kaku stopped him and said very mildly: “Your body sways, may be, but the heart of the listener is not swayed at all. Sing properly.” When the first class ended, all of us students stood up from the floor and were leaving.
So I started to leave too. But he caught my small hand and sent me back to the classroom: “Tui bosh (You sit there)” Then came another batch of students. And I learned a different song under him. So altogether I learned three new songs that day.
When I went home from the class that first day, Maa was terribly angry with me, thinking that I must have gone to play with other children. “The class ended at 8.30, and now it is nearly 11.45. Where were you?” When I told her that I was coming back right after the third session, Maa did not believe me. Later that afternoon, she went to meet Anima Kakima to enquire, and she confirmed that I was at the class. Maa came back, and I had never seen her glow with utter happiness and pride: “Kakau says you are a shrutidhar. (One who learns by hearing to something just once; in this case, the words and tune of a song.)
I was in Calcutta till a little after my Class 10 Board exams, after which my father was transferred to Nagpur.
Before that, our family attended all the programmes in the iconic Rabindra Sadan theatre hall when Kaku sang. I still remember watching his performance as Valmiki in Tagore’s fabled dance-drama, Valmiki Pratibha¸ and when he uttered that Sanskrit shlok (hymn), Maa Nishad Twamgamah, I was transported into a world of bliss that I had entered just only once more: when I tried brown sugar for the first time in college. The song and the rendition were definitely psychedelic.
While this is about Ashoketaru Bandopadhyay as a singer and my guru, there were some hilarious sides of him. Like once on a winter evening, when we were going, to attend the wedding another legend, news reader and recitationist Debdulal Bandopadhyay, who was also a neighbour, Kaku was seen with a shawl on his left shoulder, on top of which there was another silk scarf, which belonged to his daughter. When Kakima saw this, she mildly scolded him. Kaku laughed and said: “Oh, is it? I had forgotten that I had taken the shawl.”
There are scores of similar stories, for my childhood had been blessed by me and my family’s relationship with around 10 top stars of Bengali culture who all lived within a few hundred square metres around our government allotted quarters, and we five families were seemingly one. But that is a story for a different day.
Ashoke Kaku went missing one day, and the Bengal police was looking for him everywhere. He was found in a dishevelled state, wearing dirty dhoti and kurta, at a railway station. Later it transpired that the forgetful man had been trying to reach out to his son from another relationship, who is now a top sanyasi in a religious group, and he too is a singer, and his voice? A heart-shaking replica of Ashoketaru Bandopadhyay!
I went to meet Kakima a few months after his death. I told her that many people say that I sing like Ashoke-Kaku. That day Kakima paid me the biggest, almost an unthinkable compliment of my life: “Tell those people that it is very natural that a son will sing like his father!”
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