George Biswas, Tagore and a Large Peg of My Life
Step back into 1969 Calcutta, where a young boy’s dream of meeting the legendary Rabindra Sangeet singer Debabrata Biswas comes true. Experience the eccentricities and wisdom of George-da, as he imparts invaluable lessons on Tagore’s music, and discover how a child became the last disciple of this iconic artist.
“George-da… George-da,” the sound of my uncle’s voice was reassuring… finally I would be able to meet Debabrata Biswas. The legend who I had till then only ‘seen’ over the radio network… no, sorry… television had not arrived till then in India, in 1969. So I was about to meet in person who was the magical singer of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs – or Rabindrasangeet, who had captured the hearts and souls of almost all of Bengal, and beyond.
For readers of this modern age, let me ask you: how would it feel if someone were to take you to meet Roger Waters, an uncle who insisted that he knew Rogers like the palm of his hand?
“George-da… George-da…” Dilip Kaku (Kaku means some sort of cousin of one’s father…) kept hollering from near about the entry of the lane next to the famous Lady’s Own tailoring shop near Ballygunge, South Calcutta. That lane led one to the house of the fable, George Biswas.
Kaku was supposed to be a singer. Me, I too was supposed to be trying to be a singer at age nine, and Kaku had promised that he’d take me to meet the epitome of Rabindrasangeet.
So in trepidation, I was walking with my Kaku to what I had imagined to be a glass house with musical instruments strewn about here and there. Instead, what I found, as we finally entered his hovel was a narrow room, just about six feet broad and may be around twelve feet long. And there he lay on an easy-chair. A sparse bed was next to that easy chair, behind which there was a stack of books, most of them Swaravitaan, containing the scores of the music composed by Tagore.
Next to it, I found a stack of books whose names were written in a very unfamiliar language, which I later learned were some in Russian and some in German.
From underneath that easy chair on which the fable reclined, I saw a pair of eyes, which soon I found to be those of a German-Shepherd and local Indian mixed breed. His name, as “Georgeda said, was “kelo” or what would come to mean in modern Americanese as Blackie.
The legend lay on his back on the easy chair and asked in typical Dhaka (now capital of Bangladesh) lingo: “Ta ki monay koira aila?” (So what have you come for). He was asking my uncle, who had been calling out Georgeda… Georgeda from the lane outside.
Dilu Kaku stammered for a while and then said, pointing to me: “This is my nephew and he is very fond of your songs and he wants to learn them from you, so I have brought him to meet you.”
“Auaa, said the giant of Rabindrasangeet,,. “he is just a child, and what about you? Who are you?”
“Well, Sir, I am Dilip Kumar Chakraborty, his uncle…”
“And what do you do?”
“Sir, I work in the State Bank of India…”
“Okay… but so many people work in the State Bank… like managers.. accountants, janitors… so what do you do in the State Bank?” he asked.
“Ummm, Sir I work in the cash department of the bank,” Dilu Kaku muttered.
“Well, so you are just a clerk, right, so you could have told me so right in the beginning…”
***
Then he turned to me and spoke in chaste Dhakai Bangal, a dialect so sweet but lost in India today. And he asked me: “You want to learn music.”
I nodded my then tiny head.
“So go home, and take permission from your father that he should not come chasing me for hijacking his son… when are your school holidays.?”
“Thursdays and Saturdays,” I said.
“Don’t come on Saturdays, because I play cards and gamble with my friends then, so come on Thursdays… morning… 10 and 11, but with your father’s permission.”
I nodded my head. I realised that my uncle, Dilu Kaku, who had always been telling me that Debabrata Biswas was his ‘friend’ had been lying. But I was glad that Debarata Biswas had agreed to allow me to come to his home every Thursday to learn singing.
***
If you ask me, Debabrata Biswas did not teach me songs as songs are to be taught. Somehow, he may have taken me to be wiser than my years. But he would ask me to sing. And when I sang a particular song, he would take his scale-changing harmonium and would barely utter a word or two with an emphasis that would suddenly change the entire context of that song.
Like he would never pronounce Ashar, the raining month between June and July. He would tell me, with his harmonium playing… “No… Ashadh… with dhoye-shunno ra… Ashadh.
I used to thirst to meet him every Thursday… Maa would encourage that too. My father knew about it, so I would have some quick breakfast and go over.
Over the years, beginning when I was about nine, till I was twelve, I used to visit him every Thursday. And he would ask me to sing, correcting me here and there once in a while, but that was all. I do not remember him teaching a full song, as most Indian singers do. But I learned the valuable lessons of emphasis, of the drama that was driven in by Tagore in his almost unmindful elan
***
For the record. Debabrata Biswas was born in 1911 in Barisal, and then later came to Kishoreganj, in the Mymensingh district of the Bengal province of British colonial India, which is now in (WBangladesh. King George V was visiting India for the Delhi Durbar around the time of Biswas’ birth, so he was nicknamed George. He was popularly called George Biswas and George Da. (Wikipedia)
He told me that he was trained under Tagore himself. Once, I asked him, small, naïve and innocent as I was as a child of Class Three or Four… “When did you start learning music?”
“Me?” he asked me and then let out a boisterous laughter, and said: “When I was in mother’s womb, music was in my”… and he pointed to his mellow paunch.
One Thursday, as had become my habit, I was there at his home. I found a strange other gentleman sitting there with a few official-looking files. He told me to sit down next to him, while he signed some papers. He told me that those were the papers from the All India Radio for his contract to be renewed as a Class I artist.
The gentleman with the files wrapped his work, and then he said: “Georgeda, please sing a song for me… ummmm I ummm would be so grateful…..
But I was so shocked when my tutor told the official: “Me? Singing?” Ah! You have always heard me sing… now hear this child,… he’s got a knack for singing,” and he opened the bellows of the harmonium and indicated to me a particular song to be sung…., and while I was on to the paragraphs of jokhon shushko prohor, vritha kataki chahee ganer lipi tomay pathai… at that point he suddenly atopped the bellow and corrected me on just two word, vritha katai… emphasising how to eject those words to create the maximum impact.
***
I had never seen anyone else training under him. I seemed to be the only one. That was in 1970 or so. Later, someone told me that Debabrata Biswas, a bachelor all his life, used to run music classes as every musician did in those days. But before I met him, he had lost his nephew to a car accident, and since then, he had given up training other singers.
I am sure of one thing. I was the last of his disciples.
He never spoke of that, but just one day he told me: “Learn well… I lost something, so may be you could bring him back.”
***
He was a complete eccentric, in a way… a Bengali Bohemian. One December Thursday in Calcutta, when I reached his home, he offered me freshly fried Gobhi Samosa. And he laughed and said, “Khao… khao. I got five rupees I saw this lady with a Hillman Car stuck on the way. I was wearing my usual black long coat. I asked the lady what the problem was, and then I set her car. She was grateful and thanked me as a mechanic, and then she gave me a rupee five note, so that is why I bought the samosas.
One day my cousin called me from Gaya, where she was studying medicine. “Mithudada, you are learning singing from Debabrata Biswas? She asked. “I want his autograph, can you get it for me…?” I said, come over for the holidays, And Mou, my cousin did. I got to take her to meet him and he signed on an autograph diary for my sister.
I still remember that he used pastel sticks to draw a giant tree, with its branches swinging out like the façade and the beard of Tagore, and somewhere at the crest of the tree was something in black. So I asked him what that was, and he said: “I am only a crow on the Rabindrik tree.”
***
Debabrata Biswas actually trained under Tagore himself, as was my other guru, Ashoketoru Bandopadhyay.
But he introduced certain innovations that were ruled out as not being Rabindrik, or Tagore-like. These included mostly the use of western musical instruments for singing Tagore songs.
Thus it is that puritans such as Shantidev Ghosh, Maya Sne et al botched his recording songs. Let us not forget that Tagoe himself had once said, and wrote: “Please protect my songs from Shantidev.” And Shantidev and Maya Sen and a few other ran an oligarchy in Vishva Bharati that ransacked 65 of Biswas’ songs recorded with HMV, then the only recorded music seller in India.
One must remember that those were not days of music as a circus, and payments for hired artists to sing during Durga Pujas for one night of an artiste could be as low as Rs 800.
The real issue was that neither the crane-necked and nasally impaired Shantidev Ghosh, nor Maya Sen could challenge Debabrata Biswas in terms of depth of voice and the dramatic influence he brought into signing Rabindrasangeet. And the only one who brought a whiff of fresh air out of the decaying Shantiniketan environs were these two: Debabrata Biswas and Ashoketaru Bandopadhaya. The rest of them, such as Hemanta Mukherjee, who had nothing but a rich voice, Sagar Sen, Chinmoy Chattopadhyay, were the “also rans” in Rabindrasangeet ecosystem.
***
My tutor was a born a rebel. That is why he joined the Indian Peoples Theatre Association, IPTA, pretty early. And he was a close associate of Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sn, Nojon Bhattacharya and others. In fact, he not only gave the suggestions for the use of Tagore’s songs like Jay ratey mor duarguli bhanglo jhoray…when the storm tore assunder my doors… and the ultimate song of commitment in Titas Ekti Nodir Naam… with the actress Shaonli Mitra looking at the face of Goddess Durga and Debabrata sings in the background Keno cheye achhogo Maa, mukhey paney…
Frankly, I have learned singing at his feet, and also at the feet of a few others. But his dramatization of otherwise staid Tagore songs will not die… it will take a generation or two to come back to use.
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