A SENTIMENTAL PIECE - Suchitra Mitra's passing marks the end of a certain ambience
CUTTING CORNERS: Ashok Mitra
Calcutta Telegraph
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110128/jsp/opinion/story_13491194.jsp
Suchitra Mitra (September 19, 1924 — January 3, 2011)
An aching in the heart that refuses to die down; keeping it company, a dull thud of emptiness. As one mourns for Suchitra Mitra, it is also like scribbling a memo to oneself. Those who were born in the third decade of the past century, and have now entered the second decade of the 21st, have ambled across all the ten decades comprising a century. Their innings is ending. Suchitra Mitra has bidden adieu; is not the time up for the rest of that generation too?
Her going marks the surcease of a particular ambience. That ambience was created by the Bengali middle class in the middle decades of the 20th century. It coincided with a wondrous spurt of creativity in different spheres. That creativity was wrapped in a self-esteem full of dignity as well as humility, and could well claim for itself the sobriquet of a civilization. Scholars keep writing and talking about the supposed Bengali renaissance of the 19th century. Little point in joining issue with them. But the burst of creativity that took place roughly a century later ought to be accorded no less a recognition. Why be bashful about it either — the socio-cultural churning occurring in that phase was the direct outcome of the unravelling of a radical Left consciousness. It spilled over to earnest new experiments in literature, drama, filmmaking, dance, music, painting, sculpture. With the communist party acting as demure impresario, talent flooded the Bengal landscape. The coming out of Suchitra Mitra was a part of that cultural explosion. It can be put the other way round too. She herself contributed in shaping the milieu in the same manner academicians like Susobhan Sarkar, Hiren Mukherjee or Debiprasad Chattopadhyay, thespians like Sombhu Mitra, Utpal Dutt or musicians like Ravi Shankar and Salil Chowdhury or writers and poets like Manik Bandyopadhyay, Bishnu Dey, Samar Sen and Subhas Mukhopadhyay did. The new strivings admittedly had bourgeois roots, with sophistication written all over. What was nonetheless remarkable was the intensity of the urge to reach out to the people. And while the stirring of ideology constituted the undercurrent, that other awareness was equally strong: sophistication does not hurt the cause of ideology, quality counts in all seasons and under all circumstances.
Suchitra Mitra and Debabrata Biswas, who was fourteen years her senior, were integral to the passion nurtured by ideology. They, however, chose their own particular course; they embarked on revolutionizing the interpretation of Tagore songs, Rabindrasangeet. The close to three thousand songs composed by Tagore would be, so to say, deprived of their coordinates if the poetry grafted in the compositions is treated absentmindedly and the concentration is exclusively on the grammar. That poetry packs thoughts, ideas and emotions of innumerable hues. The depth of passion and soulfulness embedded in them long remained unexplored. At one end, a bunch of grammarians, lacking as much in courage as in imagination, would follow mechanically the notations and mumble the words of the songs in a dreary monotone — recitals of this nature would kill the songs. At the other end, the problem posed by an overlay of the interdict associated with the Brahmo cult which stressed restraint in social discourse. Those assuming the responsibility of popularizing these songs during the early days in Santiniketan and elsewhere were hemmed in by the discipline of self-denial. Any expression of exuberance was frowned upon. The songs tuck in layers and layers of vigour and emotion; they soar to immense heights of joyousness, or lead you into sombre valleys of otherworldliness. The denial mode would not allow such excesses.
The two of them, Suchitra Mitra and Debabrata Biswas, performed a miracle. With their audacity matching their talent, they donned the role of great liberators, rescuing Tagore songs from the clutches of both grammarians and disciplinarians. They stuck to grammar but blew life into it. They sang with such furious abandon, the inner meaning of the songs was laid bare. Thereby they established the crucial point: the songs belonged to everybody, as much to the masses as to the holier-than-holy circle, crying out to be presented uninhibitedly, full-throatedly, with the utmost clarity of diction, and defying all categories of taboo.
For both of them, there could be no higher social commitment. They would consider it a tragedy — worse, a calamity — were those born in Tagore's language, or reasonably well-versed in it, unable to partake of the feast his songs laid out. Listening to the songs was an intensely cathartic experience; it was the people's prerogative to have that experience. Given their rich, powerful voices, the clarity with which they articulated the words of the lyrics and their almost uncanny ability to unravel the meaning embedded in each song, Suchitra Mitra and Debabrata Biswas succeeded in bridging the hitherto existing distance between the Tagore songs and the ordinary householder.
Debabrata Biswas was a bit of a wandering minstrel and an ascetic. Fiercely jealous of his right to express himself in the manner he preferred, he had little taste for a structured, conventional existence. Suchitra Mitra was better organized. She was tolerant of the reality of changing circumstances and considered it her duty to be at peace with the imperfections of daily living. She never abdicated her forthrightness though. The ambience she dreamt of creating at the time she started as an IPTA partisan was not to be; she accepted that actuality with philosophical calm. She was grateful for the social acclaim she received. Some missions, of course, remained unfulfilled. Placing a lid on her disappointments, she marched on, singing with zest and passion till as long she was physically able to and training generations of young singers. Life, she was wont to remind herself, was a compromise.
She was by nature frank and forthcoming, and could even be stern if the occasion arose. There were, though, other sides of her persona. Outwardly a determined human being, she could be extravagantly sentimental too. She was, besides, staunch in her loyalties. Mention of just one instance should suffice. Mid-1990s, summertime, the telephone rang late one night, it was she, Suchitra Mitra, on the line. She was sobbing loudly and sounded nearly incoherent. A friend was critically ill, the doctors were offering no hope, and had dropped the hint to be prepared for the worst. Suchitra Mitra could not bear the thought of the friend's passing, she was inconsolable. The friend was a bit more than that: he was the ex-husband she had divorced decades ago. So what, was he not, still, a friend?
Debabrata Biswas took the bow 30 years ago, she too is now gone. It is the end of a chapter of history and the end, if not of a civilization, of a culture as well. Nostalgia for that culture meshes in with remembrance of the first occasion one watched and heard her perform on a public occasion. It was a pale February evening 63 years ago. The South East Asia Youth Conference had just ended its deliberations in Calcutta. The delegates and observers from all over the world were being accorded a grand farewell on that vast stretch of space known as the Maidan. A thick, milling crowd choked the Maidan, the mood was of festivity and joyful excitement. Suchitra Mitra was on the rostrum. Her voice was then at the zenith of its power; she was rendering one patriotic song after another from Tagore, ecstasy springing out of her vocal chords — the vast assembly of people sat and stood enthralled. Suddenly the audio system failed, there was pitch darkness and some commotion. But there was no stopping Suchitra Mitra. The audio system was dysfunctional, she was not, she kept singing one Tagore song after another, the crowd cheered and cheered along with the foreign guests.
Such was she. She will be no longer around.
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