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CALCUTTA REVISITED

The Password is Accommodation

by Waheed ul Haque
*****Calcutta metro is another world. Nowhere on this earth can a city have two so different faces — the sub-face clear and shiny and the surface bursting with garbage and people and vehicles.***
A ten-member delegation of the Bangladesh J atty a Rabindrasangeet Sammelan Partshad went to Calcutta tn July to Join tn the celebrations of the 9let btrth anniversary of Dr Sallajaranjan Majumdar, the legendary Guru of Tagore songs. The team reached Calcutta by land route and reached the residence of Dr Majumdar well into the evening. They were received tn audience by the great man as he lay unable even to sit up.
A sequel to the travelogue that appeared on this page under the same caption two weeks ago.
SA1LAJARANJAN. it was clear from his first utterances, was expecting us. it has always happened like that. I had never sent out a notice about our Impending visit, and he had always received us as If he had been waiting for us to turn up any moment. I didn't ever had the satisfaction of giving him a surprise. And this now was a special occasion — his birthday — which can never pass without us being there to sit at fui feeL He was so ccr tain about that I Which he was not about his own brothers and others as cfoae to him — peo pie who had been groomed and established in We by thto man now faying on Ms side in a simple, small and unostentatious bedroom perhaps Tagore would have loved to live in. Who to this man - di nUno «ve
diminishing even in Ips nine tysecond yew?
Hadsgaraeqan Dutt M
was born on July 31. tn the first year of this century — IMMhat to — to what to^rww
greater Mymcnstngh. Ta*nty-four years later he came out first class first In Chemistry in the Calcutta University. The formidable field of his contenders Included Qudrat-i Khuda and other illustrious scholars. But even ' that apparently failed to Impress his father who had a roaring practice as a lawyer In Netrakona. Father wanted the son to take to the bar. And Setlaja had to take a degree tn law three years later. Obliging his father beyond this was not tn his power and he joined as a lecturer in chemistry at the Shtksha Bhavan. Santlnikctan In 1*32. It was more Tagore than chemistry or the lure of a job that drew him to that unique university set up by Rabindranath with the motto Jatra vtsvam bhavatyeka needam — where the universe becomes a nest In 1974 the Rabindra Bharati University, boused tn the ancestral rest de nee of the Tagores in Joraaanko. Calcutta, made him a Doctor of Literature, hi 1985 Vtova-Bharati decked him with one of the highest honours of thaJt^great nation —
Why, what has he done to earn all that? Nothing by way *n
to be sure. As soon as he joined the Vtova Bharati as a teacher to 1932 he started taking mu sic lessons from the legendary Dinendranath Tagore. He had earlier taken lessons at plying the Earaj from the greatest
Si tai Mukherjee while pursuing his chemistry and law studies in Calcutta. Soon enough, in 1934. he started taking music lessons from Rabindranath himself and, bidden by the great ot.z, began teaching music as well the next year. In 1939 he was appointed the first head or Principal of the Visva-Bharatl Sangeet-Bhavan by Rabindranath himself. He continued tn that capacity for long 21 years. He resigned tn 1960.
From the beginning of his association with Tagore, he started writing notations M
Rabindra-Sangect. authenticated by Rabindranath himself. And he kept to It till tong after the death of Tagore bringing out of hto trove the treasure of songs created by Tagore In hto glorious and hyperactive closing decade. This made him become the third of that great trio to whom both teachers and learners of Rabindra-Sangeet of all times would remain Indebted and grateful. The apex Is held by Dlnendranath of course with Ms numerous rotations distinguished by their simplicity. Anad! Kumar Dastldar of Sylhet and Sallajaranjan of Netrakona
fill up the other two places of honour — the later excelling in arrlting very detailed and authoritative notations. Moot of Tagore's dance dramas and major songs of love and the rains were transcribed by Sallajaranjan into musical scores. Their number to overwhelming. To my mind It could surpass works of all other such transcribers of Tagore songs.
AU this to great work, no doubt. But greater still was his grooming of two generations of great artists of Tagore songs on the one hand and training
Into teachers hundreds. If not thousands, of other musics! aspirants. Sallajaranjan has thus been Instrumental In the spreading and popularising of Tagore songs all over the sub continent and among all Bengali speaking people any where on the globe. His teachings are carried far and through the radio and television and the magnetic tape and cassette round the clock. In achieving all this
and authenticity - the fact that explains turning against him by s number of his illustrious die
cipies. He says of hto life and mission that he has nothing of hto own and to wholly a carrier — transmitting Tagore aurally to the generations that haven't had the chance of hearing Tagore in person. It to quite understandable that everyone of our more successful singers wouldn't want to remain a carrier only They would like to add flavours that would go well with the change of taste down tnc years, and make them popular. But guru' would have none of this and a break with even a very dear elose disciple always looms large as an inevitability This has been happening all his life starting from Suchitra Mitra and Rajcshwarl Dutto to the lately alienated queen of Rabindra Sangeet who has been entirely his own creation Konlka Bandyopadhyay. Sublnoy Roy another stalwart among hto disciples, still keeps to his guru but meeting demands of saturation-popularity leaves one with little time and energy for making feet touching visits
It was getting late. Time for him to be fed and to let him to sleep. We came out and sent the loveliest of our girls — wcU all the girls on the team were indeed paragons of beauty, but this one with a bright chocolate complexion wore a face of utter Innocence — as an emissary to the mistress of the house, Kamala Boudt. to tell that all of us would out foe s stroll around the place. Kamala Boudt worked up quite a rage — roaring at the girl.— "you will see me returning such
uncMHtles when I gp to Dhaka to visit you. Here I am laying the table for you all — an old hag of 67 and you walk out on IL Stop that cheek of strolling tn a drizzle at well past nine."
Chastised, we find for ourselves Improvised seats as the dining table scats only six. It was the best dinner we all had for years — It responded so wonderfully to the needs of a travel weary band of pilgrims uncertain about everything but prepared to take anything.
We woke up In the morning In a leisurely, evrn lordly man ner All our worries seemed unnecessary masochistic excr-etoce in times long past. We had on our team some who were m Calcutta for the first time or for that matter have come out of dear Dhaka or Rajshahl for the first time We had to plan the day keeping that tn mind Calcutta metro-or underground or tuba came first on the card. Birla Planetarium, the Indian Museum. Jorasanko Thakurbarl. the Ganges Promenade and the Victoria Memorial were all there and In the right order
As II happens often enough — we overlooked at least two very important things. One. the latest transport situation in Cak-utta and what can It mean to a ten strong mob from Bangal country. Two. that the girls, not without support and even Instigation from some of the male members were straining at the leash dangerously — to burst forth and fall upon the fairy-tale shopping arcades of Calcutta. Like all good girls they kept it to lliemselvcs at a time when It was Important to thrash that
We go first to the New Market In order to change our dollars into Rupee from an authorised dealer in foreign exchange. And the girls just meh away as soon as w reach the spot.
Save two of us Including myself, all of the team. Including three men. danced their way Into the mazes of the old and the New Market - to trickle back nfter some three hours, it had taken
us an hour and Rs 50 to reach the spot. Add to that three hours of hectic marketing — spending nearly all of their dollars endorsed on their passports — and the team was dog-tired. It wouldn't walk up to the great eating place Kamalavllas on a DharmatoUa side-lane for a lunch of exquisite masalla doaa. We had to settle for the way-side Amtnia. It took us full thirty minutes to get seats for us — and another thirty to gorge down an atrocious meaty meal.
We walked up to the Esplanade station of the metro without much ado. We never for once suspected that the Sris were also interested In e station we would get down at the end of our metro ride It must be as ctoae to Oartahat as can be. The shopping spree was still very mucn with us. who knows how.
Calcutta metro to another world. Nowhere on this earth can a city have two so different faces — the sub-foee clear and shiny, uncrowded and arty to an uneasy manner, cool and breezy and the surface bursting with garbage and people and vehtefes as also high decibel noise and high carbon atmosphere making you tire out to hours srlthout your knowing why
The metro to one thing Cakutia can indeed be proud of. I am advisedly not saying India
The mega steed nation which has achieved advances In science and technology far spectacular than building a metro, a hundred year old wonder for London and Farts.
The fart that II was a COM of purely Bengali engineering skill and knowledge succeed tog in the fabrication as wo« as setting up and running of the thing in what was literally a swamp — and still is — is something that can indeed pep up the Bengali spirit which has been sagging interminably since the forties. But a far greater achievement that manifests itself when you take a ride on the Calcutta metro is the civility with which the crowd — and every individual ln.it — conducts Itself. Then why do not the same people behave the same way while on the ground and not under it?
Part of the question can be answered — and part of it must remain at best a conjecture shot with quite a modicum of mystery.
Whatever may Calcutta appear to a newcomer to it specially from far west — this filthy slum of a city used and abused in the daytime by at least 10 million people, a motley composed of poor and backward Illiterate and hopelessly placed representatives of perhaps all of India's thousand social and economic classes come from perhaps all of India's thousand districts — ticks on with incredibly lean and charming figures of violent crimes, molestation of women and road accidents. If one can very aptly call it a truly free people's city with its freedom worn — or rather flaunted — for everyone to see and participate, another can with equal application say that it to the biggest city on earth of the small man where the roads belong to the pedestrians and not to the whizzing vehicles and buildings belong to their tenants and not their owners.
Well, that is but only the outward manifestation of this sardine-packed megalopolis squeezed into the area of a middle-sized city becoming, in its own way, the most humane city — or shall we better say human — subscribing pervasively to and flying the standard of 'accommodation'. The spick and span underground and the way people keep It so Is but an extension of that supreme human quality of accommodation originating In overcrowding and its resultant squalor.