Sumanta Basu

Monsoon was already in. Most probably it was June 16, 2011. I can’t remember dates, however recent it is… It was raining throughout the night. The next morning, at around 8, when I left for office, the sky continued drizzling. I reached office at around 9:15. The rain was not stopping; ‘the streets of my Calcutta’ was slowly dipping down. By 11, the road in front of my office was completely under water. Nobody in the office was in the mood of working, how can one work on such a day…

At around 2:30 news of another forthcoming depression from the weather office made our office management declare a half day off. I came out.

It was still raining very hard. A crazy wind was accompanying the rain. The road condition was terrible… I had to leave my car at office parking due to heavy waterlogging in front. I took a rickshaw to come out to the main avenue. The man took 60 bucks to cross me a distance of 500 meters approximately. I did not argue. It was his day. And mine too. I did not have an umbrella, so I had no way other than letting myself drenched. My struggle began to look for a cab. After a few refusals finally one gentleman took me inside. It was a complete mess!

While traveling home, I was experiencing a different Calcutta. A wet Calcutta. I was enjoying the monsoon as well. Someone [now I know, it was Sri Satinath Mukherjee himself] was singing a song in my mind… an old song composed by Sri Sudhin Dasgupta… don’t know how many times I had chanced to listen to this song since childhood… ‘Elo borosha je sohosa mone taai’.

The melody has got something in it… it was not letting me ignore its presence in my mind in the beginning; later on, it occupied my mind entirely. ‘Someone’ was going on singing and singing the same lines… I discovered a sense of celebration in the melody. A very urbanised articulation of celebration. I didn’t understand when I started celebrating monsoon with the song in my mind…

After a point, I started thinking, why can’t we compose such a tune these days? I answered myself with another question: We Bengalis… do us have it in us anymore? Do we still know how to celebrate a season? The answer I got from myself was NO.

I could remember a song by Sri Kabir Suman. “Eso he AshaDh, Chhatay tomay boron kori”. And that was the last reference of celebrating monsoon in Bengali song I could remember!!! Oh, the same old Kabir Suman!!! Who else? Well, that too was in words only… but celebrating monsoon though tunes and orchestration? With such a modern, urban diction? Where have we lost the smartness from our musical existence? Or… Do we at all exist musically, anymore?

I was at a loss… and was craving for the good old melody… what else could I do?

“Sur tobu laage na je… kotha bolo tare paai”

I recorded this song on June 25. And filmed it last night. Today, while editing, I used some monsoon shots in the video; I found them on the internet.

And what I did… I heard the original rendition of Sri Satinath Mukherjee again after I recorded this tune… and realised once more, that I am nowhere near where I could do any justice to it…

In fact… I did nothing… How could I…

Sumanta Basu
July 03, 2011
Dum Dum Cantonment