Spotlight
Falguni Mitra

ITC-Sangeet Research Academy guru
Falguni Mitra’s concert as part of dhrupad’s rarely heard Betia gharana in the
city’s Gharana Festival, held last year at the beautiful open air theatre Spaces near
the Besant Nagar beach, in south Chennai, was a journey to the past in more
ways than one. Among other things, Mitra had been the architect of Rukmini Devi
Arundale’s dream project, Meera of Mewar, back in 1985 at
Kalakshetra.
Mitra was
at the time working as a senior executive of a British multinational in distant
Ambattur Industrial Estate, and taught music at his Adyar residence on Saturday
mornings. He composed some lovely tunes for the Meera dance drama, and it was a
special experience to watch the compositions unfold, and his new found south
Indian sishyas grapple with the challenge of overcoming their strong Carnatic
background to make Meerabai sound authentic.
Falguni
Mitra, like his father and guru, Pandit Shib Mitra before him, held a day job,
practising dhrupad only in his spare time. In fact, it was his father’s stint
as an engineer in the motorcycle manufacturer Enfield India, that first brought
young Falguni to Madras in the late 1950s. Studying at Vivekananda College and
later Madras University where he studied philosophy at the postgraduate level,
Falguni delighted in soaking in the Carnatic music of what he describes as its
golden period. As he was already an All India Radio artist, he came into
contact with the charismatic vocalist GN Balasubramaniam or GNB, then chief
producer of AIR Madras. Drawing his attention to the similarities between
dhrupad-dhamar and ragam-tanam-pallavi of Carnatic music, GNB told the young
man, “Carry on the lofty tradition of dhrupad,” adding that as he grew older,
he would gradually shed ornamentation and go deeper into the music.” How true,
Mitra was to find out over the years.
A
memorable experience for young Falguni was accompanying his father in a lecture
demonstration at the Music Academy’s annual conference in 1958 or thereabouts.
By 1960 when he was a postgraduate student he was regularly interacting with
some of the great names of Carnatic music and bharatanatyam. Besant Gardens,
Adyar, was home to Kalakshetra and the giants Rukmini Devi had surrounded
herself with—such as the great composer Mysore Vasudevachar, scholar
extraordinaire Sankara Menon, and the iconic vocalist MD Ramanathan. Guests at
his father’s home included visiting maestros of Hindustani music like Bade
Ghulam Ali Khan and Amir Khan—who used to stay with bharatanatyam legend
Balasaraswati. The neighbours in quiet Kasturbanagar were treated to top class
Hindustani music during these celebrity visits.
“Rukmini
Devi was the greatest personality I have ever met,” says Mitra. When Falguni
Mitra went back to Madras in the 1980s to work there, she remembered him as the
boy she had met decades earlier. “My brother has heard your father’s guru ustad
Nasiruddin Khan in Indore. I have great respect for dhrupad with its vast raga
development,’ she told him.
Listening
to Falguni Mitra’s music, Rukmini Devi was impressed enough with his creativity
to ask him to compose the music for a dance drama on Meera she was planning.
The genre was something Rukmini Devi had made her own, with the Ramayana series
at the Santi Niketan-like grounds of Kalakshetra, her singular contribution to
India’s artistic wealth. Working with Meera bhajans setting a few of them to
new tunes was a huge challenge that Mitra approached with some trepidation,
especially as there was very little time to prepare for the event. “I’ll give
you a number of Carnatic musicians. Show no mercy, reject them if they can’t
master the diction,” Rukmini Devi told him, and indeed that was the one serious
problem he faced. After much hard work, the premiere went off without a hitch,
and full of praise for Mitra, Rukmini Devi spoke of an improved production in
the coming years, but that was not to be, as she died next year.
In the
audience were MS Subbulakshmi and husband T Sadasivam, and meeting them led to
yet another interesting collaboration for Falguni Mitra. That is a story for
another day.
By PNV Ram
Posted by Sruti Magazine May 22, 2012