| Told by | Sri Rantideb Maitra |
| Obtained by | Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee |
| Date | 4th March,2017 |
| Place | Sri Rantideb Maitra’s Residence, Madur Daho, Kolkata |
| About the speaker | Renowned Music Collector and Music Connoisseur |
| Tags | Bijoy Nandi, Tabla, Pakhawaj, Accompanist, Indubala, Angurbala, Tawaif, 1930,s, Horimoti, Dhrupad,Tabla, Pakhawaj, Indubala, Beadon Street, Sonagachi, Harmonium, Gramaphone Records, Maharaja of Mysore, Riyaz, 1990’s |
| Language | English |
Sri Rantideb Maitra speaks :
Verbatim:
It is courtesy Bijoy Nandi, the pakhawaj player and the table player, that I came to know more about Indubala, famous Indubala, famous Angurbala and the great Tawaifs of who were living by 1930,s, whom Bijoy Nandi accompanied on Tabla, not Pakhawaj, He accompanied Horimoti on Pakhawaj, Horimoti was also a very very great Dhrupad singer.
Now once he told me that look that many household belongings of Indubala is being sold out. So if you are interested you can go and have a look.I said please take me there. He took me to indubala’s house and what I saw is that…
- Where was that house?
- That was also in Beadon Street and that is also one part of Sonagachi. It’s called something else but its okay, it was a part of the overall, it’s called Garanpara, or something like that, its still there, the house is still there. I have been there three four months back to take some pictures. Now what I saw is that Indubala’s room was full of books. Stacked with books and books and books of various subjects you know, mostly History, Bengali novels, not English, but books of every variety. She was a ferocious reader, and there was the Harmonium, there was the Tabla, there was a Gramophone machine, stacks of Gramophone records, and lots of small size diaries. I said what are these? They said that she used to write diaries on a daily basis. Let me look, I saw that at least twenty-eight or thirty years of diaries stacked somewhere. I asked what are you going to do with these diaries?
- Ki korbo? (what to do)
- At a price?
- Naturally at a price. So I offered them some price and I purchased all the diaries, Indubala’s.
So I purchased whatever pictures she had and because she was a meticulous collector of all her programme sheets, and her contracts with H.M.V and her contracts with Maharaja of Mysore, everything she preserved in a beautiful manner, so instead of, those were going to the kabariwalas I thought that I will be slightly better than a kabariwala, and purchased them also. So that was a great acquisition, and there after I read through her diaries and found what a great person she was, and her reading habits and her music habits, how she used to do her riyaz, from reading her diaries. I intend to publish it some day like a autobiography or some sort of things with her pictures, am working on that, and this is how I came into the diaries of Indubala’sthrough this Bijoy Nandi.
- And it must be in late 1980’s?
- No, it is mid 1990’s. Long time after she died.
Verbatim: RajeswaryGanguly Banerjee
Picture Courtesy: Google
Edited & Designed: Ms. Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee
Data processed at SAP-DRS Lab, Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University.