Told by	Somjit Dasgupta
Obtained by	Sanjoy Bandopadhyay and Troilee Dutta
Date	14 July, 2015
Place	Residence of Somjit Dasgupta Prof. Sanjoy Bandopadhyay, 3/1/1D, Padmapukur Road, Kolkata 700092
About Somjit Dasgupta	Disciple of Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra. Preserving rare musical instruments including the instruments belonged to Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra. He plays different instruments like Sarod, Surshringar, Mohan Veena, etc.
Tags	1950, Nikhil Banerjee, Sunil Mukherjee, Arun Chatterjee, Surbahar, Sitar, Surshringar, Surrabab, Dil Bahar, 1956,
Language	Bengali

Somjit Dasgupta speaks :

Verbatim:

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 Verbatim: Dr. Suranjita Paul

Translation:

Sometimes, when he taught the techniques of playing sitar, he would play and teach.

-When was this?

This was in the early ‘50s. Nikhil Banerjee, Arun Chatterjee, Sunil Mukherjee, and Rajanikant Chaturvedi – these four were his disciples at the time. At this time, while he was playing the sitar, it might suddenly occur to him…someone had given a surbahar, it was in their room. So, he would show how to play that as well. He played the surshringar. At that time he might think…when he would train someone for the surshringar, he would teach all three types to Nrisinha babu. In the middle of that, he might think, how would it be if there was an instrument somewhere in the middle of these two. He had a sur rabab. But he never played it. He took the one Nrisinha babu had and played on it. That instrument is now with me. So, then he thought, what would it be like to make a new instrument? So he made something that was like the surbahar, but the body was made of calabash and wood. But the wooden body was cut like a calabash. Then it was covered with hide. The bridge was shorter than that of a surshringar, almost like that of a sarod. He said, “I have made an instrument after my own heart and taken the set of a surbahar, so I shall name it ‘Dilbahar’. He gave it for the first time to ArunChatterjee to play. He played it from the radio station in Patna.

Arunbabu passed away when he was quite young. He gave one to Rabi Sen and one is with me. This instrument, with its name, was created in 1956. It had been made a year before that, but it has been played, or was prepared to be played from ’56. No other recording of this instrument being played exists. When Arunbabu passed away, the instrument returned to Radhubabu. He gave it to Rabi Sen, but Rabi Sen never recorded for the radio. He made another instrument after this one. That instrument was called ‘Nabadeepa’.

 

Translated by: Sarbajaya Bhattacharya

http://sarodia.com/pandit-maitra-instruments/

http://sarodia.com/generation/pandit-radhika-mohan-maitra/

 Edited &Designed: Dr. Suranjita Paul

Data processed at SAP-DRS Lab, Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University