Mousumi Saha, 55, has been teaching Indian classical music in south Calcutta’s Haltu for over 40 years. Every evening, school children flock to their gaaner didimoni.
Saha starts her lessons at about 8 in the morning and continues till 9 at night. These classes are held in a small room on the ground floor of her two-storeyed house. The room can accommodate a maximum of 10 students. In one corner of it, there are two tanpuras, four harmoniums, a showcase containing miniature musical instruments and a photograph of a man who turns out to be her guru Jagdish Prasad. Beside it is a portrait of Saha. A student has painted and gifted it to her. There are also shelves lined with Bengali and English books — all on music.
Outside the main door is a weather-beaten board with Darbari written on it in Bengali. When the school was registered 26 years ago, it was named after the raga. But Saha’s journey as a music teacher started much before Darbari came into existence, when she was still in Class XII. “My first pupil was a four-year-old from this very neighbourhood. Her parents had heard me sing and approached my mother,” she says.
Till the turn of the century, before the Internet happened, long before smartphones, and long, long before it was common knowledge that salsa is a dance form, music schools in Bengal were a dime a dozen. Saha’s formal training to be a music teacher began when she was herself a student at one such music school in Santoshpur. The couple who ran the school, Shailesh and Sheela Chakraborty, encouraged Saha to tutor junior students.
Saha’s father was a government employee, her mother a housewife. She says, “My father was strict about studies, but my mother wanted all three of her children to learn something beyond academics.” She continues, “My mother had told me that I should not charge exorbitant fees from anyone in exchange for teaching music.” Saha has also taught many children free of cost. She says, “I have even paid the school fees of many children at my mother’s behest. Today, it gives me peace and satisfaction to see my students flourish.”
In the 1980s, when Haltu was not so heavily populated, there were threats from locals to shut down her school. “There were police complaints too against my school. But later, they themselves approached me to teach music to their daughters,” Saha says.
Not all the classes happened out of Haltu. Saha, along with tabla player Tapan Chakraborty, would give home tuitions too. They would take the bus to Park Circus, Ballygunge and Garfa in south Calcutta, travel to Sinthi More, Bagbazar, Sealdah, Park Street, Bho- wanipore. Those days, Chakraborty used to also work as a stage-light technician. The 76-year-old is president of Darbari. It was his idea to name the school Darbari.
Saha has fought many battles. “But I have never earned a paisa at the cost of not teaching a talented student,” she says. Long years after her students have grown up, shifted from Calcutta, they have not outgrown Saha’s love and her music. They recognise her largesse and keep coming back to see her. With great pride, Saha talks about one of her first students, Sharmistha Ghosh, who came down from the Netherlands to participate in the 25th anniversary celebrations of Darbari last year. Then there is another student, Rram Tasildar, who is now a singer based in Los Angeles, US, who calls her up the moment he lands in Calcutta. “Rram tells me he wants to sit with me and brush up on his ragas,” she says. Saha never married. But she insists she is not alone. “I have so many children who call me mother, they are all my own.”
Today, Saha’s life no longer has the cadence of ragas Imon and Bageshri. “I have slowed down. My life is more like Darbari now.”
Saha, however, laments that her own voice cannot quite tease the musical notes like it used to. “I have to sing in different scales on the changer harmonium, move from G sharp right up to C sharp many times within one hour,” she says. She does not go to Sinthi or Bagbazar any more. But she goes to Ruby More, and though it is a seven- kilometre distance, she walks back. “All that walking keeps me healthy,” she jokes.
Saha does not have any cribs except one and that has to do with what she calls the altered mindsets of people. She says, “Everything is result-oriented. Parents will have their children learn music only so they can qualify for auditions for music competitions. When Tapan da and I started our journey, people were keen on music for its own sake. They wanted the children to know the basics, the art thoroughly.”
Saha has noticed that for the last 10 years or so, the moment a child is in Class VIII, parents discontinue music lessons. “They say that children do not have time to practise music for even half an hour a day. But I have seen children spend time on their mobile phones,” she says looking disturbed.
Not that it is enough to dissuade her from her vocation. She teaches over 150 students in the very room of her parents’ home where she started her musical journey.
