Songs, poetry and emotions - an hour-long online musical festival organised by Sister Nivedita University to celebrate the flavour of monsoon had all that and more. Barsamangal Utsav, or the festival of rains, was the result of the hard work of a 50-member team of academicians and students from the university.
Planning, co-ordination and rehearsals stretched for over a month before a collage of poetry, songs and dance was presented on YouTube and Facebook. All the performances were pre-recorded, carefully edited and weaved in through a script.
“I wanted to break a stereotype. Barshamangal Utsav is usually only about Rabindranath Tagore and his works. Ours was also about Kalidas, Jibanananda Das and others,” said scriptwriter Somdatta Mukherjee, an assistant professor of sociology at SNU. Emotion, devotion, love for nature and the spirit of celebration were upheld through the performances and tied together.
The programme began with chancellor Satyam Roychowdhury and Anubha Bandopadhyay, an assistant professor of the department of performing arts, reciting and singing Emono dine tare bola in a creative composition. Vice-chancellor Dhrubajyoti Chattopadhyay and Tanya Das of Bose Institute performed a piece titled Pratiksha which was a melange of melody and verses by Tagore. Songs like Tagore’s Pagla hawa gave way to extracts from Meghdootam and Das’s Kemon bristi jhore, recited by LLB student Subhagata Chowdhury.
“Around 20 students, including seven academicians, performed on the occasion, exuding the enthusiasm that went behind it,” added Sugata Das, an assistant professor of the department of performing arts. Under normal circumstances, the students, he pointed out, would have performed all day in the open air .
Mass communication Masters final year student Anupama Dutta strikes a pose in course of her performance
The guests included dance exponents Amita Dutt and Mahua Mukhopadhyay from Rabindra Bharati University. “Monsoon is my favourite season and nobody has described its grandeur and beauty the way Tagore has. It was a pleasure to perform Oi Madhabilata dole with my student Ranajit Naik. We recorded the performance in a bagan bari,” added Dutt.
Rain was proving to be a deterrent for PhD (dance) student Farjana Yasmin. The student from Bangladesh travelled from her Kolkata address in Tobin Road, near Bhowanipore, to her friend’s place in Behala to shoot her dance item to the popular Rabindrasangeet, Eso Shyamol Sundar. “My terrace was drenched in rain. I could not shoot there. So the road in front of my friend’s house became the perfect location. We shot for over two hours,” said the girl who hopes to perform live soon during her stay in Kolkata.