It is not easy for Julio Eglesias to survive on a Kolkata footpath. But he does, quite well, on a corner spot where Rashbehari Avenue meets a little lane, after you cross Basanti Devi College and an intense stretch of very affordable saris.
“Nathalie”, Iglesias Sr sings, after the stirring opening bars, and the the words that follow may be Spanish, but the language is universal, of love and longing. Facing this music, literally, is a little Shoni temple, in which the deity radiates flickering mufti-colour lights in the evening, a small shoe stall and a roll shop. Iglesias keeps pouring his heart out: “Nathalie, en la distancia…”
He can, because he has a high priest here: Apu Chatterjee. The 63-year-old, a man of short height and brisk manners, plays the music from his nameless street stall that ostensibly sells cheap faux leather accessories, but is really a temple to music. Anyone who passes by is treated to strains of the best-loved popular songs of Western music, which are Chatterjee’s passion. He lives for music. He always has.
His stall was once a music store. It had to go; but he would not let the music go. He plays it all the time from a CD player with a pen drive, for the street.
“Just hear Iglesias say ‘Nathalie’,” says Chatterjee, and sings along a little in what seems not very perfect Spanish. He says he loves old Latino music, and you imagine that slow, sensuous music is what draws him, when he surprises you by declaring that he loves Elvis most.
“I didn’t like him at first,” he says. “But he got into me. The music has to get inside you,” says Chatterjee. He plays Elvis’s Stuck on you and explains the beat to me — “ta ta ra ta ta ta ra ta” — and also breaks into a little dance. “Have you heard his Are you lonesome tonight? I may not be able to pronounce English words properly, but music is not about that.”
He says he has more than 30 posters of Elvis at home, and hundreds or more of cassettes and CDs.
Two posters, studded with lights, are on display at the store. He is himself a drummer.
Chatterjee was born and grew up not very far from where his stall is. His family was of limited means. He studied till Class XII, after which he gave up his studies and began to work as a newspaper vendor.
Next to his house was the residence of a judge, where, from the time he was very small, Chatterjee heard English songs being played. He loved them. When he grew up a little, someone told him that he should visit Free School Street, a destination for Western music aficionados.
Those were the early days of audio cassettes. On his first trip, Chatterjee picked up a Jethro Tull live cassette and another of Perry Como, who became another constant love, each costing Rs 75. He plays the Perry Como song: “I believe in music, I believe in love…,” joining in again.
Free School Street was a treasure trove. “I discovered Paul Anka, Tom Jones (sings Delilah…), Kenny Rogers, Engelbert Humperdinck, Al Martino (sings Blue Spanish eyes….). How many can I name?”
In the late 70s, when he had started working as a bus conductor, he set up his music shop, on the same spot as his current stall, but it was much bigger then. And it had a name: “Apur Swapna” (Apu’s dream), Chatterjee says proudly.
He says he was named after Apu, the protagonist of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novels Pather Panchali and Aparajito, which were turned into films by Satyajit Ray. “My daughter’s name is Kajol,” Chatterjee adds, after the name the original Apu had given his son. In a tragic echo of the novels, Chatterjee, too, lost his wife early.
He is as proud of his daughter as he is of his music. She is pursuing higher studies in science and wants to go abroad.
“You can’t go anywhere without education, without knowing English,” says Chatterjee. “My daughter has both. I have no regrets if I die tomorrow.”
In the 80s, most notably for him the age of Madonna, whom he adores, but also of Modern Talking, and other major female singers such as Whitney Houston, the going was good. But the English language was coming in the way.
“A lady came and asked me for a Grammy-winner song called Who loves me. I didn’t know which song it was, but scanning the print on the cassettes figured out that it was the Whitney Houston song I wanna dance with somebody.”
Through a customer he also discovered another Grammy-winner, Houston’s contemporary, Jody Watley, singing Looking for a new love. “Then she disappeared,” says Chatterjee.
Advised by a friend, he learnt to read English from newspapers, not very well, but well enough to understand songs. “I have also read a biography of Elvis in English,” he says. Reading cassettes helped. “I would try to find out about the lives of the singers.”
But the musician he is most grateful to, and perhaps not only for his singing talent, is Irish singer and TV personality Daniel O’Donnell, the undisputed bestseller. “For years he alone could have sustained my business,” laughs Chatterjee, who now lives in Bagha Jatin.
From the 90s, his business took a downturn. It was hit by Operation Sunshine first, then by the smartphone. “Cassettes were replaced by CDs, but music stopped selling after people could play it on their phones.” His shop was pulled down again in 2016.
He somehow managed to set it up recently, as the small leather accessory stall without a name, “but I had to play the music”. The cabinets that rise from the footpath are paved with CDs: Classic Country Hits and The Police jostle with Rasoolanbai. He listens to Indian music, too, especially old Bengali popular music. “Satinath Mukhopadhyay is my favourite. Also Shyamal Mitra, Akhilbandhu Ghosh. I miss Moloy Mukhopadhyay, who had a brief but brilliant career,” says Chatterjee.
On the second day I visit him, he plays for me Rag Darbari played by Amjad Ali Khan with Zakir Hussain on the tabla. I sit on the bench in front of the stall, wondering if I have the time, sipping several cups of strong sweet milk tea supplied endlessly by Chatterjee, and realise that I have listened to the entire sarod recital, even as it mingled with the protestations from a fastidious father trying to get a belt for his young son and chicken rolls being made and the special winter evening buzz of Gariahat. All this makes you feel again that perhaps music, of all art forms, can transcend most our human limitations with its universality.
“I have one little vice,” says Chatterjee. “I drink a little every day,” he smiles. “And I have no regrets if I die. My daughter has made me proud,” he repeats.
What is his favourite song? He plays it. It is not Elvis. It is Frank Sinatra singing My way: I did it, I did it my way… For what is a man, what has he got?/ If not himself then he has naught/ Not to say the things that he truly feels/ And not the words of someone who kneels/ Let the record show/ I took all the blows/ And did it my way.”