Soumya recounts how his younger daughter deciphered Rabindra Sangeet, losing its meaning in translation. A humourous take for Different Truths.

When my children where very young we were living in Kolkata with my parents for a few years. I was keen that they got to know their grandparents and learned Bangla.

My mother soon started their introduction to music, especially Rabindra Sangeet, like all good Bong kids.

This helped my younger daughter, who went on to win many accolades as a western classical singer and later as a rock musician, and currently composes and performs her own Indie Music.

Youngest Performer

She also was the youngest performer in the para Pujo and Rabindra Jayanti, at four years, where she was hardly visible behind her harmonium.

As she couldn’t really read then, and knew very little Bangla, she learned by rote, phonetically, as the words were incomprehensible to her, and she tried to make some sense of what she was singing.

Recently, she shared some of her thoughts about those songs and had us all in splits. But it made some strange kind of sense.

Mother’s Favourites

I will try to describe one such song with her interpretation. It was one of my mother’s favourites, “Jini shokol kajer kaji”, which is talking about God.

My daughter’s version …

Jini, a young girl, is working hard all shokal, or morning, like our maid.

Mora tari kajer songi

She’s totally engrossed

Naughty Grandpa

Tar Nana ronger rongo

Her nanaji or grandpa is a naughty colourful disreputable fellow

Mora Tari roser rongi

We’re party to his pranks

Tar bipul chonde chonde

Another relative who’s loud and annoying

Happy go Lucky

Mora jai chole anonde

He’s happy go lucky

Tumi jemni bajao bhery moder temni nacher bhongi

The more he plays the drum the more she dances the bhangra

Ei jonom moron khelay

Mora mili tari melay

On her birthday she met Mili at the mela

Ei dukho sukher jibon moder

Mora tari kajer ongi

Everyone is Sad

Everyone is sad, no idea why

Tini pother kanta paye dole

Sagar giri longhi

A thorn in the foot was the reason for the sadness.

The end

This is what she remembered today, after two decades.

Makes a weird kind of sense, doesn’t it?

Visual by Different Truths

Soumya Mukherjee

Soumya Mukherjee is an alumnus of St Stephens College and Delhi School of Economics. He earns his daily bread by working for a PSU Insurance company, and lectures for peanuts. His other passions, family, friends, films, travel, food, trekking, wildlife, music, theater, and occasionally, writing. He has been published in many national newspapers of repute. He has published his first novel, Memories, a novella, hopefully, the first of his many books. He blogs as well.

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