Hemanta Mukherjee : the Golden Voice

ami jhorer kache rekhe gelam [1961 Bengali]
(I left my whereabouts in the storm...)
Singer- Hemanta Mukherjee
Lyrics- Salil Chowdhury
Music- Salil Chowdhury

Hemanta Mukherjee (also known as Hemant Kumar in Hindi film/music scene) is well-known for his brilliant compositions in Hindi-films like Bees Saal Baad(1962) Kohra(1964) and Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam(1962). As a composer, he was not very prolific, but each one of them were a gem. Hemant-da clearly had a talent for composing music with an ethereal quality. Perhaps that's why he composed  mostly in noir/thriller/horror

movies. His music can be at best enjoyed in the chilly weather of the rainy season or at a hill-station.(And if   you catches a cold, you may even imitate his brooding baritone voice!)

Hemant-da was more prolific as a singer, his baritone voice and singing style perfectly suits romantic and sentimental numbers. Almost every  Hindi/Bengali composer of  yesteryears have used his renditions. In Bengal, he also renowned for his extensive work in Rabindra Sangeet(Tagore-music). He also teamed up with another legend Salil Chowdhury to create many evergreen hits - such as this song ami jharer kache. 
  

 Hemant-da was apolitical (like me) but not Salil-da. Besides being a great composer, Salil-da was an ardent communist. Through his music, poems and lyrics, Salil-da always aligned himself with the oppressed and down-trodden of that time. He was also influenced by 'socialist realism' of the erstwhile Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries. Apart from Bengal, Salil-da was very prolific in Kerala where he created many hits and revered as an iconic figure. And from his stable came another legend - the genius of Ilaiyaraja !

Salil-da composes folk and (Indian) classical music aided by western orchestration. He frequently used counter-point technique (including this song). Certainly, if there is any musician after Tagore who gave Bengal its own music-idiom, it is Salil Chowdhury. 

Gitanjali ( Song Offerings)

Excerpts from Tagore's Gitanjali (Song Offerings)

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.


Gitanjali (1912) written by Rabindranath Tagore - originally in Bengali, translated to English by the author himself.

Tagore : essay on Nationalism

Excerpts from Rabindranath Tagore's book Nationalism (1917)

What is dangerous for Japan is, not the imitation of the outer features of the West, but the acceptance of the motive force of the Western nationalism as her own. Her social ideals are already showing signs of defeat at the hands of politics. I can see her motto, taken from science, 'Survival of the Fittest,' writ large at the entrance of her present-day history - the motto whose meaning is, 'Help yourself, and never heed what it costs to others'; the motto of the blind man who only believes in what he can touch, because he cannot see. But those who can see, know that men are so closely knit, that when you strike others the blow comes back to yourself. The moral law, which is the greatest discovery of man, is the discovery of this wonderful truth, that man becomes all the truer, the more he realizes himself in others.This truth has not only a subjective value, but is manifested in every department of our life. And nations, who sedulously cultivate moral blindness as the cult of patriotism, will end their existence in a sudden and violent death.

In past ages we had foreign invasions, but they never touched the soul of the people deeply. They were merely the outcome of individual ambitions. The people themselves, being free from the responsibilities of the baser and more heinous side of those adventures, had all the advantage of the heroic and the human disciplines derived from them. This developed their unflinching loyalty, their single-minded devotion to the obligations of honour, their power of complete self-surrender and fearless acceptance of death and danger. Therefore the ideals, whose seats were in the hearts of the people, would not undergo any serious change owing to the policies adopted by the kings or generals.

But now, where the spirit of the Western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means, - by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and nations other than their own. This is poisoning the very fountainhead of humanity. It is discrediting the ideals, which were born of the lives of men, who were our greatest and best. It is holding up gigantic selfishness as the one universal religion for all nations of the world. We can take anything else from the hands of science, but not this elixir of moral death. Never think for a moment, that the hurts you inflict upon other races will not infect you, and the enmities you sow around your homes will be a wall of protection to you for all time to come. To imbue the minds of a whole people with an abnormal vanity of its own superiority, to teach it to take pride in its moral callousness and ill-begotten wealth, to perpetuate humiliation of defeated nations by exhibiting trophies won from war, and using these in schools in order to breed in children's minds contempt for others, is imitating the West where she has a festering sore, whose swelling is a swelling of disease eating into its vitality. 

source :// tagoreweb.in/