‘A rare musical genius completely immersed in his creative and artistic universe’

Last week, a phone call from my guru-bhai Arnab Chakrabarty triggered a flood of memories of my association with Babul Kaku. Arnab, Babul Kaku’s foremost disciple, had organised a two-day festival, “Dr Kalyan Mukherjea Memorial Concert”, on the occasion of his 80th anniversary in Kolkata, on February 25 and 26 at GD Birla Sabhaghar. It’s necessary to speak about Babul Kaku because he was not just an outstanding musician, but also an affectionate and warm human being, the proverbial friend-philosopher-guide.

I learned music from Pandit Buddhadev Das Gupta, who was good friends with my father since their time at the Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur. In time, my father got acquainted with Buddhadevji’s guru, Pandit Radhika Mohan Maitra, and Babul Kaku was his foremost disciple. Thanks to this familial connection, even as a child, I had become familiar with Kalyan Mukherjea’s name, who was then based in America. After his undergraduate at Cambridge, Mukherjea followed it with a doctorate in mathematics from Cornell. He was the son of Arun Mukherjea, a barrister who later became a judge in the Supreme Court of India. Interestingly, Mukherjea’s father was close friends with Pt Radhika Mohan Moitra — the maestro even named a raga after his name and called it Arun Kedar.

After teaching at UCLA for about a decade, Mukherjea returned to India in early 1976 and joined as a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi. This also marked a new beginning in his life: that as a performing sarod exponent.

As a sarod novice, I was amazed by some of Babul Kaku’s finger techniques, jhālā strokes, and his keen sense of rhythm that was amply evident in his recitals from that time. I still remember the beautiful Rageshree that he played at his Aritra Circle concert. Besides the captivating lyricism of his musical style, Babul Kaku’s instrument was in itself a source of magnetic attraction for many of us. It was a sarod that had belonged to Radhubabu’s guru, Ustad Md. Ameer Khan. What he held in his hands was not merely a beautiful sarod, but a living slice of a truly golden history.

Soon, he shifted base to his Kolkata residence near Menoka cinema hall. This shifting of cities led to numerous meetings where I had the opportunity to share the wealth of his musical ideas. I fondly recall the privilege of his absorbing discussions on sarod techniques, bandishes of old masters, and even Carnatic ragas, of which he had a fair knowledge.

Babul Kaku had poor eye sight even as a child. But it was most unfortunate that he developed a severe problem in his eyes in the later years, which worsened. In fact, in the twilight of his life, he had nearly lost all eyesight. Even in this time of adversity, his unceasing quest for knowledge kept him active and engaged. He used state-of-the-art voice assisting software to be able to work on his computer, keeping himself abreast of the latest developments in the worlds of both mathematics and music. Though it got increasingly impossible for him to play the sarod, he once shared with me his beautiful creation in Yamini Bilawal, besides a new raga, Ravi Kauns.

A fair number of recordings are easily accessible today: those of the Indian Music Archives concert and the AIR National concert especially come to mind.

To this day, my heart is filled with the memories of Babul Kaku, a rare musical genius completely immersed in his creative and artistic universe. Today, when many of us get entangled in the pursuit of personal gains, material achievements, and popular recognition, it is imperative to remember and draw inspiration from legends like Babul Kaku, for whom musical knowledge was the heart of life.

Prattyush Banerjee is a Kolkata-based sarod player

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