Before a recent performance, Chowdhury discussed his artistic inspirations. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Bedtime lullaby
When Chowdhury was little, Chakraborty would sing Tagore’s poem “Diner Sheshe Ghumer Deshe” to him at bedtime. Originally published in 1907 by Tagore as “Shesh Kheya” (“The Last Boat”), and put to music in 1922 by Pankaj Kumar Mullick, the song became known by the first line of the poem.
In “Rheology,” Chowdhury recites the opening lines: “Diner sheshe, ghumer deshe, ghomta pora oy chhaya bhulalo re, bhulalo mor praan.” (“At day’s end, in the land of sleep, there’s a shadow there, with her veil drawn low, lulling me into forgetting, washing my waking life away.”) The lullaby has a “tragic quality,” Chowdhury said.
“Ghomta” is a word that’s difficult to translate, he said, because it refers to the way a woman, or a wife, covers her head with the loose end of sari as a gesture of modesty or respect. “I remember being intrigued by Tagore’s choice to make this shadowy figure, this personification of death, a woman wearing a ghomta.” The gesture of the ghomta, he said, is one he is parodying in “Rheology” when he puts his mother’s pink scarf around his head to become her widow.
Radio daze
As a boy, Chowdhury was enthralled by two Tagore plays played on tape during car rides: “Raktakarabi” (1924, “Red Oleanders”) and “Dak Ghar” (1912, “The Post Office”). The plays were produced by a theater company, Bahurupee, founded by the husband and wife Sombhu and Tripti Mitra. Chowdhury was particularly struck by Tripti’s “explosion of very feminine grief” in “Red Oleanders,” in her role as Nandini.
