Kolkata :

Three and a half years after legendary Rabindrasangeet exponent Suchitra Mitra passed away, her daughter Sudeshna Chatterjee has come forward to bring her legacy alive. Sudeshna has brought together the oldest students of Rabitirtha – the Rabindrasangeet institute started by Suchitra Mitra – to form Rabitirtha Praktoni. The fledgling organization promises to surprise the city with its mammoth Suchitra Smarane – a three-day celebration of Tagore songs and discussions at the ICCR in September on the occasion of Mitra’s 90th birth anniversary.

This is a breakaway from the mother institute that still exists off Lake Market. Towards the last couple of years of Mitra’s life, former minister Subhas Chakraborty and wife Romola took over the reins of Rabitirtha. After Mitra’s death, the media had been rife with reports of how its management changed overnight under Chakraborty’s aegis and how classes became irregular. Mitra’s students complained that teachers, whom she had handpicked, were thrown out of the institute. Interestingly, apart from Rabitirtha, Mitra’s house was also taken over by Romola Chakraborty’s NGO, Pather Panchali, and it was announced that a museum on Mitra would be developed. However, that is yet to come up.

Sudeshna, whom Mitra lovingly called Chiku, has relocated from the US to bring this project alive. Instead of the old world school where the original version is housed, Rabitirtha Praktani is holding its classes inside a state-of-the-art studio for performing arts owned by her. “The classes are being taken by some of my mother’s famous students like Purba Dam, Sumitra Roy and Agnibha Bandyopadhyay. We are bringing back that old tradition at Rabitirtha Praktani,” Sudheshna said.

You will find Sabitri Dutta in her late 70s, Tapati and Bharati Mukherjee, in their 60s, who had been trained by Mitra, happily coming to the class like old times. “We were heartbroken at the old school because training was intermittent and the likes of Kashinath Das, one of Suchitra-di’s handpicked teachers, were asked to leave,” said an old student.

The three-day festival at ICCR is being supported by JU’s School of Cultural Texts and Records that is providing rare photographs of Mitra for an exclusive exhibition and the Rabindra Bharati University.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kolkata / by Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey, TNN / August 14th, 2014