Aditi Sengupta(1938-2012)
- Music Department
Aditi was the younger of the two daughters of Kshitindra Kumar Nag and
Provabati Nag. Family sources say that Kshitindra Kumar, then a young
man and "Foreign retuned" was a pucca sahib and he chose Prova as his
wife only for her singing talents and always lent active support to
Prova to develop her as a powerful singer. Kshitindra Kumar was
professor in Chicago University and served The Indian Aluminium after
returning to India. Prova was winner of first position in several
examinations conducted by The Bengal Music Board. However she never
took up singing as her profession and her renditions were restricted to
private audiences, Ramkrishna Mission functions and the like. Aditi was
born on the seventh day of November, 1936 in Cooch Behar of undivided
Bengal. She started training in pure classical music from a very early
age of four to five. About the same time she had lessons in Bharat
Natyam at Bani Bidyabithi but soon gave up dancing in favor of singing.
Contrary to the common happening of being trained primarily by a very
able parent, Aditi's first GURU was Pandit Ramkrishna Mishra of
Vishnupur Gharana. She switched over to Tagore music at a later date
after the demise of the Pandit around 1949 and took lessons at
Geetabitan, Dakshinee and other renowned institutions. In 1958 her
position in Geetabitan changed from that of a student to that of a
teacher. Satyajit Ray made a documentary on Gurudev Rabindra Nath
Tagore in 1961 at the request of the then Prime Minister Pandit Nehru.
Ray utilized the services of Geetabitan artistes including Aditi for
this film and here she sang Amar Mukti Aloy Aloy solo for this
documentary. Ray chose Aditi again for his 1962 release Kanchanjangha.
None other than Bijaya Ray trained Aditi for the famous E Parabase Rabe
Ke. However, her voice was not used ultimately. Her first 78 r.p.m.
disc, from Hindustan Musical Products, was published in the mid
six-tees and she sang two duets SEI TO Basanta Phire Elo and Eki Gabhir
Bani with Debabrata Biswas, who was her teacher at the time. Later she
came to be associated with the His Master's Voice where Santosh
Sengupta, Prasad Sen gave her lessons. She cut several discs in the two
companies and for duets her co singers included Debabrata Biswas,
Prasad Sen, Gautam Mitra. Along with her basic discs, she was a regular
Tagore song artiste with Akashbani and with the advent of television,
with Doordarshan. All India Radio classified her in the Hi B grade but
listeners always felt she was a class by herself. Her association with
Geetabitan came to an end in 2003. As a rule she chose songs with a
classical touch and those which were not already made popular by other
artistes. She got married to Sukamal Sengupta when she was only
eighteen. Her son is Debashish Sengupta and her daughter's name is
Tublu. Tragedy stuck around 2005 when she started to forget lyrics of
her songs. That was a terrible thing to realize. Soon she was
forgetting other things as well and ended up with total loss of memory.
She was looked after by her son and daughter in law Sharmishtha very
well but she could not sing any more. Her last days were physically
painful and she breathed her last on the second day of October, 2012.