Jana Gana Mana

Namaste,

Yet another overwrought version of Jana Gana Mana, featuring well-known singers and instrumentalists. The extreme close-ups are annoying.  Still I choke up. It is like a prayer.

Anuranan

Rahul Bose as Rahul and Raima Sen as Preeti in Anuranan

It's not often that one finds Bengali language films playing in movie theaters in the U.S. (unless it's a retrospective of the films of Satyajit Ray), so on a lark, I persuaded my husband to take me to see Anuranan.

Anuranan is about two couples: the dreamy/poetic Rahul (Rahul Bose) and his wife Nandita (Rituparna Sengupta) and driven businessman/domineering husband Amit (Rajat Kapoor) and his repressed wife Preeti (played by Raima Sen, granddaughter of Bengali cinema legend Souchitra Sen). Gradually, Preeti finds that she can find expression for her interests in literature and nature with Rahul. The relationship has tragic consequences.

As with many Bengali offerings, Anuranan is replete with quotations of songs and poems of Tagore. In the way that Anuranan deals with a woman who finds (non-sexual) self-expression through a man other than her husband, it recalls Satyajit Ray's films Charulata and Ghare-Baire, both based on stories by Tagore.

Dr. L. Subramanian in concert

If The first ever Indian and American Achievement Awards program disappointed, the same cannot be said about the Fairfax (VA) Symphony program honoring India's 60th anniversary of independence that featured Dr. L. Subramanian, his wife Kavita Krishnamurthy, and two of his three children.


Dr. L.Subramanian and son "Ambi" with supporting musicians

The program opened with traditional Carnatic music, featuring Dr. Subramanian and his teenage son "Ambi" on violins. Additional musicians performed on Mridangam (drum), Ghatam (clay pot), Kanjeera (tambourine), and Morsing (jews harp) [the links are to audio clips from Swar Systems that demonstrate the sounds of these instruments - ed.]


Kavita Krishnamurthy and stepdaughter Seetaa Subramaniam performing Freedom Symphony

The rest of the program featured three of Dr. Subramanian's compositions that fuse western and Indian music styles: Global Symphony, Freedom Symphony, and Turbulence Concerto. Freedom Symphony, which was billed as a world premiere, featured poems of Rabindranath Tagore (Jodi Tor, a favorite of Gandhi, in Bengali), Subramanya Bharati (Acham Illai, in Tamil), and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (Vande Mataram, in Sanskrit) set to music. We were seated near the stage, where we were thrilled to see and hear Kavita Krishnamurthy at such close range.

The entire program was awe-inspiring. I don't think that I'll hear or see such a program again.

NOTE: I am indebted to Cathy Smith, Director of Marketing, Fairfax Symphony, for the photos and supporting information.

Tagore in Hindi

UPDATE 2007-06-04: This article was replicated on Blogs - Gadar - Film Information without attribution.


Rabindranath Tagore

Outside of his native Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore is probably best known for Jana Gana Mana, India's national anthem. Now there are two efforts in making his work better known outside of Bengal.

DD One began a weekly series of Tagore's songs on May 13. The series is broadcast at 10:30 PM IST and will run for a year. According to Indiantelevision.com,

... A unique aspect is that Gurudev's compositions have been translated into Hindi while retaining the originality of the musical and lyrical flavour of Tagore.

The songs have been rendered by some of the best known voices - both classical and popular. Some of the singers include Anup Jalota, Anuradha Paudwal, Bhupinder Singh, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Vinod Rathore, Suresh Wadekar and Mitali Singh.

Somnath Chatterjee (CPI-M), Speaker of the Lok Shaba, who represents Tagore's Shantiniketan and surrounding areas, also released a DVD (the first of a series) of songs of Tagore. No word on how or even if these DVDs will be made available to the public.

The second effort is a CD called "Mere Mann Main Dhadkan Main" to be released by T-Series. Hindi versions of Tagore's songs are sung by Indrajit Dasgupta, a government tax official, and narration preceding the songs is provided by Amitabh Bachchan. Bollywood actors Ashmit Patel and Rituparna Sengupta (who is also a veteran of Tollywood, that is, the Bengali film industry) will be featured in a video.

Mere Mann Main Dhadkan Main was announced with great fanfare this past January. At that time, it was said that the recording would be released in February. Nothing happened. Now, with renewed buzz, it seems that the release might be imminent. I couldn't find anything on the T-Series web site.