My Mentor
I have studied music with various eminent personalities associated with the classical music of North India, but there is always that one individual who stands out as mentor and guide in a manner that transcends the process of learning music. My guru, in that sense is Prof. Kalyan Mukherjea (b. 27 October, 1943 – d. 31 March, 2010). Kalyan-da, as my wife and I came to know him, was a gentleman of phenomenal erudition, both in music and mathematics, his other area of expertise, and more importantly, one of the finest people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. He was an astoundingly humble and polite man for a person of his achievements, although none of that humility could ever be construed as false, for Kalyan-da, in spite of his self-critical nature, knew his worth, both in maths and as a sarode player.
While his contributions to the field of algebraic topology were considered seminal to the area in the 1970s and 80s, Kalyan-da never received the recognition he richly deserved for his work on the sarode, a fact that tormented him deeply till the end of his days. After all, he had always spoken dismissively of the mathematician in him, but in his own quiet manner, made it clear that his own assessment of his music was quite favourable. As a musician, Kalyan-da did not achieve career success, but he is remembered fondly as a ‘musician’s musician’ in the true sense, who gave his best when seated in front of a dozen musicians rather than in those cold, dark concert halls that we are all too familiar with. Till the end, Kalyan-da always nursed a sense of betrayal by two of his closest musician friends, both known sarode players.
Kalyan was born into a privileged Calcutta family of East Bengali origin. His father, Arun Kumar Mukherjea, served in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and quit the service early in his career to study law and become a barrister. Mukherjea senior eventually retired as a Supreme Court judge and served as acting Chief Justice of India for some time. His mother, Geeta Mukherjea had founded one of the earliest girls’ schools in Calcutta, and continued working well into her 70s. It was essentially by design that his parents took young Kalyan to the inimitable Radhika Mohan Maitra, a close personal friend of Arunbabu. He had been born with a rare ophthalmologic condition and by the time he was 12, doctors had predicted eventual loss of vision with age. It was to mitigate this potential disaster that the sarode was brought into his life, more as a ‘companion’ rather than what it would eventually turn out to be – his favourite and most passionate pursuit in life.
This is also available in: French
