On the drizzle-dotted afternoon of 28 July, four days after what would have been his hundred and thirteenth birthday, a city auditorium reverberated with the sound of song in honour of an “unsung” legend. Leave it to another musician, living legend Kabir Suman, to seize the Sunday following legendary flautist Pannalal Ghosh’s birth anniversary on 24 July, to effectively tell Calcutta’s culture-conscious citizens to wake up and hear the music!

And through the smell of steaming coffee served in paper teacups, Kabir, in his inimitable style, created a storm, delivering his message loud and clear. “Nowhere else has Pannalal Ghosh been treated with as much neglect during his lifetime as he has been in his own land, Bengal,” Kabir thundered, lamenting that the maestro found himself hounded out of Kolkata, then Calcutta, by envious, insecure and resentful contemporaries who would not let him survive far less thrive in the city. Eventually, BV Keshkar, who was Indian minister of information and broadcasting between 1952 and 1962 and who was horrified by the utter neglect of this outstanding talent, arrived in Kolkata, whisked him away to Mumbai, then Bombay, and gave him a job.

The tribute to Acharya Pannalal Ghosh by Kabir Suman was much more than the honouring of a genius relegated to the throes of oblivion. It was a sepia-tinted, nostalgia-tinged wake-up call to Calcutta, which whispered, through the ascending and descending notes of ragas, “Look around you and listen….to the lurking sounds….before it is too late.”

Lately, Kabir Suman, who in the late 1980s and early 1990s pioneered a trendsetting genre of modern music fusing livewire lyrics with timeless tunes that defied scrutiny by purists’ perfectionism, has delved deeply into the lost world of “Bengali Khayal.” Kabir weaves the Bengali language brilliantly into Khayal, the classical vocal musical tradition of the Indian subcontinent, which, by and large, has been rendered only in a few esoteric languages. He, however, says that it is important to highlight that he is not the “inventor” of Bengali Khayal and that there have been renditions of this form earlier too.

“I did not invent Bangla Khayal. It was practiced long ago, but no one pursued it for a long time. I am trying to revive the great genre,” he tells me.

One of Kabir’s favourite stories, which he narrates with a great deal of satisfaction and mirth, is how a revered Bengali musician of the 1950s and 1960s, Satya Kinkar Bandyopadhyay, chose a live radio program to start singing a Bengali Khayal song, knowing full well that the producers wouldn’t be able to stop him in the middle of it. “If it was a recording, they could have stopped him,” Kabir chuckles. Aghast, when the producers demanded to know, after the program, why he sang in Bengali, Satya Kinkar apparently asked them to show him rulebooks that barred renditions of Khayal in Bengali. They could not, of course. In fact, when a few weeks later the then-central minister for information and broadcasting arrived in Kolkata, journalists asked him his views on Bengali Khayal. The minister said he thought there was nothing wrong with it. Kabir marvels at the sheer determination of Satya Kinkar Bandyopadhyay, who not only thus fought for Bengali Khayal but managed to extract a contract from the same national radio station for several renditions of Bengali Khayal. Kabir says he is unsure if all the scheduled programs could take place as planned, but Satya Kinkar died soon after.

Kabir himself has faced opposition from purists who decry what they claim to be iconoclasm, but their criticism has been drowned out mostly by overwhelming support for his venture.

They include connoisseurs of Hindustani classical music.

Says Krishnaraj Iyengar, a musicologist, music writer and an expert on Hindustani musician, “While the lyrical content of khayal per se is essentially a vehicle to convey the melodic content, Bangla-Khayal seems quite a fresh avenue.” He points out that other forms of Hindustani classical music are much more lyric-centric. “ Unlike Ghazal, where the lyrics are emphasised for their poetic value with the melody as the vehicle, several great Hindustani vocalists across generations have believed that the lyrical pronunciations during Khayal singing don’t necessarily have to be crystal-clear, as one can realise on listening to the recordings of many great masters like Ustads Faiyaz Khan, Abdul Karim Khan, Vilayat Hussain Khan, to name a few.

While Khayal has been rendered in several Indian languages like Brij Bhasha and Punjabi (like many of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s compositions), Ustad Amir Khan even famously composed Khayals and Taranas in Persian. A classic example is his Ram Kalyan, to name a few. However, one might consider the compatibility and harmony of Bengali lyrics with Khayal Gayaki’s musical flavour and essence. After all, all the above-mentioned languages have been part of a larger region. Ustad Amir Khan too sang in Persian, which he pronounced in a South Asian manner rather than with the original Farsi accent, and hence, it sounded compatible with the core South Asian essence of Khayal. Bengali too, being a South Asian language, might harmonise with Khayal bandishes, which most northern Indian languages would, unless one sings Khayal in English, French or Swedish! Ultimately, for a knowledgeable listener, the Khayal lyrics dissolve in the melodicity of the bandish. And on a personal note, while I would think, ‘if Khayals have been sung even in Persian, why not Bengali?’ If the idea were to succeed, time will surely tell, as has been the case with all new creative ideas.”

One of Kabir’s and Bangla Khayal’s well-wishers has been West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who readily responded to Kabir’s request for creating a space for and allowing Bangla Khayal to be taught as a part of the state’s cultural curriculum.

As part of his tribute to Acharya Pannalal Ghosh, Kabir composed a number of songs dedicated to the late legendary flautist in Bangal Khayal. One of them was “Jodi banshi taar baajey dure” (if the sounds of the beloved’s flute float in from afar). He set it to “Raag Nupur” one of Pannalal Ghosh’s own creations.

Before singing the song, Kabir narrated the heartrending tale of how “Raag Nupur” came about. Ghosh’s two-year-old daughter Nupur had died, and the heartbroken flautist could only grieve through compositions of sounds.

“Jodi banshi taar baajey durey….” Kabir Suman sang. The sky had cleared up. But, even through drizzle-dotted afternoons, the mellifluous Khayal, even if in Bengali, surely reached very, very far. Onek onek durey.