How a geologist built a Hindustani music oasis in a steel town

Imagine India’s first steel plant, newly forged with socialist aspirations and carved out of a village in the baking plains of Central India. Now imagine this industrial complex, crisscrossed by blast furnaces, conveyor belts, chimneys and cranes, as an oasis for Indian classical music. That is precisely what Bhilai was to become, driven by the passion of a gentle, unassuming geologist.

Bimalendu Mukherjee combined two seemingly polar skills: he was a sitariya of the Imdadkhani gharana with a prodigious understanding of string instruments and also an expert prospector of mines who supervised the flow of ores that fed the steel plant. He belongs to that quiet league of unacknowledged evangelists of Hindustani music who dedicated their lives in small, unexpected corners of India to bring art into the lives of common people.

Over nearly six decades, as the steel city grew to become the backbone of Indian railways and industries, Mukherjee turned Bhilai into an important hub for Hindustani music. It became a town that drew every legend of the era, from Vilayat Khan, Roshan Kumari and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan to Amir Khan, Ravi Shankar, Kumar Gandharva, Bhimsen Joshi and Girija Devi. Its new residential quarters housed some of the country’s best and brightest – a cosmopolitan mosaic of communities that drew on and contributed to a rich tapestry of musical influences.

Nearly 400 students would learn music under Mukherjee – young and old, employees and their families, alongside many who arrived in Bhilai drawn by stories of a guru with infinite reserves of patience and generosity. Among them were Sudhakar Sheolikar, Anupama Bhagwat, Sanjoy Bandopadhyay, Rajeev Janardan and Kamala Shankar. The youngest among his disciples was his five-year-old son, Budhaditya Mukherjee, who would later earn acclaim as an exceptional sitar exponent.

“He created this place for brightness in Bhilai, which invited everyone to come and delight in this art,” said Budhaditya, now 71. “For him, music was never a means to livelihood; it was life itself and a thing of joy. The tough lessons of his early life had taught him to separate sustenance and art. But he taught freely, generously and with profound compassion. The greatest musicians of his time saw this, felt free to share their vulnerability with him, and perform in this little town few had heard of. He taught me a way of life, how it can be lived through music, and the priceless luxury of self-belief.”

Budhaditya’s home in southern Kolkata now archives the evidence of his father’s variegated life, once housed in Pratibha, the landmark family bungalow in Sector 11 of Bhilai. Stacked in a tall glass shelf in this home is a priceless collection of old string instruments – including an antique Bobbili veena carved from a single piece of wood – that he collected, repaired and conserved with love.

Yet the collection tells only part of the story. The fullest account of Mukherjee’s generosity as a guru and his expansive engagement with music from across the nation emerges from his students, most of whom found both a classroom and a home at Pratibha.

Last year, Mukherjee’s birth centenary was marked by a concert series organised across several cities by his student and sitar exponent, Anupama Bhagwat. “He was an exceptional guru, very liberal for his times, very giving, but also uniquely detached in how he let you explore music on your own terms,” she said. “The word in Bhilai was that if you knocked on his door to seek music, you were never turned away.”

Mukherjee’s life intertwined many strands of music and political history – the era of feudal patronage of classical music in undivided Bengal, a young independent India striving for self-dependence, and the rise of a new class of urban audiences for classical music in the country’s shiny new industrial towns.

Early chords

In the early 1900s, Mymensingh, now in Bangladesh, was fabled for its arts patronage. Its rich zamindars, with time on their hands, inheritances to expend and a passion for the arts, vied to play hosts and students to the ustads and pandits of the day.

It was into this world that civil surgeon Dr Satish Chandra Mukherjee arrived from Calcutta. The demands of his profession kept him busy, but as a music buff, he would unwind with a sitar baithak at his home. His young son Bimalendu, who was learning singing from his mother then, listened intently.

In 1924, the great Enayat Khan of the Imdadkhani or Etawah gharana moved to Gouripur in Mymensingh from Calcutta, becoming the court musician of Raja Brajendra Kishore Roy Choudhury. An educationist, the zamindar is known to have figured as a patron in the lives of many legends, including Hafiz Ali Khan and Baba Allauddin Khan.

As zamindars in the region clamoured to learn from the legend, Bimalendu would listen from behind doorways. He became something of a favourite in these circles for his uncanny ability to pick up intricate musical passages and repeat them after the ustad left – a feat that did not go unnoticed by the great master.

But turbulence was right around the corner. Enayat Khan died tragically young, aged just 43. Much of Bimalendu’s sitar training was under the ustad’s students: Choudhury, Nirod Kanta Lahiri and Jitendra Mohan Sengupta. Soon after came the violence of the Partition and the Mukherjee family had to return to Calcutta. A year later, Satish Mukherjee died, leaving his young son responsible for six siblings.

Mukherjee completed a postgraduate degree in geology from Calcutta University and plunged headlong into work.

“He never really had the time or opportunity to consider a career as a musician with that massive family responsibility on his young shoulders,” said Budhaditya of his father’s choices. “For him, music and a steady career had to go together. He lived both roles with equal intensity. It was never about juggling them somehow.”

The young geologist’s first job was with the Geological Survey of India, followed by the Indian Bureau of Mines. For four years, Budhaditya says, he and his young wife Nilima lived in tents along the Odisha coast while prospecting for ores. Yet the sitar and sarod never left his side.

A new chapter opened in the mid-1950s as India under Jawaharlal Nehru embarked on an ambitious programme of industrialisation. A public-sector steel plant that could reduce dependence on imports was considered essential. To that end, Hindustan Steel Limited was established in Durg in 1955 with Soviet collaboration, later christened the Bhilai Steel Plant and now part of SAIL.

Manufacturing steel in Durg required the movement of 11 different ores from neighbouring mines, among them iron ore from Dalli-Rajhara, limestone from Nandini and dolomite from Hirri. When Mukherjee joined as assistant manager for ores, mines and quarries, it became his responsibility to keep this complex operation running.

The family settled in Sector 11 of a township carved out of nowhere. “There was no classical music of any kind in Bhilai, though it had a rich tradition of folk music,” recalled Budhaditya. “But the people who settled around the steel plant represented the country’s best, integrated into one identity. They were curious and open to anything new. So my father’s vision of classical music gained momentum rapidly.”

Pratibha soon opened its doors to anyone keen to learn music.

Duty and art

Among those who settled in Bhilai to work at the steel plant was the Telugu family of Anupama Bhagwat. Full of musicians and music lovers, the family made sure she enrolled for sitar under RN Verma at the steel plant school. When she turned 12, it was suggested she seek Mukherjee’s tutelage.

Bhagwat has clear memories of Budhaditya, aged around 20 and already a star prodigy, on his scooter, waiting at the railway crossing on his journey to Raipur, home to the nearest radio station, for a recording. It was with considerable awe that she and her father approached her prospective guru. Mukherjee asked her only one question before agreeing to teach her: how serious was she about music?

“It was a tough journey in the beginning,” she said. “He was on this high perch and I was a child. His style was evolved – it was like a flowing river and you had to learn how to place the vessel to absorb some of it. But he was infinitely patient, a man of very broad outlook, and not controlling at all. He would sing and teach beautifully. He would often say that, if nothing else, you will learn about yourself through this music.”

Bhagwat remembers her guru as a man with an almost limitless capacity to engage fully with both work and music. “His day would begin when the siren signalled the start of the workday at 4.00 am in the city, and ended with long teaching sessions that went up to midnight and beyond,” she said. “He barely slept a few hours. He was content and fully immersed in whatever space he occupied.”

As a young learner, Budhaditya remembers that his father’s biggest concern was the emotional impact of music. “He would ask: ‘Does this music bring you joy?’ When he returned home from work, he would sit and listen to me play, no matter how exhausted he was. He never once scolded. Instead, he would anticipate the shortcomings and step in to help. If he was happy with my playing, he would say, ‘Always remember this moment and the pleasure it brought you, not just the notes.’”

That philosophy was rooted in Mukherjee’s own early experiences. As a young man, he had watched some of the greatest musicians of his time struggle with financial insecurity, fickle patrons and social disrespect. Possessing deep empathy, he resolved that Bhilai was going to be a place where artists would never have to deal with such indignities.

In its early years, the steel city had no formal performing spaces. Mukherjee’s home served as the first welcoming stage, followed later by the Nehru Cultural House in Sector 1, which Budhaditya recalls began life as a hall with a tin roof, seating 600-700 people.

How did Mukherjee persuade the country’s foremost classical musicians to travel to a town that sat squarely in the middle of the Howrah-Bombay railway line? The answer lay partly in the attentive, respectful audience whose musical sensibilities he had helped cultivate, and partly in the legendary hospitality of Pratibha.

“Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan came twice and stayed with us,” Budhaditya said. “I recall a painting of a woman on the wall that he was fascinated by. One morning, while he was having chai, he picked up his surmandal (drone), looked again at the painting, and told my father, ‘Mukherjee, look, she is smiling at me.’ Then he instantly went on to express himself through an astoundingly brilliant, lightning-like taan in raga Ramkali that was beyond belief. It was this possibility of brilliance that my father wanted to share with everyone, including me.”

Another memorable visitor was Amir Khan, who arrived in Bhilai after a two-concert schedule in Nagpur, where he had been deeply dissatisfied with his performance. The initial performance in Bhilai also did not match the level of perfection he desired. After the performance, he told my father: “Mukherjee, I like Bhilai and I think I will stay for a while longer,” he said. Four days later, he was to declare: “Gaane ki iccha ho rahi hai (I am in the mood to sing).”

A dhurrie was rolled out in the family’s quarter, along the pathway connecting the scooter garage to the road. Mukherjee’s disciple Sheolikar was summoned to play the harmonium and a contractor to the steel plant was called in to give the theka (beat cycle).

“The audience was one man – my father,” said Budhaditya. “From his memories, he would say that it was the most unbelievable music he had ever heard ustadji play. He [Amir Khan] did something unheard of – sing a thumri, which he never did in public. When my father asked Khan sahaab why he never sang thumri at his regular concerts, he replied with the greatest respect to Ustaad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan sahab: ‘Unke samne, unke hotey hueye, hum kya thumri gayenge…’”

In all this, he emphasises, his mother Nilima, herself a sarangi player, was an indispensable and unflinching ally. The steady stream of guests, students who lodged with them and the endless labour of care that sustained it all – none of it would have been possible if she had not stood by the vision.

Quiet departure

It was in this world of intimate yet extraordinary musical exchange that Budhaditya made his debut at age 12, at an eight-day soiree featuring Vilayat Khan, Amir Khan, Kumar Gandharva, Roshan Kumari and Kishan Maharaj. The youngster later chose to study metallurgy, but there was no doubt that music would remain an inalienable part of his life. Unlike his father, however, he also chose to make it his primary profession.

Mukherjee performed at only a few venues and before small audiences, remaining very much a musician’s musician. One of his passions, born partly of necessity, was the repair and conservation of musical instruments. Unlike major musical centres like Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi and even Baroda, which had long traditions of instrument crafting, musicians in Bhilai had no choice but to master the technicalities themselves. Mukherjee would often retire to his music room and its tool rack to work on instruments.

Soon after he retired from the steel plant, in 1982, Mukherjee was appointed vice-chancellor for two successive terms at Khairagarh University. Around 72 kilometres from Bhilai, it was Asia’s first university dedicated entirely to the performing and visual arts. Teaching, however, remained central to his life and he pursued it with undiminished rigour well into his eighties.

By the 2000s, the steel city had changed. It had grown larger and busier, losing its intimacy, warmth and embrace of classical music, says Budhaditya, who relocated to Calcutta in 1995 but continued travelling frequently between the two cities to care for his father. In 2008, Mukherjee left his beloved Bhilai and moved to Kolkata. A year and a half later, he passed away.

Malini Nair is a culture writer and senior editor based in New Delhi. She can be reached at writermalini@gmail.com.