For Dr Chandrima Majumdar, a resident of Airlines Apartments, Sector 23, Dwarka, it was love at first note. She is today one of the most eminent sarod players of her generation.
The year was 1988. A girl in her middle school attended a classical music concert with her father and heard Raag Puriya Kalyan on sarod by maestro Pandit Narendra Nath Dhar. It was an instant love affair. That girl became one of the few female sarodists from the younger generation.
Dr Chandrima Majumdar, a resident of Airlines Apartments, Sector 23, Dwarka, still remembers the day vividly. She recounts, “I was only 13, but I was taken in by the recital. The tone and depth of the instrument left me spellbound. I knew that instant that I wanted to learn sarod.”
Her newfound passion found the right soil — a culturally rich city such as Lucknow and a musically inclined family. She says, “I come from a family of musicians. My maternal grandfather — though a senior technocrat with the Indian Railways — was a flautist and a vocalist, and my mother, too, was a vocalist. So attending concerts and talking about shastriya sangeet [classical music] was a way of life with us.”
Dr Majumdar began to learn the basics of singing from her mother at the age of 7, and later received formal training from Bhatkhande Music Institute in Lucknow.
She gave her first performance in Pune in Raag Bihag.
Recounting her training days, she says, “I give a lot of credit to Dr Tej Singh Tak, my first guru. Starting from the gyaan [knowledge] of bandish to khyaal, he cleared our basics, and laid down a strong foundation. And that helped me evolve as a musician first and as a sarod player later.”
Sarod originated from a stringed instrument from Afghanistan called the rabab, explains Dr Majumdar. “The lack of frets on the fingerboard makes sarod a very demanding instrument to play, as the strings must be pressed with the nail tips against the fingerboard. The sound that emanates from this instrument made of wood, steel and leather is pure magic.”
Besides being a regular performer at All India Radio and Doordarshan, Dr Majumdar has performed at prestigious music festivals such as the Sankatmochan in Varanasi, Pratibha Utsav of Sangeet Natak Akademi in Delhi and Saptak Festival in Ahmedabad. She was also awarded the Surmani title by Sur Singar Samsad of Mumbai and Sarod Ratna by the Society for Action Through Music (Delhi).
She has been assistant professor at Banasthali University in Rajasthan, where she started a department of sarod. She has also done a PhD on the contribution of Pandit Radhika Mohan Moitra in the development of sarod playing.
So what does this sarod doyen do when she is not practising her art? Tend to her plants. In fact, her neighbours often turn to her for gardening tips. “I am in charge of horticulture in my society. People often leave their dry flowerpots at my home, and I turn them green,” says the musician with a smile.
