Chandrabindoo performs on a stage in 2010. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons@Soumikb)
Abhik Bhattacharya
Jan 14, 2025 22:04 IST First published on: Jan 14, 2025 at 19:13 IST
The sky doesn’t need to be cloudy to be “gloomy”. Kolkata’s grumpy bikel comes with many sounds and smells: Chalk sliding from the table; dust gathered on the benches — often wiped by the students with the schoolbags of their friends-turned-foes — the essence of first love and the longing for the bell that signals chhuti. The feeble voice of the teacher fades into the rhythms of slowly revolving ceiling fans. The unbearable summer, a gust of wind and murmurs in the back bench.
These scenes are not uncommon for those who grew up in Kolkata during the 1990s. The frugal lifestyle — far removed from today’s fripperies — didn’t have much to offer. Except for jhalmuri, phuchka or, at the most, a bite of patties from Monginis — a newly launched bakery that all of us thought was a “foreign brand”. These emotions were either scribbled on the last pages of our notebooks or lost in memory. But one musical band — Chandrabindoo — gave shape to this untold nostalgia. From the sleepy classroom to the intimacy of “nicknames”, they captured everything. Their latest album, Talobasha — the 10th in their three-decade-long career — takes us back to the city where public buses were more a place of conversation than for scrolling through the phone.
Gone are those days when people would stand in queues to buy albums. Everything is now just a click away. But Chandrabindoo must have something that carries nostalgia. This time, it is vinyl. The digital album on their YouTube channel has 10 songs, but the playing disk has 11— one exclusively for those who want to put the effort into buying an album — to float in the harmony of their lyrics and melody.
The first song of the album, Ek lozenge e, transports you to a public bus covering the long distance from Howrah to Kasba. In the massive crowd, where finding a seat is a matter of luck, if not privilege, the sounds of hawkers selling lozenges finds its way. And that one candy helps you survive the traffic snarls and the famous “Kolkata traffic jams”. Chandrabindoo’s songs are never centred on a single topic. They touch upon emotions in bits and pieces. The same song also addresses adolescent inquisitiveness about sexuality — the hush-hush moments in the classrooms when the life science teacher is about to teach the chapter titled “reproduction”.
In another song, Kerani, literally meaning “clerk”, the Upal-Anindyo-Chandril (founder members of the band) trio documents the life of a middle-class clerk whose mixed sense of superiority and inferiority makes him what he is — sometimes a steadfast moralist, on other times, a proud poet. Their words capture the complexities of their lives in the simplest words.
It is a disservice to the band if one misses their engagement with the essence of first love. In their early albums — Chandrabindoor Chow, Daknaam or Juju, for instance — they unravelled the unspoken. In this album as well, their song Kukur ar Prajapati becomes a tribute to the love of the millennials who are yet to be touched by the idea of “situationships”. Their political satire Pradhanmantri please explores the political ambiguity of our time.
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In the late 1990s, when Chandrabindoo started their journey, they offended the Bengali bhadraloks: The upper caste, middle class, purist guardians of “Bengali culture”. The band’s explicit depiction of everyday realities made them uncomfortable. More so, they couldn’t tolerate the band’s assertive approach toward sexuality and desire. Yet, they prevailed — sometimes, with their Sukumar Ray-style nonsensical poems, and, on other occasions, with the melody of love and longing.
After a 12-year hiatus, as Chandrabindoo makes a comeback, we, the millennials whose secrets they know the best, find again a space to fall back on. Instead of fixing the cassette reels that used to get stuck at the hub of the music player, we have shifted to the “play all” mode on YouTube. We are ready to croon: Ebhabeo fire asha jay, bondhu ebhabeo fire asha jay (Really, friend, you can make a comeback like this).
abhik.bhattacharya@expressindia.com
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