For celebrated actor Soumitra Chatterjee, recitation is nothing new, being a known figure in the circle, but reciting Rabindranath Tagore's poems to the accompaniment of music is a novel experience he wants to treasure.
Soumitra recites poems, be it Tagore's poems or his own, when he is not acting and his passion for recitation almost rivals that for acting.
However, this is the first time the thespian recorded a 'geeti-alekhyo' (recitation with musical accompaniment), an established genre in the Bengali cultural tradition.
Soumitra recited Tagore's 'Birpurush', a cult poem on a child's imaginative act of bravery, to be featured in a Bengali film "Jara Roddure Bhijechilo" (Those who soaked in the Sun).
"As the script goes, my character narrates the sequence of the Birpurush poem to his grandson and I quite enjoyed the recordings. It is like revisitng Tagore in a film recording," Soumitra said.
Music director of the film Piloo Bhattacharya told PTI after the recording session that the actor, looking characteristically reserved and composed, gave four different renditions of the poem.
"Since one will be seeing Soumitra singing 'Birpursh' for the first time in a Bengali film, we have sought to break the typical narration type to avoid any monotony by interspersing the Birpurush lines with those of some other Tagore poems. You can call it a collage of sorts," he said.
"All the four renditions were equally captivating but very different," actor Arjun Chakroborty, who is also lending his voice in the film and took part in the recording along with Soumitro, said.
