Sangeetam organised a two-day music festival in memory of Pandit V.G. Jog at the the Amaltas hall of the Habitat Centre recently. There were vocal recitals by Anisha Ray and Subhadra Desai, disciples of Sarathi Chatterjee and Madhup Mudgal respectively, apart from samuh gaayan (group singing). But the artiste who immediately connected with the late Pandit V.G. Jog was Paromita Mukherjee, a gifted disciple of the legendary musician himself.
Paromita is a familiar and much admired face on the Hindustani concert scene in the Capital. Music lovers have seen her accompanying the top vocalists with her hypnotic harmonium mirroring their nuances with intuitively fresh and spontaneous sangat, but few of them would have known that she is an equally accomplished violinist. Trained under the watchful guidance of none other than Jog himself, whose name is synonymous with the violin, Paromita came under his tutelage by sheer chance.
Early start
Born into a music loving family in Kolkata she was attracted to music from an early age. She would try to sing and play the harmonium with her vocalist mother when she was barely six or seven years old. She still remembers her excitement when Pandit Jog rewarded her with a five-rupee currency note after watching her play the harmonium. The maestro offered to groom the child. Thus from the age of seven she started learning music from him. In the music class she would find herself the odd one out learning the harmonium while others learnt the violin. She conveyed her eagerness to learn the violin from him through Pandit A. Kanan, who was a common friend of both families. Thus her training in violin started.
After his demise Paromita learnt from Amina Parera and Aashish Khan (daughter and son of Ali Akbar Khan). She graduated in Vocal Music and did her Masters in Violin from Rabindra Bharati University, where she also learnt under Pandit Amiya Ranjan Bannerjee. Paromita also took lessons in the Carnatic style of playing the violin at Kolkata. She was lucky to find an encouraging husband in Deb Mukherjee who got her admitted to the Delhi School of Music to master the Western technique too, and she has passed the exams conducted under Trinity College London.
Paromita feels that all this grooming has given her a lot of flexibility, and insight to use these techniques to enhance her style and the tuning of her instrument. An unassuming artiste, Paromita loves music and revels in it whether playing solo or accompanying someone. Her three-year-old son Debjit is equally fond of music, she says, and listens to concerts with his parents for hours together if the performer is sureela (euphonic), otherwise refuses to suffer any mediocrity!
Paromita played a delightful Bageshri on the violin and a melodious Marwa on the harmonium that evening, followed by a comely composition in Kafi as a bandishi thumri before concluding with Abdul Karim Khan's immortal Bhairavi composition “Jamuna ke teer”.
