I started training in singing with my father, the late Pandit Harihar Shukla, at the age of five. As I grew up, I occasionally sang on All India Radio. I was about 20 years old when things took a dramatic turn and the famous music director Shailen Mukhopadhyay made me an offer to cut a record. The EP was cut by Hindustan Record Company in 1972 and was an instant success. This was to be the first turning point in my life.

People still remember the song Eto kanna noy aamar from this record and even now I get lots of requests for it at shows. Two years after this, I got my big break as a playback singer. The film was Ami, Se Sakha and I did the playback for the famous Bengali actress, Kaberi Basu for a song composed by music director Shyamal Mitra. It was a huge hit. An album with Manna Dey followed in the mid-70s.

Hindi playback singing happened much later in 1981 with the Sai Paranjape’s comedy, Chashme Buddoor. The song, Kahan se aaye badara that was based on the raga Megh got me noticed in Bollywood. There was no looking back after that. I kept up the tempo, singing to music composed by Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in the LP titled, Geeti Bichitra in 1986. Produced by music company HMV, it carried an introduction on the record jacket by Satyajit Ray.

After that, I sang compositions of maestros like Naushad, Hemanta Mukherjee and Manna Dey over the years. But the song I did for Naushadji in the early ’90s is indelibly etched in my mind. The song, Katha diye ele na, was also a big hit.

Now I’d like to focus on something different — singing my own compositions. And hopefully before the Pujas this year I’ll be ready with a CD of eight modern Bengali songs.

This has been an important experiment for me and I hope this too will be a turning point for me as a singer.

(As told to Nandini Guha)