Satyajit Ray's last film in the Calcutta trilogy, Jana-Aranya in 1976, is possibly his darkest of the three urban tales of betrayal and redemption.

And here, when the maestro wanted a young girl's voice to render the Rabindrasangeet Chhaya ghanaeyechhe boney boney, but which would sound sombre, he chose Sharmila Roy Pommot.

Now in her sixties, Roy Pommot, a painter, scholar and singer, is one of the 30 artists taking part in the ongoing Friendship Workshop in Ranchi, the capital city's first international art camp from February 17 to 27.

Painting and music being her two creative mainstays, she is now making a vibrant abstract in acrylic on canvas inspired by Santhali songs.

Her perfect diction, her choice of words, the way she pauses to think in front of her canvas before applying colours, suggest a heightened intellectual engagement with the world.

Daughter of scholar and writer Kshitish Roy, Roy Pommot's sensibilities are shaped by Santiniketan and Paris, the two culture hubs of the Orient and the Occident. She grew up in one, and worked in another.

Recalling her childhood years in Santiniketan, Roy Pommot remembers many intellectuals coming to meet her father, including Satyajit Ray.

"I was a mere child when Satyajit Ray, himself pretty young, came to meet my father to discuss his upcoming documentary on Rabindranath Tagore, which was finally released in 1961, the poet's centenary year. He heard me sing then but years later, he approached me to sing for Jana-Aranya. Again, much later, it was in Paris that I was approached by Peter Brook to sing for his magnum opus, The Mahabharata, on stage and for the film," recalled the painter, who incidentally learnt Rabindrasangeet from stalwarts Shantidev Ghosh, Kanika Bandyopadhyay and Suchitra Mitra.

As far as her career as an artist goes, after school in Patha Bhavan, Santiniketan, she made "the natural transition" to join art college Kala Bhavan in the same university town.

There, she earned a national scholarship to pursue graphic art, learning the technique from legendary sculptor and printmaker Somnath Hore.

Soon, she earned a French government scholarship in art and left for Paris where she worked at the famous Studio 17.

In Paris, she stayed for a good 38 years, teaching iconography, art history and musicology at Sorbonne University, and painting all along.

Glad to be here in Ranchi, Roy Pommot said: "Besides history of art and musicology, I have enormous interest in tribal culture."

But, she misses a friend. When she had come to Ranchi earlier - she can't recall the exact year - she had met tribal ideologue Ram Dayal Munda whom she had come to know through "a common friend in Minnesota, the US".

Munda passed away in September 2011 but his memory keeps "haunting" her. "He was so knowledgeable about tribal culture, a wonderful raconteur," she remembers. "But, though he is not around anymore, tribal culture is very much alive and will be."

Do you know any multi-faceted talent like Roy Pommot? Tell ttkhand@abpmail.com