Amitabh Bachchan and Tanusree Shankar: Winter tryst with Tagore

This is my prayer to thee, my Lord — strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart.

Auditoriums around the country and abroad will reverberate this winter to these immortal lines from Gitanjali, delivered in a distinctive baritone. Danseuse Tanusree Shankar has brought together the words of Rabindranath Tagore and the voice of Amitabh Bachchan in her project Chirantan, which is nearing completion.

“We are not staging a typical dance drama or recitation. This is a simple composition that brings alive the situation that we live in, caught in conflict and hankering for peace, using Tagore’s songs and poetry. Amitji has done the narration for us.”

Chirantan is broken into sections. It starts with a shanti sloka. Then the audience is plunged into the turmoil of war and calamity. Through sorrow would then come hope and through hope, love. This would lead to peace, but only if one has the courage to do what it takes.

Five poems from Gitanjali and The Child have been used to depict each mood, in between the dances and the songs.

The Bachchans and the Shankars go back a few decades. “Amitji was a friend of Ananda (Shankar). They are exactly two months apart in age. When Ananda came back from the US in 1969, Amitji was here in Calcutta. He would go to all the concerts around town where Ananda played the compositions for his first album. Then Saat Hindustani was released and Amitji asked Ananda to see the film together.”

The two families kept in touch all along. “We would dine at the Bachchan’s whenever Ananda went to Mumbai. During the shooting of Yaraana at Netaji Indoor Stadium, Amitji was here for some days and he asked Ananda for a spare sitar to play at the hotel after work.”

So when a letter reached Pratiksha, the Bachchan villa, with a request from Tanusree to lend his voice for the project, his secretary promptly called and asked for the script. By the time the date came for recording at an Andheri studio, the Big B was ready to recite.

“The first day, the session was at noon. But he was not happy with his performance. So he wanted to come again the next day, at 7 am. Though it was so early, I told my daughter Mishtu (Sreenanda) that we should be in even earlier, just in case…”

And true to her hunch, Bachchan entered at 6.45 am.

“There were just the three of us — Amitji, Mishtu and I — in the studio. The recordist came much later,” recalls Tanusree.

The workload that the 61-year-old takes on left the danseuse amazed. “His day starts at 5 am and after a gruelling routine, he still finds time for a workout in the gym at midnight,” Tanusree exclaims.

Equally “admirable” is Bachchan’s zest for perfection. “He kept telling me that if I was not happy, he was willing to redo it and send it over later.”

Tanusree says the tryst with Tagore left Bachchan “thrilled” as an artiste.

“After a long time, he was enjoying doing something creative, he told me.”

The music has been composed by Debajyoti Mishra. “A little bit of the dubbing is left. We hope to stage Chirantan by the year-end,” says Tanusree.

However much the Shankars would love to have the Big B at the inaugural show, his crowded calendar would make that almost impossible.

“He tells me, ‘Tanusree, you do the show in 2006. I am committed till 2005.’ But how can we wait that long?” smiles Tanusree.