A job lost gave him the determination to fulfil his musical dream.
Six years and much struggle later, a song written, composed and sung by Arnab Dutta has already got 128K hits on YouTube and thousands of likes on social media. He is the voice behind Tapur tupur, the lilting melody from the soon-to-be-released Rosogolla, a fictional biopic on Nabin Chandra Das, directed by Pavel and produced by Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy.
“Tapur tupur actually happened in 2016. I had met Pavel in Mumbai a long time back and two years ago, he asked me to write a romantic song for a film set in the 1850s and 1860s. I wrote the lyrics the day Mumbai got its first rain in 2016,” said the 34-year-old from Konnagar.
Arnab’s musical journey began, under his mother’s wings, when he was just three. In school, he was good in athletics and football but what endeared him to his friends was his singing.
Pursuing his passion as a career remained a distant dream as Arnab’s father, then a clerk in the land registration department of the state government, wanted him to study engineering, find a good job and help the family of four.
After passing out of Howrah Zilla School, Arnab took an education loan and studied BTech at BITM, Bolpur. “I was far from music in the first semester of college and it left me frustrated. I realised I couldn’t live without music. In my second semester, I came to know about the audition for a popular music reality show and decided to give it a try. The audition was in Jamshedpur and I put together some money to go there,” said Arnab, who stood first in the eastern-region audition and went to Mumbai for the finals, skipping an exam.
Arnab couldn’t qualify for the round of 32 but the loss made him more determined. “I lost but learnt a lot. I returned to Calcutta and got in touch with Jayanta Bose. I trained under him for the next four years. Whatever I’m today is because of him,” said the singer, who also took lessons from Sailen Ghosh and Kartik Das in his early years.
He tried his mettle in music reality shows twice more but was eliminated along the way. “I broke down in tears on the last occasion as I thought I had lost my last opportunity to make a career in music,” Arnab said.
Arnab still had his education loan to repay and he moved to Doha as a project engineer in 2009. “I stayed for the next two-and-a-half years but kept looking for an opportunity to return to India. All the while, I didn’t give up on my riyaaz.”
A new job in 2011 took Arnab to Bangalore but he moved to Mumbai the year after. “I was offered just Rs 10,000 but I wanted to go to Mumbai to try my luck,” Arnab said.
Seven months later, the company shut down and Arnab, whose father had retired by then, was left jobless. “It was the toughest period of my life. I lived in a small room in an under-construction building and ate bhog in a Jain temple once a day. I would spend all day making the rounds of the studios and managed to get some ad jingles in 2014,” Arnab recounted.
The break came the very next year with the title track of Sony Liv’s first web series in India, Love Bytes. Soon he caught the attention of Vikram Bhatt and sang four songs for his web series Maaya in 2017, followed by three songs, including Sunn le zara, in 1921 earlier this year.
“Even 10 years ago, I couldn’t imagine singing in a Tollywood or Bollywood film. It’s a dream come true for me,” said the Kishore Kumar fan. “I want to take Bengali music to the global stage.”
The Konnagar boy who loves his luchi-torkari has already taken his first step in that direction with Tapur tupur.
