Recording a By-gone Era
Partho Datta
THE LOST WORLD OF HINDUSTANI MUSIC by Kumar Prasad Mukherji Penguin Books, 2007, 354 pp., 395
October 2007, volume 31, No 10

Kumar Mukherji died just as this book was published. The enthusiastic reception (Ram Guha in his column in The Hindu called it one of the most significant non-fiction books written in post-independent India) would have pleased him enormously. He was certainly keen to share his vast fund of stories and knowledge with a wider Indian audience. Originally serialized in the Bengali literary magazine Desh, it was published to wide acclaim in 1995 as Kudrat Rangbirangi, by Ananda Publishers and went on to win the prestigious Rabindra Puraskar. A Hindi translation by vocalist Dipali Nag was published in 2002. In a later account in Bengali he wrote about the burden of fame, continuously being invited to address or chair literary sabhas and para functions, the steady stream of which left him slightly out of breath. Not that Mukherji was new to the life of an engaged litterateur.

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