Ravi Shankar "Satyen Bose will be etched in my memory forever!"

Ravi Shankar (Ashim Roy & Family Private Collection)

It was a special intimate recital I gave in Calcutta in the late 1940s at the residence of Jnan Prakash Ghosh that I first met Shri Satyen Bose.

Though I didn't know him then, I was attracted to this pleasant looking elderly gentleman sitting in the front who was listening to me with such rapt admiration and exclaiming his appreciation at the right places in the right manner.

After I finished, he paid such high tribute for my playing and the training I received from my Guru. When I was told who he was, I was bowled over. This was the great man from India, of Bose-Einstein fame!
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He said he played the Esraj (bowed instrument). Unfortunately, I never heard him but learned that he was a proficient musician.

I met him a couple of different times at different functions in Calcutta. It was a year or two later, when he was Vice Chancellor of Shantiniketan (Vishwa Bharati) he invited me to spend a few days there. Having been in Shantineketan a few times in the early 30's when Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore was there. I was excited and accepted his invitation.

I will always cherish the memory of those few days I spent there with all the students, the eminent teachers and especially Shri Bose!

He was so full of fun and laughter. He was such a great man and I was a musician and so much younger than him, but without any air about himself, he would introduce and praise me to all the students and staff - I felt so embarrassed.

I have met many great men in my life, but the memory of Satyen Bose will be etched in my memory forever.

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San Diego, CA 2007

Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Jugalbandi. 1940s

Rabindranath Tagore (Ashim Roy & Family Private Collection)

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NB: The SN Bose Biography Project is grateful to Pandit Ravi Shankar and his family for capturing such a heartfelt and moving reminiscence of Professor Bose. In particular, I would like to offer my heartfelt gratitude to Srimati Sukanya Shankar, Panditji's wife, her close friend Mrs. Pam Kwatra and her son Mr. Neal Kwatra.

In 2007, while my family and I were living in Chennai India, I was doing research and writing on the SN Bose Project. I had heard that the great musician Ravi Shankar, who was still with us at that time, had met Bose many years earlier.

Curious about the connection, I visited the Ravi Shankar Foundation website and sent an email to the contact listed. After two or three follow up emails I received a reply informing me that Panditji was out of the country and on tour in the USA. They said that they would try and get him a message. 

After not hearing back and rather disappointed, my good friend Sumanta Ray said that the family of a good friend of his, Mr. Neal Kwatra, was connected to Ravi Shankar, and perhaps he could help. I reached out to Neal who was gracious enough to contact his mother, Mrs. Pam Kwatra, who apparently contacted Mrs. Sukanya Shankar who was touring with Panditji in San Diego, California at that time.

Neal wrote me:

  "Great news! My mom is with the Shankar's right now in San Diego. I just got off the phone with Sukanya Aunty and Raviji. He remembers your grandfather well and said, among other things, "He should have won a Nobel Prize."
  Sukanya is going to transcribe Raviji's remembrances of your grandfather and send it on to my mom sometime in the next week or so. Once receives it I will forward it to you.
  Hope all is well and you are making progress with the book.
Neal"

True to their word, within a 10 days, on June 12, 2007, I received an email directly from Sukanya Shankar with Ravi Shankar's remembrances attached, which is transcribed above.

I was over the moon, but as was my poor manners and lack of follow through I did not send a reply with acknowledgement or gratitude. And, as I have written in an earlier blog, I let the project stumble along for a few years, and then it went dormant. And many years later, in this year only, I have revived it and pushing forward.

But sadly, and very regretfully, I did not thank Maestro, who left this mortal realm 5 years later on December 11, 2012, and his lovely wife Mrs. Sukanya Shankar. Nor did I properly thank Neal and his mother Pam. I did have a chance to read some relatively articles on Shrimati Shankar discussing her memories of Panditji ('He is and will always be with me,' Nirtika Pandita, THE ASIAN AGE April 12, 2020), and visit the @sukanyashankarofficial Instagram Page.

Here it is, sixteen years (!!)  later, and I am finally offering my heartfelt thank you and immense gratitude to the Shankar and Kwatra families! I hope that this page is in some small way a worthy representation of the interaction between two world class figures. One can feel the immense reverence Panditji has for Bose, and knowing what I have learned about Bose from so many who knew him, the appreciation the old man must have felt listening to the gifted youth who would go on to revolutionize music, and change the world, must have been ethereal in its splendor.

Falguni Sarkar (2024)