Preetidi breathed her last on August 25 in Kolkata. She came of the famous Sarkar family of Rajshahi (now in Bangladesh). Her grandfather Akhilnath Sarkar was a medical surgeon of Bihar and Orissa (then under the same health administration under the Raj). Her father’s eldest brother was the path-breaking historian, Sir Jadunath Sarkar. One of her uncles was Jagannath Sarkar, former state secretary of CPI in Bihar and ex-member, central secretariat of CPI. Her cousin brother was Binoy Roy, a central leader of IPTA in the 1940s. A leading lyricist and a composer, he remains famous for the heart-rending song, firaiya de, dere more Kayyur bandhure (Give me back my Kayuur comrades), in memory of four CPI activists who were hanged to death.
Preetidi was attracted to communism through Jagannath Sarkar – her Jagannath kaka – who went underground while he was a young activist of CPI. He went to Rajshahi as a Sanyasi. Narrating her silent indoctrination, wrote Preetidi, “I myself started slowly working with the Communists. In our large family (her grandfather was one of the seven brothers), Jagannath Kaka and his younger brother, Debu Kaka and I were communist workers. I had had to struggle with my family to be allowed to do my party work and, in that, Jagannath Kaka helped me.
Preetidi reminisced the IPTA days when Ravi Shankar used to live at Malad in Bombay (now Mumbai) with his first wife Annapurna and son Subhendra Shankar. “We used to call him Robuda and he, after scoring the music for Sare Jananse Achchha, taught me the song. From me, others of the IPTA central squad picked it up. We used to stay at the Andheri commune and he used to come regularly to groom and train us. That was a great experience.”
Preetidi in an interview to the CPI Bengali morninger, Kalantar, after the demise of Ravi Shankar recalled that ‘Robuda” was the music director of a ballet by IPTA – India Immortal. “The opening lines of a lyric were “Namoh Namoh Himadri/Namoh Giriraj Namoh (Salute to you the Himalayas, salute to the king of mountains). It had many ragas intertwined in it and that created a marvelous melody which moved us all. We never felt fatigued. At times, he taught us for whole day and whole night”.
She joined the All India Student Federation, student front of CPI when she was an undergraduate student at Rajshahi. .Thereafter, Preetidi went to Bombay and joined the IPTA as a wholetimer. That was the golden period of IPTA with which were associated Timir Baran, Uday Shankar, Prithviraj Kapur, Balraj Sahni and many stalwarts. Their magnetism was Puran Chand Joshi under whose general secretaryship CPI became a mass party.
Ravi Shankar was the music director of IPTA’s first film venture, Dharti Ke Lal (1946) , directed by Khwaja Ahmed Abbas. It won an international award. Preetidi was one of the main singers. Among other films of IPTA with Ravi Shankar as music director, in which she sang was Neechanagar(1946), directed by Chetan Anand.
She married a prominent student leader Ramen Banerjee, later a state-level leader of CPI in West Bengal. She also sang for Nagarik (1953) and Komal Gandhar (1960), directed by Ritwik Ghatak with Jyotirindra Maitra as music director. After Ravi Shankar had left the IPTA, one who left deep impression on her as a music director was Jyotirindra Maitra (her Batuk Mama).
My first and last one hour meeting with Preetidi was breezy. Although she was no more a card-holding member of CPI, she remained a strong fellow traveller. She closely followed all developments in the left movement and the cultural world. She fondly remembered the glorious days of IPTA in 1940s and how P.C. Joshi successfully gathered the cultural stalwarts under one roof of IPTA.
I promised to meet her again. I am in agony for having fallen back on my words and having missed jewels from her reminiscences. (IPA Service)
India
PREETI BANERJEE DIES AT 90
ANOTHER LINK WITH IPTA MOVEMENT IS GONE
Sankar Ray - 2014-08-29 12:52
Some of us – either journalist Chandra Sekhar Bhattacharjee or lensman Bappaditya Bhattaharyya asked somewhat childishly, “Can you sing a few lines of one of your favourite songs Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein”. She, at 90, sang out: and all three of us were dazed at the still-retaining melody and the rare grain of vocal throw That was Preeti Banerjee who was the first to have learnt the song, Sare Jahanse Achchha, after the lyric of the great Urdu poet Mohammad Iqbal was tuned into song by Pandit Ravi Sankar in 1946 at the Andheri commune of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), cultural front of the Communist Party of India. Pandit Ravi Shankar was then the music director of IPTA and was a recruit of the then general secretary of the CPI, P.C. Joshi.