From singer to counsellor: 48-yr-old wore many hats

The second wave of Covid-19 ravaged India, killing thousands and leaving families in grief. These people are not mere data points; they had real lives with hopes, dreams and loved ones. HT profiles some such people, famous and regular

KOLKATA: Sanghamitra, 48, and her 24-year-old son Soham Chatterjee had a song. She would sing it to him to mollify him when he was upset; they would sing snatches of it to each other during a humdrum day, and they would even perform it as a duet at family gatherings. And when Sanghamitra was on her deathbed, Chatterjee sang it for her one last time.

“But she couldn’t hear it, as she was unconscious. I broke down after singing the first few lines, but dad asked me to finish it,” he said.

The song — a Kishore Kumar– Sushma Shreshta duet Tera mujhse hai pehle ka nata koi (written by Sahir Ludhianvi and featured in the 1973 film, Aa Gale Lag Jaa) — “symbolised their relationship,” said her husband Dhurjati Chatterjee (55), adding that his wife was “a great singer”.

“She tested positive on May 6 after we rushed her to a hospital because of her Covid-19 symptoms. By then she had started sinking. On May 12, we got a video call from the hospital. That’s when I sang our song out to her,” Chatterjee said.

Sanghamitra died of Covid-19related complications in a Kolkata

hospital on May 13. On that day, West Bengal reported 20,839 cases, the second highest caseload till date.

Born to a middle-class Bengali family in north Kolkata, Sanghamitra was the younger of the two siblings. She was the softspoken one and did well academically. Her older sisters recall Sanghamitra receiving an impossible score of 99 out of 100 in a Bengali exam in secondary school. Sanghamitra inherited all of her schoolteacher father’s books after he passed away earlier this year in March, older sister Sharmistha Bhattacharya said.

Both parents were trained classical singers — their father trained under legendary singer Dwijen Mukhopadhyay — and so, Sanghamitra and her siblings were made to learn music, too.

“We were trained in classical music as children. Shomu, as we used to loving call her, trained under Pandit Tarapada Chakraborty,” said Bhattacharya.

But Sanghamitra was inclined to other arts as well. Trained in a Bengali-medium school, she had an excellent command over the language and would write Bengali poetry.

“After our annual exams, our father used to take us to watch some of the good Bengali movies, mostly films by Satyajit Ray, in cinema halls and buy story books,” Bhattacharya said.

Sanghamitra married Durjati soon after she finished high school; she was 18 then.

From a soft-spoken girl who talked little, Chatterjee came into her own after marriage. She completed a post-graduate diploma in counselling and struck conversations with people across all age groups. With children, in particular, Sanghamitra had a knack of breaking the ice easily, said her son.

“She was a great cook. My father’s colleagues used to steal the tiffin my mother used to make for him. My friends and our relatives dropped in quite often just to eat something cooked by her,” Chatterjee said.

“She was a trained counsellor. But she never took it up professionally. Over the last few years, however, she started counselling. Her fame spread by word of mouth,” her son added.

Sanghamitra had health concerns, including hypertension and diabetes, and was doubly careful during the pandemic — she barely stepped out. “We never thought that she would get infected by Covid,” Chatterjee said.

On May 12, when Chatterjee sang the song to his unconscious mother, the medicos in the room could not help but be moved.

Critical care doctor Dipsikha Ghosh, who made the call to Chatterjee from her phone, wrote on her social media account on May 12: “The song changed us. The song would always be there.” to sanitation workers, HT profiles those who lost the battle to Covid