As you may know, dear reader, I have a long and intense relationship with Kolkata, and with the Bengali language. 

When I visit the city, I’m so honoured to meet the wonderful singer-composer-actor-filmmaker Anjan Dutt, and his musician son Neel Dutt, at their home, close to Park Street. We chat about his work and last film Chalchitra Ekhon (Kaleidoscope Now), an impressive and moving reflection of his lifelong relationship with filmmaker-mentor Mrinal Sen, with powerful performances by Sawon Chakraborty and Dutt himself. But I’m too tongue-tied to tell him that I’ve adored his songs since the 1990s, including Debalina, Kolkata 16 and Bela Bose. The last, a great favourite, also known as 2441139, is the phone number a young man dials, to tell his fiance Bela Bose that he’s finally got a job... but you sense it’s too late and she’s going to be “married off” to someone else. The song remains insanely popular and is probably historic, in that it has spawned a host of “reply songs” composed by swooning women singers/fans, including Dipanwita Bhattacharjee’s “Reply of Bela Bose” (about “hajar hajar” Bela Boses waiting for his call), Mouli Banerjee’s Bela Bolchi, and more. Friends introduced me to Moheener Ghoraguli (Moheen’s Horses), the older, gorgeous baul/jazz band (Bhalo Lage; Prithibita Naki), Kabir Suman (Tomake Chai), Bonnie Chakraborty’s Oikyotaan, the baul fusion band, and more—apart from Rabindrasangeet and baul songs, of course.