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How Anupam Roy Created 5 Of His Most Popular Bengali Songs

Given the convention of writing a film song to a given tune, legendary lyricist Kaifi Azmi likened it to first digging a grave and then looking for a corpse to fit in it. By that token, what Anupam Roy has achieved is nothing short of upending the entire process. Here is someone who has almost single-handedly managed not only to bring about a resurgence in Bengali film music but has done that with songs that were never written or composed for films in the first place. Filmmakers have time and again picked up songs from his private albums and created a situation or a character in which to fit the song.

“I always wanted to be an independent singer-composer-songwriter,” says Roy. “Films took me by surprise. None of my friends and acquaintances can imagine that I work in films. In the era and milieu I grew up, you became a doctor or engineer. You know how in Bengali you always said about people entering cinema, ‘Cinema-ye nemechhe’ – you descend in cinema.” But for Roy, it has been anything but a descent.

After university, I moved to Bangalore as a circuit design engineer with Texas Instruments, making voltage regulators. I was missing home, missing Bangla, so I started reading a lot, poetry, novels. That helped me hone my writing skills. I also met people who were aware of and dealing in alternative Bangla literature. We used to have regular addas at the home of Ranjan Ghoshal, the lyricist of Moheener Ghoraguli. It was there that I met Srijit-da first. One day in passing he mentioned that he would use my songs in his films – we were all nonplussed, what was the man saying? Subsequently, he left Bangalore to assist Anjan Dutt and Aparna Sen while I remained stuck with my job, desperately trying to return to Kolkata where there were no jobs to be had.

Meanwhile, I had begun recording a song or two here and there for an album – amateurish efforts where I just sang and strummed the guitar. I had no idea how one recorded songs for albums. I kept making the rounds of music companies in Kolkata, who paid no heed at all. It was at this point that Srijit-da said he wanted to use two of my songs for the film he was making, Autograph. I personally did not have a high opinion of film music – for almost twenty years from the 1990s, Bengali film music had been in the dumps. What I had been exposed to was Kabir Suman, Chandrabindu, Bhoomi, independent, non-film music.

I was still in Bangalore, recording an album with Dwight Pattison of Krosswindz, when news started to trickle in during the pujos that the music of Autograph had clicked big time. And the song that had taken a whole generation by storm was ‘Amake amaar moton’. The song originated from a relationship, but not quite, sort of virtual, online, one-way love. It was a song dedicated to someone you cannot forget, who does not leave your headspace. Srijit-da called me, asking me to send him a demo of the song. He said he would use the song, but never mentioned if I was going to sing it. I did a rough recording at a friend’s place and sent it to him. That scratch version ended up being used in the film. I had no idea about the film, its story, the situation… Click here to read the full story