(From top) Arjun and Chaiti: Tuning into Tagore

This anniversary, Rabindranath Tagore received tributes from two faces who are more familiar to screen audiences than votaries of the Bard. Actor Arjun Chakraborty released his maiden Rabindrasangeet album, while Chaiti Ghoshal picked up two plays to present as audio drama.

Old friends like Debashree Roy would remember Arjun regaling colleagues with ghazals during outdoor shoots. Prizes for singing had come his way since his school and college days. Even Gulzar whom he assisted for a while, he recalls, would comment, “Ladka sur mein hai.” But touching Tagore was something else. “I was brought up in Rajasthan so I never thought my accent would be up to essaying Tagore,” says Arjun.

Arjun singing Rabindrasangeet was purely Swagatalakshmi Dasgupta’s idea. “I have never sweated so much even before the camera,” he had grinned nervously moments before Debashree launched the CD at MusicWorld last month.

But he can rest easy. He may not compete with the best in the business but what rings through the 10 tracks is the honesty and sincerity that has gone into the training. Some songs are quite uncommon, like Nishi na pohatey jiban pradip.

For Chaiti, though, the album was a return to familiar terrain. Few would remember her as Dakghar’s Amol, or as Raktakarabi’s Nandini on stage.

Last month, the actress returned to both with her audio drama CD — Chaiti: Amol Nandini, containing excerpts from Dakghar and Raktakarabi.

Chaiti remembers little of her Amol to Sombhu Mitra’s Fakir under the Bohurupee banner. But to be Nandini, she underwent a year-and-a-half’s training under Tripti Mitra. “I was around 15 then and had little idea what I was getting into. If I knew, perhaps I would have fled,” she laughs. The mid-80’s production under Arobdho Natya Bidyalay banner was her own interpretation of the play. Just as the audio rendition is her own.

“Mashi’s (Tripti Mitra) ideas might have been the foundation but the essence was drawn from my own experiences of working with the best directors over the past decade,” she says. Some scenes had to be deleted in Chaiti due to time constraint and a narrator introduced to fill in the gaps. “The narrator’s script is my own, drawn from Tagore’s prologues or epilogues.”

If Chaiti’s Nandini has stolen a march over Chaiti’s Amol in the album, she is not complaining. “I was forced to quit the production (Raktakarabi) as a penalty for doing a film (Rakhee’s daughter in Parama) after 14-15 shows just when I was maturing as Nandini. The return to being Nandini has completed the circle.”