INDUBALA DEVI: Mohe Panghat Pe Nandlal Chhed Gayo Re

Indubala s mother was Rajabala, who along with sister Matibala and brother Tinkary worked in Motilal Bose s The Great Bengal Circus, also known as Bose s Circus or Professor Bose s Circus. Indubala was born in November 1899 at Amritsar, where the circus party had gone for performance. Indu was born premature and Dr Bidhumukhi Basu was taken to Amritsar from Calcutta to attend to Rajabala. Indubala s first training in music was from her mother. The initial plan was to train Indu as a nurse and she was admitted as a trainee in a hospital in the Pataldanga locality of Calcutta. Indu did not take fancy in the job and ran away from the hospital, much to the disappointment of her mother, who never wanted her only daughter to be forced into a life of indignity. After this incident Indubala s musical training started. In later years she took training from Girin Chakraborty, Kamal Dasgupta, Subal Dasgupta, Jamiruddin Khan and Kazi Nazrul Islam. In time she came to be one of the major exponents