Legendary Bengali singer Sandhya Mukherjee needs no introduction. She has worked with leading music directors such as SD Burman, Naushad, and Salil Chaudhury. Do you know this talented singer has returned the Padma Shri Award, given to her by the government? Today, on the birth anniversary of the late playback singer and musician, let’s take a look at the reason behind this, as well as her career.
According to reports, Sandhya Mukherjee was born in Kolkata on October 4, 1931, to Narendranath Mukherjee, a railway official, and Hemprova Devi. She learned the basics of music at home. She started singing at the age of 12 and adorned the bhajans and songs played during Durga Puja with her voice. She was just 16 years old when she did playback for the first time. She did a duet with India’s Nightingale Lata Mangeshkar. Then she returned to Bengal and confined herself there. There were many rumours during that period that Lata did not let her shine. There was animosity between the two, but she shared the truth in her biography, published in 2001 and clarified all this as rumour.
Sandhya Mukherjee gave her voice for a Hindi film in 1948 titled Anjangarh, directed by Bimal Roy. She sang the song Ab Nahi Dharat Dheer Dheer. She was one of the leading singers of the golden era of Bengali films. Her best-known collaboration was with Bengali vocalist Hemanta Mukherjee, with whom she recorded several duets, particularly for Bengali cinema.
Hemanta and Sandhya became known as the voices behind the pairings of the Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar and his numerous heroines, most notably the actress Suchitra Sen, whose singing voice she became.
She learned classical music very well under the guidance of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Despite her classical training, she primarily performed modern Bengali songs.
She initially began her career in Mumbai, singing Hindi songs, beginning with a song in the film Taarana (1950). She performed as a playback vocalist in seventeen Hindi films. For personal reasons, she returned to her hometown of Kolkata in 1952 and opted to live there.
She married the Bengali poet Shyamal Gupta in 1966. Gupta went on to write the lyrics for many of her songs.
On January 26, 2022, on Republic Day, Sandhya Mukherjee was awarded the Padma Shri for her performance in music. She refused the award, labelling it “disparaging and degrading.” She died of cardiac arrest and Covid-19 complications on February 15, 2022, at the age of 90.
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