Hemen Sen

A very sad piece of recent news is the passing of Hemen Sen, the premier sarode builder of the twentieth century. We all called him Hemen-Babu, a term of respect, and in a way his passing is in symmetry with Khansahib’s; Hemen provided the instruments that Khansahib taught his students to play. I don’t think he knew his age for certain, but he was probably in his late 80s. I was hoping very much that I would have another chance to walk by his tiny shop on Rashbehari Avenue, stop to say hello, and be invited for a glass of tea and a biscuit, a ritual that I always looked forward to no matter how many times repeated. He made some beautiful instruments for me, and I got to sit and watch as he completed the final stages of adjustment; then I would tune the instrument and play something for him, in the midst of the shattering traffic noise of Rashbehari Avenue, and he would work some more.

I was fortunate that he gave me an in-depth interview for my dissertation research in 1994; I don’t think he had been asked before. He told me a wonderful story regarding how he came to have his “position” as sarode maker for the Maihar Gharana. After getting some training in building instruments in East Bengal, he moved to Calcutta and looked for an opportunity. As a craftsman from a village background he was not at all a part of the middle-class concert going society of 1950s Calcutta. He told me that sometime in the mid-1950s he had a chance to see Alauddin Khansahib perform on sarode at a big outdoor venue, with thousands of people, and that he was far away in the back of the crowd. Never having seen or heard a sarode, and based on what he could observe from where he stood, he went back to his shop after that performance and built a sarode. He had never even seen the back of a sarode! He then found out where Alauddin Khan lived, brought the sarode there, and requested that the great maestro please examine his work and give his critique. Perhaps partially because Hemen was from Comilla, Alauddin Khan’s native district on East Bengal, he got his audience, and the maestro’s respect for his initiative. According to Hemen, Alauddin Khan told him that he had been hired to teach instrumental music at the Marris College in Lucknow, and he would need to order a number of sarodes for the students there, and Hemen got the commission.

I also had the opportunity to learn about Bengali life and culture from his narrative. When I interviewed Hemen about his background, his answer was translated on the spot as “I came from a small village.” When I later had my tape of the interview transcribed in detail, Hemen’s answer was transformed into, “I came from a village so small that everyone knew what kind of fish you had for lunch.”