Moheener Ghoraguli - Later Years

Later Years

The group played together until 1981 and was then dissolved. In the late 80's Subrata Ghosh a student of Presidency College, Calcutta, an ardent Music lover, heard a song bhalo lagay jotsnay kash boney chhut tay and came to know about Gautam Chattopadhay. Immediately he became a die-hard fan of Monida and excavated information about him. In a few days, Subrata reached Monida's residence at Naktala. After few days of jamming with Subrata, the 2nd innings of Monida started. It was days after days, night after night, month after month gradually new generation music lovers, who wanted to break the traditional tide of Bengali music started jamming in at Monida's small drawing room and sometimes they used to gather at Sale Lake BE Park at Salt Lake Welfare Associations tent to create new innovative music. This was the time when the most revolutionary compositions like "Prithibi", "telephone", "bangalee Korachoo" got created. Then in the mid-1990s, a decade and a half after Mohineer Ghoraguli's dissolution, Gautam Chattopadhyay with immense mental support of Subrata & Neel decided to revive the movement of Moheener Ghoraguli. In 1994 Gautam was awarded with an assignment from Kolkata Doordarshan to make 1st ever Bengali Music Video and a budget was allocated to him. As usual the budget was too little to make a quality product, so after the songs got recorded Gautam with the support of Sourish and A. Mukherjee decided to come out with a cassette album Abar Bochhor Kuri poray - compiled by Mohiner Ghoraguli: Mohiner Ghoraguli shompadita Bangla Gaan.

The first album in this phase issued by the new-look Moheener Ghoraguli was a compilation called Abar Bochhor Kuri Porey ("Again, After Twenty Years", a quotation from Jibanananda Das), released at the Kolkata Book Fair. It included a number of original Moheener Ghoraguli classics from the 1970s, as well as songs recorded by select music makers of the 90s. Although listeners were initially slow to catch on, the album proved to be a hit, and it introduced the MG movement to a new generation of music-lovers. Gautam Chattopadhyay finally saw Moheener Ghoraguli music gaining the popularity and critical recognition that had eluded their band in the 1970s. Several other successful compilations have followed since the first one. Both in their native West Bengal and in Bangladesh, Moheener Ghoraguli is now a much-admired movement.

Gautam's death in 1999 was sudden. After returning from a location shooting of his last film Rong Bin, which was never completed, the next day he went to the Indropuri Studio to meet his longtime cinematographer friend and colleague, Vivek Banerjee and there he collapsed and died of a heart attack. An entire generation of budding musicians who had been popularized by Gautam in Kolkata mourned his untimely death and a tribute album "Moni chara shunno laage" was released; it should be noted here that Moni was not Gautam's nickname, but his siblings would call him Moni-da, moni, defining that he was the third of the brothers. His nickname was Manik.