Bertram da Silva, professor by day and musician by calling, sings stories that write themselves and stirs hopes of a revival of Western music in Kolkata
A snatch of a conversation can, sometimes, be more potent than reams of printed words. Bertram da Silva knows it. In November last year, while he was singing in his first comeback concert in a Kolkata auditorium, a member of the audience whispered to his neighbour: “I know what this concert is about; there are going to be stories about people.” When da Silva later learnt of this exchange, it marked a moment of quiet victory. “I knew that I had reached out and connected,” he says.

Every working day, from nine in the morning till early evening, Professor da Silva, dean of arts, St Xavier’s College, Kolkata, ceases to be a musician. The mind works in a different way, he says, when he sifts through administrative humdrum. As it does when he teaches, bringing to life Blake and Yeats, igniting the fire in the minds of successive generations of young adults. “Teaching, too, is a performance, but of a different kind,” says 50-year-old da Silva, better known as “Bertie” to students and academics.

It is only when he steps out into the din of city life, the foundry forging a thousand stories every minute that he grows into his other persona. The songs write themselves, da Silva says. Bits of people’s hearts play themselves out, coming to life as he sets them to music in what he finds a “strangely refreshing” exercise at the end of the day. “Being a teacher and musician does not complement but it kind of nicely faces off,” he adds.

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