Our Story

PUNASHCHA means Post Script, a name suggested by Shyamali Basu's parents, who are both the inspiration and the driving force behind Shyamali's many musical endeavours and achievements.

The mission of PUNASHCHA: School of Rabindra Sangeet is to promote the joy and spirit of Tagore's work, especially among children. Adults join our classes for the love of singing, a way of staying in touch with their roots and remaining culturally active.

Shyamali Basu has been practising and teaching Rabindra Sangeet for over four decades. Trained first in Indian classical music under Sukhendu Goswami, she went on to study at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan (the institution founded by Tagore himself), under teachers including Shailaja Ranjan Majumdar, Santidev Ghosh, Kanika Banerjee and Nilima Sen – eminent singers who were themselves direct disciples of Rabindranath Tagore.

After moving to the UK in 1982, she headed the Bengali Music Department at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, London from 1992 to 2005, creating its Bengali Music Diploma courses and producing several Tagore dance-dramas. Punashcha (পুনশ্চ, meaning "once more", a word Tagore himself used as a book title) grew out of that work: a warm, unhurried space in London where students of all ages encounter these songs not as museum pieces, but as living music.

Classes are taught with as much attention to context as to melody: the poetry, the emotions, and the cultural world each song carries — following the Santiniketan style of teaching Rabindra Sangeet that Shyamali herself trained in.