Arunima’s Faerie Tale Is An Alchemic Intersection Of Music, Poetry, & Storytelling

Something magical happened at Skinny Mo’s Jazz Club in Kolkata last Saturday. In three acts over two hours, singer-poet-artist Arunima Dasgupta and her motley crew of minstrels — Aditya Majumdar on guitar, Mainak Nag Chowdhury on bass, Shonai on piano, and Premjit Dutta on drums and percussion — transported the room to another realm. Bringing together music, poetry, art, animation, and storytelling, Arunima’s Faerie Tale was a musical unlike any other I have seen before. It was, in many ways, a culmination of Arunima Dasgupta’s story.

Dasgupta has been a working musician for nearly three decades, performing with The Saturday Night Blues Band; Fender & Friends, which she founded as Artist Relations & Events Head (India) for Fender and Ernie Ball Music Man; and Disco Inferno, a unique band featuring two female vocalists covering retro disco, funk, and soul music. Dasgupta also writes poetry and paints when she is not singing or making music.

All of that came together in Arunima’s Faerie Tale — a three-act musical that took the audience on a journey through storytelling, poetry, live music, art, and animation. Part musical, part poetry recital, and part narrative fiction, it was inspired by Dasgupta’s own story, almost thirty years in the making. It was an old story — of love found, lost, and found again — told in an entirely new way.

Although magic realist on the surface, the fairy tale at the heart of this musical is a coming of age story revolving around the three loves in an unnamed woman’s life. It unfolds in three chapters titled ‘Dependence — The Child’, ‘Addiction — The Girl’, and ‘Recovery — The Woman’. Filmfare Award-nominated screenwriter Arpita Chatterjee (Three Of Us), narrated the narrative parts, and Arunima Dasgupta herself played the protagonist, the Prima Donna, recited the poems, sang the songs, and painted the immersive moving images (animated by Uttaran De) which completed the illusion of being inside a fairy tale — quite literally.

When I spoke to Dasgupta after the performance, she told me this might be a one-off production. And although I understand why, I hope she brings it back. Arunima’s Faerie Tale was a vulnerable act of artistic alchemy, transmuting personal pain into a work of beauty. What Arunima Dasgupta and her collaborators conjured at Skinny Mo’s on Saturday night was not only a spellbinding performance but a testament to the power of art to heal, to connect, and to transform. Whether or not it returns to the stage, Faerie Tale will live on in the hearts of those who were lucky enough to witness it — a fleeting, shimmering thing that reminded us how stories, when told with courage and imagination, can become magic.

Follow Arunima Dasgupta here.

If you enjoyed reading this, here's more from Homegrown:

'Sundae': Angad Berar's New Album Reimagines Psychedelia For The Quiet Hours

Visions From The Edge: Six Indian Artists Using Psychedelia As A Weapon Of Disruption

Subhadra Mahajan’s 'Second Chance' Is A Rare & Radical Portrait Of Feminine Grief