All-doctor band Bytichromi is on roll in 19 years with over 200 shows and counting
All-doctor band Bytichromi is on roll in 19 years with over 200 shows and counting
They are amongst Kolkata’s most sought after doctors: Dr. Tapas Raychaudhuri, renowned heart surgeon who led the team that performed Eastern India’s first heart transplant in 2018; Dr. Raja Roy, Interventional Cardiologist; Dr. Shivaji Basu, Urologist; and Dr. Vivek Dutta, Eye Surgeon. Forget music, meeting him during the day can prove challenging. Nevertheless, these men of medicine, in the form of a band called Byaticromi (“the Extraordinary”), have outlived most bands and troupes with their 19-year run of belting out old hits.
Today, the youngest member of Bytichromi is in his late fifties and the oldest in his seventies; And in the 19 years they’ve been together, the two were swept away by the pandemic, which also changed the way they performed – from more people on stage to only four of them singing songs for recorded tracks; But the happiest thing for him is that he still gets to perform. Last week, he performed at the Bengal Club; Next week is his show at Fortis Hospital.
return to old times
“We have performed all over the country – we must have done over 200 shows in these 19 years. People ask us how we find time for music despite being so busy, but when you are passionate about something So you always make time for that,” said Dr Roy.
For a long time, the group sang old, popular Bengali songs, and over the years, as their popularity as the group grew, they included old Hindi and English numbers in their repertoire. While what they sing on a particular evening largely depends on the mood of the audience, the songs always belong to a time when music was more about melody than noise – the era of Salil Chowdhury and Hemant Kumar and Cliff Richard .
Their journey began in 2004, when they first came together to perform on Camac Street. “The audience was simply mesmerized,” recalled Dr Roy. Among the audience was a hotelier from Bangladesh who took the doctors to Dhaka where he performed with a group of local doctors. The journey culminated with the release of a CD, which was written by Dr. According to Roy, there were “thrilled listeners”. And thus, Bytichromi was born.
not in it for the money
“We don’t earn anything from performance,” said Dr. Raychaudhuri. “We ask for an amount that is donated immediately to NGOs working for the poor or marginalised.”
The group members insisted that their greatest reward from music was relaxation.
“We all have highly stressful jobs, and music relaxes us. Not only this, the kind of songs we sing takes us back to our childhood. We get a chance to relive our youthful days. We can feel that the same happens to our audiences who are relieved from the day-to-day stress and conflict. This is the USP of Byticromi,” said Dr. Raychaudhuri.