The swansong

Shillong Chamber Choir’s Neil Nongkynrih’s love for travelling in trains and breaking into dance has found its way into a posthumously released track

When Neil Nongkynrih, founder and conductor of the Shillong Chamber Choir passed away in January this year, his students were hoping to keep alive the best parts of him in a manner that was befitting the genius. Fortunately, for them, their mentor, uncle Neil, had left behind the perfect legacy in the form of a song. 

The Great Indian Train Journey, a soon-to-release track was written by the Padma Shri awardee nearly 10 years ago, and was inspired by the countless train journeys he undertook within the subcontinent with his choir. “Uncle Neil loved travelling by train; he would look forward to cruising in the first class compartment and sip some tea from the eccentric cups and saucer and the infamous cutlery. He’d always return with a plethora of tales that he’d share with us and his friends,” recalled the lead singer of the choir, William Basaiawmoit. 

Neil Nongkynrih

He recounts this one time many years ago, when the choir had to travel to Guwahati by second class as their flight got cancelled due to a sand storm. “They were the only tickets available. I remember uncle Neil being fascinated by the people he met that day in the compartment; the colour and the chaotic harmony of that experience is what inspired him to write this song,” he added. 

The choir started work on this song in late November last year, just a month before Nongkynrih’s death. Basaiawmoit says that “this is the first and the only song, where you will see Uncle Neil dancing.” “We were shooting this elaborate quarrel scene between the coolies and the Gujarati aunties as part of a sequence for the video and amidst all of this, we saw Uncle Neil dancing his heart out and living in the moment. Ten minutes later, the same choreography made it to the video. He would break into a dance at any chance he got, be it with children or anyone else, he just loved it.”

Nongkynrih, he shares, was determined to release the piece as soon as possible as he wanted to bring joy to whomever listening. “This song was with us for 10 years, and even when we were working on it, it seemed difficult to achieve, but somehow we, along with our director Satish Raj Kasireddy and choreographer Shohini Dutta, worked on it till the end,” he says, adding, “He had lived such a rich life and his happiness dwelled in the act of giving. He wanted to bring that joy to all the people listening to this song, especially after the hardships everyone has been through in these two years of the pandemic.”

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