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S D Burman's B'desh house may be turned into cultural centre

PTI | 07:01 PM,Jan 17,2012

Agartala, Jan 17 (PTI) The house where music maestro Sachin Dev Burman lived at Chartha in Bangladesh's Comilla district, about 50 km from here, is likely to be converted into a cultural centre. Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina had during his recent visit to Tripura given an assurance in this regard to a delegation of cultural personalities of the state when it met her. “We requested her to renovate the ancestral home of S D Burman and convert it into an international centre for folk culture and she assured us of doing her best,'' Gautam Das, Convener of Tripura Cultural Co-ordination Committee and who led the delegation, said. Das said that the house had been acquired by the Bangladesh government earlier, but sadly it was turned into a poultry farm. “The one-storey building is now in a decaying state, but can easily be repaired,'' he said. A scion of the princely family of Tripura, S D Burman, was born in Comilla's Chortha village, on Oct 1, 1906. Though he was a prince of Tripura’s Royal Manikya family, his father Navadwip Chandra Dev Burman used to live in their house at Chartha and collected revenue from Chakla Roshnabad, an area formed with Comilla and Brahmanbaria districts and parts of Sylhet and Noakhali district. Tripura joined India on October 15, 1949, after signing a merger agreement and Chakla Roshnabad fell in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Sachin Dev Burman's house in Kolkata has already been declared a heritage building and the street where the house stands is being named after him. The central government has also issued postal stamps in his memory.