ORISSA'S NIGHTINGLE IRA MOHANTY

Orissa rocks in tune with her honeyed song, ‘Mu to dream girl’. Rock or rap, Odissi or classical, bhajan or modern, she delivers it deftly. Meet Orissa’s nightingale, Ira Mohanty. A performer with panache, she pours passion into her performance that fixes her fans pirouetting in the dream domain. Born to be a singer, she sprang a surprise by singing at the tender age of two when a baby begins to babble. Madhulita Mohanty, popularly known as Ira Mohanty, is now a household name who astonishingly intoned without flaw the strains of ‘Hrudayara ei sunyataku’ at the tender age of four.

When the sole familiar female voice of Trupti Das went missing leaving behind a raucous monotony in the ensemble of Oriya song and music in the late 1990s, a titillating timbre of an unusual kind possessed by this prolific singing bird is heard rippling through the void. Unlike others gradually graduating from album notes, she made her debut directly in a film entitled ‘Sakal Tirtha To Charane’ in 1996. Back and back, she went on singing in films like Mana Rahigala Tumari Thare (2000), Mo Kola To Jhulana (2003), Rakhi Bandhili Mo Rakhiba Mana (2003), Bahudibe Mo Jaga Balia (2004), O My Love (2006) and Tu Thile Mo Dara Kahaku (2010), besides many other films, devotional (bhajan) and modern albums.

She was born in Bhubaneswar. Her father, Jitendra Mohanty of Balakati in Khurda was working as a supervisor in the Orissa Assembly. Shuttling between Bhubaneswar and Balakati as a child she imbibed and embellished her aptitude earnestly. The advantage of being born at Balakati, the birthplace of legendary singer-composer Sangeet Sudhakar Balakrushna Dash as much inspired her as her uncle Sarat Rath and her mother Kalpana Mohanty, both of whom hailed from a musically inclined family.

She was fascinated by the sweet south Indian and Hindi songs while she was a student at Subhadra Mahtab Girls’ High School in Bhubaneswar. She could, in those days, ape all Bollywood singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Subha Mudgal and other legends, and inspire awe and admiration among her friends. This love for songs rendered by the stalwarts pulled her to perform on stage which has always proved mesmerizing with fresh nuances from her delivery and disposition.

When she joined BJB College in Bhubaneswar for doing +2, she took music as one of her combinations. This brought her in close contact with her music teacher Guru Sri Chittaranjan Pani, a front-ranking exponent of Odissi and classical music.

The perfect musical chemistry with noted composer Malaya Mishra bought the best out of her, although she has sung compositions of almost all eminent music directors of Orissa.

She has won innumerable awards in her singing career spanning a little more than a decade. Besides being honoured by Zee TV Saregama, she has bagged the prestigious Cine Critic Association Award, Chalachitra Jagat Samman and Banichitra Samman several times, besides innumerable awards for her inimitable singing. She has also been bestowed with OMPTWA Award, ETV Best Playback Singer Award 2010, Taranga Cine Award 2010 and many other prestigious awards.