New Delhi, July 18 -- At 77, Kabir Suman's firestorm years as a singer-songwriter through the 1990s are a matter of the past. The man whom iconoclastic author Nabarun Bhattacharya once called "the last street fighter of our times" raged into urban Bengali consciousness with the 1992 album Tomake Chai (I Want You). He ushered in the era of singer-songwriters in the tradition of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, a loose scene in Kolkata that led to the explosion of Bengali rock bands through the 2000s concurrent with the rise of private FM radio stations.

Right from the beginning of his career, Suman set about puncturing his stardom by refusing to collaborate with or support the ruling Communist party, whose members often heckled him at live conc...