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Indubala (Amateur). She was not the first amateur artiste of the company but
enjoyed the privilege of announcing her name at the end of each song saying
"My name is Indubala". The amateur status continued for a fairly long period.
Later on she received Rupees two hundred per record and also received a
royalty of five per cent over the sales. Her first songs of Nazrul on the disc were
"Cheyona Sunayana" and "Rumjhum Rumjhum Ke Eley Nupur Paye". The record
number was P 11661. To Indubala also goes the credit of being the first Bengali
artiste to record Hindustani songs for the Gramophone Company. For the Indian
State Broadcasting Center, later named All India Radio, Indubala first sang on
the second day of the radio company's broadcasting in 1927 in Calcutta and went
on singing in this medium for nearly fifty years. Over the radio, Indubala sang not
only from Calcutta but also from several other stations by special invitation all
over India. Apart from discs and the radio, Indubala was well established by the
thirties in cultural functions all over India. Frequent invitations used to come from
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Shahjahanpur, Pakur, Madras, Bangalore, Palanpur, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Oudh,
Trivandrum, Vizagapattam, Ajmer, Qoembatore, Dacca and several other places.
In 1936, she was appointed court musician to His Highness, The Maharajah of
Mysore. She received a monthly salary of Rupees two hundred and fifty and this
continued till the time when the native princes faced withdrawal of privy purse. In
all, Indubala had recorded some two hundred and eighty songs, including about
two hundred forty basic songs, the rest being from films. Indubala's first stage
appearance was in The Rambagan Female Kali Theatre, established by her
mother Rajabala in 1922. Both mother and daughter took part in the plays and
Indubala appeared in about twelve plays in this short-lived company that lasted
for only two years. In 1924, she joined Calcutta's most prestigious stage, ‘The
Star Theatre’. She continued to appear on the stage mainly in singing roles and
her songs were a major attraction in each of the plays. By rotation she acted in
all the public theaters of Calcutta and even took part in the Hindi Parsee Theatre
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