No stranger to controversies, Suman's latest CD Chhatradharer Gaan (Songs of Chhatradhar Mahato) created a furore, as many of the songs were openly sympathetic to the struggle of Bengal's tribals against the establishment.

Elected last year to the Lok Sabha as a Trinamool Congress candidate, he is in the news as much for his vociferous opposition to Operation Greenhunt as for his constant differences of opinion with party chief Mamata Banerjee.

The songsmith recently threatened to hold a protest outside Parliament against the operation launched to flush out Maoists. The first-time MP has claimed that these operations are against the interests of the tribals residing in Maoist-infested areas.

Suman has also offered to mediate between the Centre and the Maoists, after Maoist leader Koteshwar V Rao alias Kishenji named him, along with writer Arundhati Roy and former bureaucrat B D Sharma, as the intellectuals who could facilitate the dialogue process. Home Minister P Chidambaram has turned down Kishenji's offer, firmly stating that talks will take place only after the Maoists halt their violence.

In the first part of a free-wheeling interview rediff.com's Indrani Roy Mitra finds a singer madly in love with the language of music, and a politician who admits that politics is not his cup of tea.

How do you manage to do so many things at a time? What's the secret?

There is no secret, maybe I have a problem somewhere (laughs). The eminent psychologist Alfred Adler, who was a disciple of Sigmund Freud, once said that creative people suffer from an inferiority complex. Because of this inferiority complex, perhaps, people like me try to establish a few things. Adler, however, made this statement in all earnestness, and not the way I am putting it.

To be honest, I have been restless throughout my life, I have been regularly inconsistent. I have been consistent only with my friends and my music. I hopped from one job to another; never found peace.

Music came naturally to me. My parents -- they are both dead -- Uma and Sudhindranath Chattopadhyay -- were reputed singers/musicians.

My father was more famous of the two. In the 1940s, he had at least 100 gramophone discs to his credit. My mother too had several discs and both sang for the radio. My father took up a job in All India Radio during the British Raj. It was Kazi Nazrul Islam, one of my father's mentors, who wanted him to join AIR.

It was the maestro himself who negotiated with AIR and made him (my father) join as a production assistant. My father being a man of strong principles, at once gave up singing in public.

I was born with music, you see. I heard before I saw. At home, I always heard my parents singing. However, no one tried to give me music lessons till I was 8.

At that age, my father started teaching me all kinds of Bengali songs. My parents had a very liberal attitude towards music. Anything that sounded good could be sung. I still remember my mother singing Khoya Khoya Chand by Mohammad Rafi while cooking. There was no so-called bourgeoisie policing at home. No one ever told me that a particular song was good and another was bad.

At 12, I started to take lessons in Hindustani classical music from Kalipada Das. I owe so much to him.

Later, I came in contact with Ustad Amir Khan. I could not become his direct disciple, though. For, Ustadji wanted to take me to Mumbai (then Bombay) with him. But my father did not allow me to give up studies.

Having tested the waters as a professional musician himself, my father did not want me to have the same career. Rather, he thought I should complete my graduation, have a regular job and pursue music as my first love.

At 17, I heard Amir Khan at a concert in Kolkata. And it changed my life. It radicalised me for good.

You mean Ustad Amir Khan's khayal radicalised you? How?

(Smiles) Yes. People read Che Guevara, Mao Zedong or Karl Marx and become radicals. But for me, inspiration lay in Ustad Amir Khan's khayal, his style and view of khayal, the way the maestro took the khayal form on.

Those were turbulent times. The Congress party's grip on Bengal was slackening and the Leftist forces were coming up. Bengal was reeling under the Naxalite movement.

Many people think you were involved with the Naxalites.

Strangely, yes. But I never had any inclination for politics. Frankly, I had no time. I had to do riyaz for 6 to 7 hours a day. I would get up early in the morning, do riyaz for 3 hours before leaving for college.

In 1966, at the age of 17, I already had a B High grade in music. Bengali music at that time was adorned with great names like Hemanta Mukherjee, Manabendra Mukherjee, Shyamal Mitra, Satinath Mukherjee, Tarun Banerjee. They were there like celestial bodies.

I cut my first two Rabindrasangeet discs in 1972 and 1973. I was an upcoming singer at 23, 24. Music ruled my life. When I took up a job, I got up at 5, did my riyaz for three hours, went to work and on return started my riyaz again.

I was so much in love with music at that time that my first marriage ended in divorce just like that (smiles). This corroborates the fact that I simply had no time for politics. However, I did have a political bend of mind. I was constantly asking myself -- what was I singing for?

And then by the mid-1970s, you stopped singing. Why?

I realised soon that the songs that I was singing were not satisfying me. They did not speak on my behalf. I felt I would have to write my own songs. I tried, tried hard but failed. It took me several years before I could find my voice.

Meanwhile, I had to leave India over a paltry issue, an infantile misunderstanding. The Emergency was coming. Some people were irked with me and my parents and those close to me were of the opinion that I might get arrested.

Around that time, Voice of Germany had opened its Bengali service. While in Germany, I started learning the language and soon got a job in the Bengali division of Voice of Germany. My German was not that bad, you see. I became a radio journalist, a career that I pursued for over a decade.

From Germany, I went to the United States of America. I worked for the Voice of America in Washington, DC for some years before returning to the Voice of Germany again. My last assignment was that of a senior editor at the Bengali service of Voice of Germany.

I had started writing songs in Bengali and was itching all over to sing my own songs. I was 37 then. At that age, I started taking lessons in finger-style guitar from an Italian guru in Cologne. That changed me altogether.

Prior to this, I used to play the keyboard but I could not carry the keyboard with me. It was too heavy and I needed to learn a string instrument. First I thought of playing the dotara. But in dotara, one cannot play the chords. Hence, I opted for the guitar. I soon became some sort of a strummer. I could never become a guitarist -- it was not possible at that age.

Thereafter I told myself, 'Enough is enough, I must go back to Kolkata now and see what I can do with my songs.'

India is a land of beautiful melodies and songs. But as I started writing my own songs, I felt it was high time the lyrics came of age and thoughts. Any song, I feel, should be like a snapshot, a haiku. It can be temporal in nature; it may change the very next moment. But it should be well crafted, structured and meaningful, it should effectively capture a particular moment.

My music, too, is at times utilitarian. My songs are topical, short-lived. Once the topic dies, so does a song. I never claim immortality for my songs.

I read quite a few books by Edward De Bono, inventor of lateral thinking -- it is a term coined by de Bono for the solution of problems through an indirect and creative approach.

In one of his books, de Bono says -- you may be a good scientist but what apparently matters more is how you sleep with a woman or with a dog or a snake. He says, and I am just paraphrasing, it does not happen in the US but England specialises in it. I think such comments stem from people's repressed sexuality.

It is true that I have married several times and I have had relationships but I have never tried to suppress that information.

You have always been pretty unabashed about your marriages or relationships. Does this brazenness bother people?

Maybe. If you ask me 'Kabir, are you in love' and expect me to turn crimson and say, 'Oh no, what do you mean?' or 'Have you made love to any other woman other than your wife?' and want me to shudder and state, 'No no, please, how can you say that? chastity for God's sake', you are sure to be disappointed. For, this kind of behaviour is alien to me.

But I do respect other people's chaste opinion of God's scheme of things in matters related to sexuality, lovemaking and relationships. All I can say is that I have never harmed any woman or I have never raped any woman, you know.

Not a single woman has ever said that I have forced her to sleep with me or kiss me.

To be honest, I think people are simply jealous of me. They see in me a man who makes good music, performs well, performs alone and draws some kind of attention.