Early life

Nilima was born as Nilima Gupta in Kolkata

Kolkata

Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 on April 28, 1928. Her parents moved to Shantiniketan when she was six.She had her education there and completed diploma course in Classical Music & Rabindra Sangeet from Santiniketan.She also did her B.A from the Visva-Bharati University

Visva-Bharati University

Visva Bharati University is a Central University for research and teaching in India, located in the twin towns of Santiniketan and Sriniketan in the Indian state of West Bengal. It was founded by Rabindranath Tagore who called it Visva Bharati, which means the communion of the world with India...

 at Santiniketan.
She had the privilge of acting under the direction of Tagore but that was not staged.She sang in the presence of Gandhiji, Subhash Bose etc. during there visit to Santiniketan.Her Guru
was mainly Shri Sailajaranjan Mazumder.

She started singing at the AIR and cut her first disc at the age of 16 and soon became famous.
In 1950, she married Dr Amiya Kumar Sen and settled in Santiniketan.She has a daughter Nilanjana who also is a singer. She visited US with her husband and performed at various centres incliding BBC.

She founded the music school " Surangama" along with Prasad Sen and later joined Sangeet Bhavan as a Faculty. For a couple of years, she taught music at Bardhhaman University.She became the Principal of Sangeet Bhavan& retired from there.As a Faculty, she took part in various dance dramas like Tasher Desh, Mayar Khela(along with Suchitra Mitra),Sesh Raksha (along with Supriyo Tagore) organised by Vishwa Bharati & staged at auditoriams like Rabindra Sadan,New Empire Kolkata. Songs like "Chokher jaler laglo joar", "Aha tomar sange " " Bajao re mohan banshi" found correct expression through the embedded sadnes in her voice.

She performed all over India, Bangladesh, UK, US, Burma & Malayasia. Her famous students include Swastika Mukhopadhyay, Lily Islam, Basabi Datta, Rezwana Chowdhury Banya, Rita Ghosh,Pramita Mallick, Jayanti Purkayastha, Soma Roy,Aditi Mohsin etc.

She has a number of Music Albums to her credit.

She expired in 1996 after a prolonged illness.

Recordings

In 2004, Sa Re Ga Ma

Sa Re Ga Ma

Saregama India Limited, formerly The Gramophone Company of India is an Indian music company. Saregama also works in the home video business...

re-released four singles by Nilima Sen: "Khelar Saathi, Bidaydwar", "Raja (Drama)", "Tomari Madhur Rupe Bhorechho Bhuban" and "Tumi Bandhu Tumi Nath".

In 2005 sa re ga ma released "ki ragini bajale"-some 21 of her songs in a collection