Does Tagore belong to home and not world?
Indian fans woke up to a surprise as a video from Pakistani show featuring Rabindra Sangeet “Amaro Porano Jaha Chay” went viral. The footage is from the show “Dil Kya Karay”, where the lead actor Yumna Zaidi is seen crooning the popular Bengali song. Calling it a ‘proud moment’, fans even said that it was ‘heart-warming’ to see the inclusivity in the serial. Have you ever heard the saying “Music has no borders”? The words couldn’t be truer in case of these videos from a Pakistan TV show. They feature the popular Rabindra Sangeet “Amaro Porano Jaha Chay”.
In a country of a million idols and temples—including those for movie stars; a country where taxpayer money is spent on giant statues to politicians—there is something to be said about a culture that bows to a poet. Tagore was a philosopher and a polymath, a nationalist and a political ideologue, an artist and an educationist, but above all, he was a poet. And in celebrating him, we celebrate the spirit of poetry.
Be it Hindu-Muslim relations, women's emancipation, exploitation of nature, development of the village, or his contribution to modern art, Bengal's thinkers and commoners alike marvel at how the man remains relevant even today as his 160th birth anniversary dawns on May 9. Tagore was born in 1861 and lived till the age of 80. He wrote nearly 3,000 songs, set up an experimental school at Santiniketan, and went on to win the Nobel prize in 1913 for his compilation Gitanjali.
Bengalis do not need to read about Rabindranath, he is already flowing in our veins. Non-Bengalis are a different matter. When I was a boy in Calcutta, I remember watching one of my uncles reading the newspaper every morning, shaking his head and saying, ‘These non-Bengalis, I tell you!’ He was not pleased with the news, and he was clear about where the responsibility lay. Therefore, when Hindustan Times asked me to explain Rabindranath to non-Bengalis, I did not undertake the task lightly.
The first thing to understand about Rabindranath is that his shape is very distinctive. He had a strong aesthetic sense, and always art directed himself most beautifully. But he was most often portrayed with a yard long beard and in an ankle length kaftan, in profile, hands behind his back. He is one of the few famous people, along with Einstein and Gandhi, who can be recognized by a silhouette. He was a man in advance, he created his own emoji. As children growing up in Calcutta, long before we read him, we recognised his shape.
The first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, Rabindranath Tagore’s novels, stories, songs and dramas were acclaimed as well as criticised for their lyricism and colloquialism. Gitanjali, Gora and Ghore-Baire are his best-known works. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's “Jana Gana Mana” and Bangladesh's “Amar Shonar Bangla”.
Tagore has been an inescapable reality for all 250 million Bengali speaking people around the world. He is widely revered all over Bangladesh and in India. He commands a towering presence in the Bengali speaking world. His literary achievements overshadow anything that happened before him and anything that happened after him in the Bengali literary world. Tagore, in fact, is embedded in the collective psyche of educated Bengalis. The Jorasanko Thakurbari is a living memory of a man whose impact and influence travelled continents and also reminds us why Bengali culture will always be indebted to Rabindranath Tagore. The writer of Indian National Anthem, the writer of Bangladesh's National Anthem, the person to have inspired Sri Lanka's National Anthem with his work, the first Non-European and also the first lyricist to win a Nobel Prize in literature - Rabindranath Tagore. Not just this, he was a renowned poet, painter, writer, composer, and philosopher. Due to his achievements, Rabindranath Tagore is also known as the 'Bard of Bengal'.
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
kaledo-art
andulkaphoto
discoholicmusic
2087
vaporwave