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FOR this present generation, Rabindranath Tagore holds out through his writings and verse and, of course, through those images. In fact, today there are only a few around who’d met him, interacted with him and can narrate tales of his charisma. Several years back, the well-known Hungarian artist Elizabeth Brunner, who had made India her home, had told me in great detail about her meetings and interactions with Tagore, when she and her mother had been invited by him to stay at Santiniketan. In fact, Brunner had a particularly interesting backgrounder to offload along the strain that whilst they were still in Hungary her mother had a rather strange dream, through which it was relayed that she and her daughter should set sail to India and meet a sage ... Thereafter, the mother-daughter duo packed their bags and reached India, landed in Santiniketan and stayed there for a considerable stretch of time as guests of Tagore. She had told me in great detail about her stay there, her interactions with Tagore and the subtle impact it had on her very work, on her very perception, on her bonding with India ... And in the autobiography of Khushwant Singh – Truth, Love and A Little Malice (Penguin), there are passages which carry details of the writer’s stay at Santiniketan. He had enrolled himself at Kala Bhavan (Santiniketan’s centre for music and the arts) for sitar and painting classes. Together with descriptions of Bengal’s countryside, from details centering around his sitar and art classes, to the everyday realities prevailing on those premises, to the mosquitoes which finally drove him away from Santiniketan, he has focussed on Tagore. I quote Khushwant: "Once a week, we were allowed to have darshan of Tagore at his palatial mansion, Uttarayan (Tropic of Cancer). He was usually seated in a large chair, very much like those of dentists. It was covered with a mosquito net and had a couple of cup holders with incense burning in them. Only the privileged like Nand Lal Bose and a few others were allowed to touch his feet. Students sat on the floor awaiting pearls of wisdom to drop from his heavily mustachioed and bearded mouth. He seldom had more than a few sentences to say to us ..." In fact, even to this day that fascination for Tagore reigns. Not just in India. but in other parts of the world, too. In fact, there is a volume published in Romania which carries this rather telling title — Tagore: Romania Remembers. And those pages are laced with details of Tagore’s travels, together with news reports and interviews conducted with him during the course of his foreign journeys. The editor of this volume - Daniela Neacsu - must be totally fascinated by Tagore, for it couldn’t have been an easy task to unearth newspaper reports of his travels and interviews, dating back to the mid-1920s. Some of those convey not just his stark views but also throw ample light on the then prevailing realities ... I quote from an interview published in this volume, dated November 21,1926, in which Rabindranath Tagore speaks to Dimineata Daily. Says the interview taken on the train to Bucharest - "When we reached Ramadan, the sight was totally different. A pitch-like darkness had engulfed the pier all along. The representatives of the local authorities were the only persons who had come to welcome the poet `85Rabindranath Tagore looks like a biblical figure. A tall and slim old man with an oblong face and two black eyes of an impressive kind. Dressed in a long light brown robe and holding in his hand a book bound in light red leather, which gracefully interrupted the austere line of his appearance... ." Innumerable books have been written on him, on the very range his works, on his diverse talents. Throwing up a dilemma of sorts. As writer–translator Sinjita Gupta writes in the introduction to the volume titled ‘Mystic Moods – Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore’ (UBSPD) - "We find a curious mingling of the real with the unreal in the works of Tagore. He seems to search for a link with the supernatural and the undiscovered all the time. Some of his short stories are excellent examples of Tagore’s desire to know the unknown. Unfulfilled dreams, dead spirit longing to be in the company of the beloved who lives, or sometimes forgotten pages of history coming alive `85Tagore was a close observer of human emotions and aspirations. Hence, it is not surprising that his stories deal with the problems facing women in society and how often they are forced to lead lives of utter depravation and disgrace ..." She goes on to dwell further on this: "This very idea of women being the anchor of peace and stability in the turbulence of human emotions finds its expression in nearly all his heroines `85 Tagore has revealed the intellectual and sensitive qualities which lie latent in women, unexplored and unappreciated. That a woman is not a mere embellishment of the household but also an independent entity is shown by the writer in almost all his novels and short stories ..." Or as another translator of his short stories, Joyasree Mukerji writes in the introduction to the volume titled She : Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore (UBSPD), "Tagore was extremely sensitive to the swift changing colours of a woman’s mood, the layered texture of her feelings and the complexities of her nature, just as a wind chime is sensitive to the lightest whiff of breeze. He saw tremendous possibilities in them - talent, character, an imaginative mind, a quiet strength and, above all, a dignity even under the worst kind of humiliation from a man and the coarse, despotic, social system created by him ..." Perhaps, his own personal tragedies and sorrows made him perceive much beyond the average, and provided that insight to look at the larger picture ...After all, his words carried forth much to counter the political realities of the day, to make dents on the prevailing customs and social practices, to focus on the disadvantaged and the rural poor of undivided Bengal. In fact, Joyasree
Mukerji has tucked in these very relevant lines of Tagore in that
introduction to his short story collection She`85: "My
later stories have not got that freshness though they have greater
psychological value and they deal with problems. Happily, I had no
social or political problems in my mind when I was young. Now there
are a number of problems of all kinds and they crop up unconsciously
when I write a story ..."
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