Remembering Tagore, the bard who celebrated life

It was the first week of May 1941. Santiniketan was preparing to celebrate its founder’s 80th birthday on May 8. His health had begun failing since the previous year. Two days before the mega event, former disciple Shantideb Ghosh came to meet him. Tagore sought to know from him what the plan was for the big day. “I understood he wished that the day be celebrated through music and dance,” Ghosh later wrote in his book ‘Rabindrasangeet’.

Listen to a rendition of ‘He Nutan, Dekha Dik Arbar…’ by Pankaj Kumar Mallick here.

Shantideb Ghosh had been handpicked by Tagore to be a teacher at Santiniketan and was sent across India and abroad for musical education for the purpose. In his memoir, he wrote how he tried to suggest songs that could be performed on his birthday.

“You decide on what you want to sing, why will I choose songs for my birthday?” Ghosh quoted Tagore as telling him in reply.

Also read: What would you serve Rabindranath Tagore if he came home for lunch?

The poet was then requested to pen a song especially for the occasion, but he refused fearing criticism and suggested names of some contemporary poets to do the job. Ghosh and others, however, managed to prevail and Tagore eventually gave in to their request.

Almost two decades prior to that, he had written a poem, ‘Ponchishe Boishakh’, which was part of his Purabi collection. Tagore made some changes to some of its lines and set it to tune, Ghosh wrote in Rabindrasangeet. The date was May 6, 1941, two days before his birthday that was celebrated with much fanfare.

Tagore’s rather peculiar, bordering on the eccentric, tastes often threw the household into a state of panic. (Express archive photo)

That was the last birthday he celebrated, and ‘He Nuton…’ became his very last poem, according to Ghosh. The poet passed away exactly three months later in August 1941.

It was Shantideb Ghosh who had prepared the notation for the special song and a recording was released the same year by Kanak Biswas, according to Dr Suman Ghosh, a senior lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at Bath Spa University, UK, who previously taught Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Also see: Rabindra Jayanti — Poetic words of wisdom by Rabindranath Tagore

“To me, the song brings out Tagore’s love of life and his celebration of living. In this song — as in many others — he uses the sun as a metaphor for himself. He is very clearly conscious of his own mortality in this song; the ability to celebrate living also represents his unending capacity to look beyond the imminence of his own death,” says Dr Ghosh.

Rabindranath Tagore during his tour of the West in 1921. (Photo: oldindianphotos.in)

He believes the wider reason for this song’s significance is because of its quest to look for the permanence of human existence in a world torn apart by World War II. “Surrounded by death, this song is a yearning for life. Surrounded by destruction and the possibility of his own end, this song is a call for a new beginning. Surrounded by mortality, this is his final defiant call for the human values that are immortal,” adds Dr Ghosh, who researches and writes about art-house traditions in Indian films and about their impact on contemporary cinema.

In her book ‘Baeeshe Shrabon (22nd of the month of Shravan, the day Tagore died)’, Nirmal Kumari Mahalanobis aka Rani Mahalanobis gives a detailed description of the event marked by songs, dances and staging of a play — Bashikaran.

Among the highlights of the play was the character played by Banamali — Tagore’s old domestic help who quite efficiently and confidently played the role of a servant — writes Mahalanobish, wife of Indian Statistical Institute’s founder Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, who attended the event.

Rabindranath Tagore with Albert Einstein. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

“See how good he (Banamali) is. Staying with me, he even learnt to act,” she quotes Tagore as saying after the function.

It’s Ponchishe Boishakh on May 8 and time for Tagore admirers world over to once again sing the song set in morning raga Bhairavi, invoking the rising sun — the song that welcomes the new dawn, praying for the auspicious moment of birth to return once again, displacing all morning haze and mist — like the rising sun.

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