From Rabi Thakur to Rabindranath Tagore

My Boyhood Days. Rabindranath Tagore.

“Best known internationally for his revolutionary poetry, Rabindranath Tagore is also well known for the school and university he founded in the Bengal countryside. Seen through the amused eyes of a precocious young boy growing up in turn-of-the-century Calcutta, this memoir describes the joint family he grew up in, the city he played in, and the school he was sent to against his will. It is an exquisite portrait of both Tagore’s childhood and his country, India, at a turning point in its history.

”Source: goodreads.com

‘ A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is

just a footnote’-Yevgeny Yvtushenko

Precisely we need to seeand talk that why in particular Tagore has been

chosen?

Why is it so critical and interesting to read him, know him ,talk him, glory him or bury him.

Who tagore had been? Where he had been? By whom?

What kind of relevance does he have in today’s time? And why?

What he did in his life

The Text

Time playMemoryPoetic text

Time play

ContrastMetaphor

Now and Then Contrast

‘there was no gas then in the city, and no electric light. When the kerosene lamp was introduced, its brilliance amazed us. ‘

‘there were no trams then, no buses, no motors.’

‘there were no water-pipes laid on in those days.’

Painting by Rabindranath TagoreThe Art Institute of Chicago

“ The clouds have had no rest since yesterday evening. The rain is pouring incessantly. The trees stand huddled together in a seemingly foolish manner; the birds are silent. I call to mind the evenings of my boyhood.”

Now and ThenMetaphor

Painting by Rabindranath TagoreThe Art Institute of Chicago

Memory interchanges "So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.”

- Sarah Dessen

“our ‘jamadar’ Sobha Ram, who was a wrestler….”

“another story was connected with the thick-leaved Badam tree at the western corner ….”

“there was a narrow passage, enclosed by latticed walls, leading from the outer apartments to the interior of the house.”

“then nine o’clock would strike, and Shyam would swoop down on me like a hawk on a dove…”

- Rabindranath TagoreMy Boyhood Days

Poetic text

"Always be a poet, even in prose." - Charles Baudelaire

“Liony, liony, off with your head,Liony, liony, now you are dead.

Woofle the walnut goes clappetry clap,Snip, snop, SNAP!”

- My Boyhood Days

Vase -Painting by Rabindranath TagoreNational Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

Theme

CalcuttaJorasanko Thakur BariSociety Education

Kolkata‘The City of Joy’

Landscape-Painting by Rabindranath TagoreNational Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

The Abode

Jorasanko Thakur Bari

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

“ Your flute plays in the thunder:

No light note to hear.I would wake to that tune:

O grant me such an ear.

……”- A few lines from the song ‘Your Flute

Plays in the Thunder’

A video still from Satyajit Ray’s Documentary on Tagore

Society

Poet as an ‘Activist’

Painting by Rabindranath TagoreNational Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

“Women used to go about in the stifling darkness of closed palanquins”

“An additional covering, a kind of thick tilt, completely enveloped the palanquin of a rich man’s daughters and daughters-in-law, so that it looked like a moving tomb.”

- Rabindranath Tagore

My Boyhood Days

Brooding -Painting by Rabindranath TagoreNational Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

“Why should you not let woman empowered be

With right to conquer her own destiny,O Lord?

Why must I sit and watch beside the road

With lowered head, in tired patient wait

For the day ordained by fateTo grant my hopes? Why should I gaze in space?

…..”

-Woman EmpoweredTranslated by Sukanta Chaudhuri

SocietyWoman -Painting by Rabindranath TagoreNational Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

Poet as an Artist

Color

“This screen that thou hast raised ispainted with innumerable figures withthe brush of the night and the day. Behind it thy seatis woven in wondrous mysteries of curves,Casting away all barren lines of straightness.

The great pageant of thee and mehas overspread the sky.With the tune of thee and meall the air is vibrant, and all ages passwith the hiding and seeking of thee and me.”

- Rabindranath Tagore Gitanjali

ColorBird Fantastic-Painting by Rabindranath TagoreNational Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

“I came out alone on my way to my tryst.

But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?

I move aside to avoid his presencebut I escape him not.

He makes the dust rise from the earthwith his swagger; he adds his loud voiceto every word that I utter.

He is my own little self, my lord, he knowsno shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company”

-Gitanjali

Self Portrait 1935Medium: Water color

Truth be told:The Autobiographical

Pact

“After these eighty years even the picture of myself that comes before me does not correspond line for line with the reality, but is largely a product of the imagination.”

- Rabindranath TagoreMy boyhood days

Thank You!