Rabindranath Tagore---------The Masterpiece:
"OI Mahamanabo Ase
Dike Dike Romancho Lage
Marta Dhulir O Ghase
Ghase...."
These lines actually talk
of the arrival of a super human being
whose arrival totally nurtures the lives of people on the Earth.
Well 7thMay 1861 was the
day when the first ray of Sun dawned on the eyes of a superhuman being & he
took his first breath on this earth --- Yes we are talking about none other
than The Greatest of the Poets & other literarry works KABI GURU RABINDRANATH TAGORE.
He was born at the
Jorasanko Mansion in Kolkata to parents Maharshi Debendranath Tagore &
Sarada Devi. He was the youngest of the thirteen surviving siblings of the
family. The Tagore family came into prominence during the Bengal
Renaissance period & originally The Tagores were called Banerjee but in
those days those days they were called as the "Thakurmosai" to show
respect & in this way they came to be known as Tagore. Well the Tagore
hardcore "Brahmo" the religion founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy &
his grandfather Prince Dwarakanath
Tagore. The Tagores had a big zamindari & were very affluent people.
Rabi lost his mother at a
very tender age & so he was brought up
by the servants of the house as his father remained busy in travelling
various places. Rabi had to lead a very strict life under the guidence of the
servants.
He recalled in his
"JEEVANSMRITI" that during his childhood days one of the servant
Ramdin who had a very big moustache & a well built body used to to take
care of him & also punished when necessary. little Rabi was very scared of
him & he recalls that in his boyhood days
Ramdin used to take in a room & make him sit at a particular place
& draw a line around him so that he remain confined at that place only. He
was so scared of the servant that Rabi did not move an inch from that place
even after hours passed by. He has cited many events of his childhood &
among them one of them was that when his father Debendranath Tagore used to gout for traveeling he went into his room
& sat on his father's rocking chair & also went to his bathroom &
used his shower.
Little Rabi always tried
to make himself happy with the little things he used to get. He recalled one
such event that there was a pond behind
their house & little Rabi used to sit there & observe the various style
of bathing of different people. Rabi was sent to school to receive his best
education but since his childhood he was not drawn towards education in a confined room. As a
result he received education in his home having private tutors. There also he was not so much serious as he recalls that
in evening they used to sit for studying with his teacher with a lamp lit with
cambis oil & in that dim lighting condition as the clock struck 9.00 he
started to fall almost asleep thereby quitting tat day's study. in this way he
continued with his regular studies. Actually Tagore was not at all interested
in a everyday routine life like a caged
bird rather he wanted to roam about like a free bird & that is why he
said------- " Ha re re re amay chere de re de re
Jemon chara
Boner pakhi moner anonde re....."
These lines actually
convey the strong desire of Tagore to live his life independently just like
a free bird in a wood live.
Well another interesting
fact from Tagore's life is that though
they were affluent people yet little Rabi had no fascination for good clothes
& they were not provided also. He
recalls that in winter he used to wear a white shirt over another white shirt
to prevent cold. In case of shoes also
there was no fascintaion of shoes as those were were also not of proper sizes.
As the Tagores were Brahmos so they didn't beleive in idol worship & had
very less festivals but one of their most important festival was the "Magh
Utsav". It was celebrated with much pomp & grandeur. Well his brother Hemendranath tutored &
physically conditioned him.
After he underwent an upanayan initiation
at age of eleven, he and his father left
Calcutta in February 1873 for a month -long tour of the Raj. They
visited his father's Santiniketan estate
and rested in Amritsar en
route to the Himalayan Dhauladhars, their destination being the remote hill
station at Dalhousie.
Along the way, Tagore read biographies; his father tutored him in history,
astronomy, and Sanskrit declensions. He read biographies of Benjamin Franklin among
other figures; they discussed Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire; and they examined the poetry of Kālidāsa. In
mid-April they reached the station, and at 2,300 metres (7,546 ft) they
settled into a house that sat atop Bakrota Hill. Tagore was taken aback by the
region's deep green gorges, alpine forests, and mossy streams and waterfalls. They stayed there for several months
and adopted a regime of study and privation that included daily twilight baths
taken in icy water.
Tagore was gifted with poetic bent of mind since his
childhood as he wrote his first poem at the age of five telling-" Amsatta
dudhe feli". Writing poetry was his
hobby & habit. Apart from poetry he was also masterpiece in writing
stories, short stories, novels, plays
& songs & even drawing pictures . Tagore was a gift for the Bengalees
but other customs of people were also benifitted & had literarry
upliftment inspired from Tagore.
From his childhood days Tagore was very fond of his sister in
law Kadambari devi who was little older than Rabi & was Jatindranath's
wife. After her death Rabindranath was heartbroken as he lost his childhood friend & out of this
agony he wrote out the song---" Tumi robe nirobe/ Hridoye Mamo...."
Tagore was married to Mrinalini devi in 1883 at the age of 22
only & she was only 10 at that time.
Before Marriage Tagore after coming back from the hills wrote
many poem & one of them was a very long one in Maithali style of
Vidyapati. Regional experts accepted
them as the lost works of Bhānusimha, a
newly discovered 17th-century Vaishnava poet.
He debuted the short-story genre in Bengali with "Bhikharini"
("The Beggar Woman"), and
his Sandhya Sangit (1882) includes the famous poem
"Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the Waterfall").
Debendranath always wanted his son to become a barristor so
Tagore enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England in 1878. He stayed for several months at a
house that the Tagore family owned near Brighton and Hove, in Medina Villas; in 1877 his nephew and
niece—Suren and Indira Devi, the children of Tagore's brother Satyendranath—were
sent together with their mother, Tagore's sister-in-law, to live with him. He briefly read law at University
College London, but again left school. He opted instead
for independent study of Shakespeare, Religio Medici,Coriolanus,
and Antony
and Cleopatra. Lively English, Irish, and Scottish folk
tunes impressed Tagore, whose own tradition of Nidhubabu-authored kirtans and tappas and
Brahmo hymnody was subdued. In
1880 he returned to Bengal degree-less, resolving to reconcile European novelty
with Brahmo traditions, taking the best from each. In 1883 he married Mrinalini Devi,
born Bhabatarini, 1873–1902; they had five children, two of whom died in
childhood.
In 1890 Tagore
released his Manasi Poems from Shelaidaha along with his wife & children.
He mainly talked about the reigning excitement
in doing dreadful works during the time of youth -hood in his poems of Manasi.
He had writtem many Kabya granthas apart from Manasi
like-- Kotha o Kahini, Purabi,
Bhairabi,Chaitali, Porisesh & many others.
In 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan to
found an ashram with
a marble-floored prayer hall—The Mandir—an
experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, a library. There his wife &
two children died. Even after this tragedy
struck his family he continued
with his mission of establishing school for the children . He never liked to
study ion a confined room so he also started teaching children in the open
environment under the bluey sky & surrounded with green trees. There he
established the Viswa Bharati High school with his new style of education for
the masses.
Later Tagore received the Nobel prize for literature in 1913
on a small body of the translated part of his Gitanjali ( Song Offerings) in
1912. In 1915, the British Crown granted Tagore a knighthood. He renounced it
after the 1919 Jallianwala
Bagh massacre.
Well apart from all these, his novels are very famous . I myself have read
some of his novels & truely enjoyed them. His famous novels include --
Gora,Noukadubi, Seser Kabita, Bou Thakuranir Hat, Ghare Baire, Chokher Bali,
Rajarshi & so on. Gora is his longest novel & is about a
particular person , his life style & his ideals. Noukadubi is an eternal
love story revolving around three characters Ramesh , Hemnalini,& Kamala.
Ramesh wanted to marry Hemnalini but on his father's wish he married Sushila, a
poor village girl. On return from his village in a boat huge storm struck the Ganges & the
boat got wrecked. When Ramesh came to senses he found a new bride beside him so
thinking her Sushila he brought her home. She also thought him to be her
husband but later on Ramesh came to know that her name is not Sushila but
Kamala & her husband's name is to Nalinakha
which he is not . Finally after a lot of struggle Kamala united with Nalinakha in Kashi &
Ramesh also came face to face with Hemnalini who at that time was engaged with
Dr Nalinakha in Kashi . The engagement broke & Kamala & Nalinakha
united. Ramesh & Hemnalini parted their ways with a bitter ending.
Seser Kabita was another masterpiece. I have read it for
atleast 5 times & every time I read it I rediscover the story from some new
angles. This is also of the eternal love between Amit Ray & Labonyo . The two them used
call each other as Mita & Bonna respectively The wonderful description of
their future planning just pull the readers into it. The heart touching poems
associated with this novel furthermore add essence to his story. One of the
famous Poem is Pather Bandhan which Amit Ray receited saying that it is written
by Nibaran. Actually written by Amit Ray himself. The ending to this love story is very different from the common love stories comprising of Happy
ending. Rather at the find we find that Amit & Labonno never got married to
one another but remained friends forever. This was Amit's choice as he always liked to remain carefree
& free from all family attachments.
Not only a great writer he was also a great talent hunter. He was the one who
discovered Kanika Banerjee who later on became the Bengal Melody in her time.
Tagore is great from all aspects of life. .What not to
mention, he was even the sole creator of all the dance dramas & the song
dramas like Chitrangada, Chandalika, Shyama, Sapmochan, Rakta Karabi, Balmiki
Pratibha & many others.
Tagore was a prolific composer with 2,230 songs to his
credit. His songs are known as Rabindrasangit ("Tagore Song"), which merges fluidly
into his literature, most of which—poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays
alike—were lyricised. Influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani
music, they ran the entire
gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional
hymns to quasi-erotic compositions. They
emulated the tonal colour of classical ragas to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga's
melody and rhythm faithfully; others newly blended elements of different ragas. Yet about nine-tenths of his work was
not bhanga gaan, the body
of tunes revamped with "fresh value" from select Western, Hindustani,
Bengali folk and other regional flavours "external" to Tagore's own
ancestral culture. Scholars have attempted to gauge the emotive force and range
of Hindustani ragas:
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the pathos of the purabi raga reminded Tagore of the evening tears
of a lonely widow, while kanara was the confused realization of a
nocturnal wanderer who had lost his way. In bhupali he seemed to hear a voice in the
wind saying 'stop and come hither'.Paraj conveyed to him the deep slumber
that overtook one at night's end
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Tagore's remit expanded to science in his last years, as hinted in Visva-Parichay, 1937 collection of essays. His respect for scientific laws and his exploration of biology, physics, and astronomy informed his poetry, which exhibited extensive naturalism and verisimilitude. He wove the process of science, the narratives of scientists, into stories in Se (1937), Tin Sangi (1940), and Galpasalpa (1941).
Well inspite of being
such a great personality he was very simple from the core of his heart. Reading about his life story we come to know
about one such incident that once he was invitited for a marriage ceremony & at the last
moment he remerbered that he had to go
there & he has arranged for no presents. His companion told him that a poem
for that little girl would be a
great gift for her. So while going to
the marriage hall he wrote the poem in the Palki. After finishing it when he
reached the place he called some little boys & girls & taught them the
dhun of the poem that he had just now written So very soon it became a wondeful song .
His last five years were marked by chronic pain and two
long periods of illness. These began when Tagore lost consciousness in late
1937; he remained comatose and near death for a time. This was followed in late
1940 by a similar spell. He never recovered. Poetry from these valetudinary
years is among his finest. A
period of prolonged agony ended with Tagore's death on 7 August 1941, aged
eighty; he was in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion he was raised in. The date is still mourned. A. K. Sen, brother of the first chief
election commissioner, received dictation from Tagore on 30 July 1941, a day
prior to a scheduled operation: his last poem.
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