Revisiting Tagore

Song, dance, prayer and remembrance, all will come together on May 9 (Pochishe Baisakh), when India and the world will start a year-long celebration of 150 years of Rabindranath Tagore. And, if you were expecting a flurry of festivals, a rush of books and films surrounding Tagore’s phenomenal treasure trove of poems, essays, songs, journeys, it’s been rather quiet so far. Sadly, we haven’t been able to celebrate a national poet like the UK does Shakespeare or Dickens.

Visva-Bharati, the cradle of education the poet visualised in the lap of nature, will begin the day early with a Baitalik (walk around the campus) singing his songs, hold an exhibition of Gurudev’s life at Kala Bhavan, the fine arts section, inaugurate a computer literacy programme at the rural extension centre at Sriniketan and so forth.

In Kolkata, Rabindra Bharati University, which is located at the Tagore family home in Jorasanko, and now has another campus in the northern part of the city, has also drawn up a series of events to mark the occasion. Vice-Chancellor Prof Karuna Sindhu Das says the university has sent an Rs 15-crore proposal to renovate Jorasanko Thakurbari, where the poet was born. “It is 225 years old and needs to be renovated, for which we have already got Rs 17 lakh. With the Prime Minister himself at the centre of Tagore’s 150 year celebration, we are confident funds won’t be a problem,” he says.

Full report here Financial Express