May 9 is 150th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the first Asian author to have won the Nobel Prize in literature, still remains an inspiration around the world. A poet, playwright, performer, musician, essayist, philosopher, and one of the finest storytellers from India (eight novels, four novellas and numerous short stories), he also had over 2,000 paintings and doodles to his credit.
As he said in his first talk at Shanghai in 1924: 'I say that a poet's mission is to attract the voice which is yet inaudible in the air; to inspire faith in the dream which is unfulfilled; to bring the earliest tidings of the unborn flower to a sceptic world.'
That Tagore was able to give voice to the voiceless from among the colonised and subjugated nations is history now. But his legacy still lives on because, as Mahatma Gandhi had once said about him: 'In common with thousands of his countrymen I owe much to one who by his poetic genius and singular purity of life has raised India in the estimation of the world.'
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