Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) The national capital will reverberate with the sounds of Bengal on Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary Sunday.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will inaugurate an exhibition “The Master Strokes: Art of Rabindranath Tagore” at the National Gallery of Modern Art Sunday morning.

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will release a special commemorative coin on the Nobel laureate to mark the occasion. He will unveil the coin at a tribute, Rabindra Pranati, at the Mehgdoot theatre in Rabindra Sadan.

The theatre will also be the venue for a open soiree of Tagore’s music from 6.00 a.m.-12 noon featuring artists from Delhi and the national capital region Sunday.

A compilation of songs from Tagore’s anthology “Geetanjali”, accompanied by recitation, will be presented by Jayati Ghosh at the India International Centre Sunday evening.

It will be presided over by Chhattisgarh Governor Shekhar Dutt. The programme will be held in collaboration with Impresario and Rabindra Bharati University.

The spread of events is bigger and varied this year with the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Sahitya Akademi, Lalit Kala Akademi and the union culture ministry joining hands to mark the occasion.

The celebrations began May 7 with an exhibition of Tagore’s books, “Tagore’s Treasures”, at the Sahitya Akademi. It showcases “Renderings of Gitanjali” in different Indian languages by eminent poets.

Other programmes Sunday include “Kavyanjali”, a poets’ meet, puppet play, dance performance and songs by a Kolkata choir.

Tagore, the 14th of the 15 siblings, was born in 1861 at Jorasanko in Kolkata.

The yearlong celebrations are likely to see a resurgence in awareness about the Nobel Laureate’s contribution to world literature and an affinity to his works among the GenNext.

“Rabindranath Tagore is still very relevant even outside Bengal. His music is everlasting. But he is not read by youngsters as he used to be even 10 years ago, primarily because Bengali children do not study the language in schools outside Bengal any more. The world could do with more translations of Tagore’s songs,” Sudhir Chanda, an alumnus of Shantiniketan, and who teaches Rabindra Sangeet in Chittaranjan Park, said.

Chanda, who has been living in Delhi for the past 50 years, is a member of the Bengal Association, which is organising a Prabhati Anusthan - morning concert.

Veteran Bengali actor, Soumitra Chatterjee, also echoed the sentiment.

“For a Bengali, getting away from Tagore is very difficult because his works reflect a gamut of creative experiences. You listen to his songs every day in some form or the other,” Chatterjee told IANS.

“But Tagore is being read much less these days. His poetry is not so popular any more, but strangely whenever people want a quotation to add literary flourish to any intellectual activity (be a simple letter, an essay, a social or literary event), people still fall back on Tagore’s prose and poetry for the right expression,” he said.