Rabindranath Tagore-An Anthology

To say that Bengalis love their hilsa is an understatement. To add Tagore to the menu would be a Godsend for them. The other day with time at my disposal, I got to understand this Tagore worship by reading a book ‘Rabindranath Tagore-An Anthology’, which contains a selection of his plays, poems, letters and essays. It gives an insight into the man, his family, his work, his beliefs, and his world view in general. Since many of his major works were written in his beloved Bengali, translations included in this book  are primarily targeted at non Bengalis, more so a western audience to help them understand and appreciate the man and his greatness.

His play ‘The Post office’ takes us through the innocence and imagination of young Amal who is ill and cannot go outdoor but  yearns to explore the reality of the world through the eyes of different people who pass by his window..

Further we are given a dose of some of his best travel writings on Russia,Japan, Indonesia, the UK, Persia  etc where he discusses on what attracted him in those lands as interesting, as positive worthy of emulation by India and some shortcomings. Short pieces and easily digestible, they are a treat to read as they show his itch for travel and assimilation of the best from far off..

By now one has got a real feel of the depth of Tagore’s writing, and we are now privy to Tagore’s letters to his wife, niece, well known people like WB Yeats, Bertrand Russell, Ezra Pound, Lord Chelmsford, Romain Rolland, CF Andrews, our own Gandhi & Nehru etc. These letters show Tagore as a universal man rooted in India, having definite and farsighted views on all major events influencing mankind.

His views on the past and present are brought out in his Essays, with a dialogue on music and the nature of reality with Einstein. Towards the end, a collection of his short stories  and a novel  later, one is reminded of the fact that Tagore was a great poet before  all his other vocations, through some of his poems.  After all, we know even without this book that he got the Nobel Prize for his work of poetry called the Gitanjali.