GuruDev Rabindranath Tagore:Immortal Poet

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not!

I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch

of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end

before I am aware, and the time of offering go by.

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this

flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.

-Rabindranath Tagore (Gitanjali)

Gurudev is as unique as a poet and artist as humanitarian and social and religious reformer,born on 7th May 1861 in Jorasanko (Tagore House) in Calcutta.He was the fourteenth child born to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi.At a very early age Tagore was writing his own poetry. Some poems were published anonymously or under his pen name “Bhanusingha”, but he was soon a regular contributor to various magazines including Balaka and Bharati. His first collection Kabi Kahini was published in 1878.

In l883 he was married. He never mentions his wife in his Reminiscences. His family chose his bride, an almost illiterate girl of ten named Bhabatarini (renamed Mrinalini), whom he married with little ceremony. The bride was then sent away to a convent to be educated. They were to have four children, the eldest was born when Mrinalini was 13. Mrinalini was to die at the age of 30, apparently unmissed by her husband.

In 1901 he founded Shantiniketan near Calcutta. This was designed to provide a blend of traditional ashram and Western education. He began with 5 pupils and 5 teachers (three of whom were Christian). His ideals were simplicity of living and the cultivation of beauty.

In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize and used the prize money to improve his school at Shantiniketan. By 1921, he had added a university to the school complex.In August 1941, Tagore was moved from Shantiniketan to Calcutta for an operation. In the same year he died in the house in which he was born.

What makes him a great artist his ability to work in every aspect of art with perfection,he was as good in poetry as in painting,his short stories and novels depicts the true color of his time.Tagore was the first Indian to bring an element of psychological realism to his novels. Among his early major prose works are CHOCHER BALI (1903, Eyesore) and NASHTANIR (1901, The Broken Nest), published first serially. Between 1891 and 1895 he published forty-four short stories in Bengali periodical, most of them in the monthly journal Sadhana.

Tagore’s reputation as a writer was established in the United States and in England after the publication of GITANJALI: SONG OFFERINGS, about divine and human love.At the age of 70 Tagore took up painting. He was also a composer, settings hundreds of poems to music. Many of his poems are actually songs, and inseparable from their music. Tagore’s ‘Our Golden Bengal‘ became the national anthem of Bangladesh.

He was not at all political but he was great supporter of humanity.He was a genuine soul of great love towards humanity.On his 150th birthday we have to learn humanity and enjoy his legacy through his work.

I am building my mind all by myself
And growing worthier for the tasks ahead
Who knows when shall I be able to declare with all my heart:
I have reached my Realisation,
Come all, follow me,
The Master is calling you all,
May my life bring forth new life in you all,
And thus may my country awake.

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