Young Bengalis do not appreciate Tagore’s works enough…..

Rabindranath Tagore – the greatest Bengali of all time, one of the greatest Indians of all time, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in 1913 and of course the most versatile creative genius that the world has seen after Leonardo Da Vinci. These are only a few drops of an ocean of adjectives that describe Tagore. In the 1890s he changed the face of Bengali literature with his non-esoteric creations, which was never the case with his illustrious predecessors like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Michael Madhusudan Dutta. As a Bengali myself, I can proudly say that as a composer of songs, he was the best ever and had no equal, even in the west, and I know of Hugo Wolf and Schubert. His short stories were amongst the best ever written and appealed to millions starting from the rich to the impecunious. The Sotheby auction in London, a month ago, emphasizes the fact that his paintings were also extremely precious.

Unfortunately however, and disgracefully so, Bengalis of my generation do not appreciate an iota of his genius. If you pick a sample of 100 Bengalis between ages 20-30, I am dead confident that only a handful (if at all) will say that their favourite brand of music is Tagore songs, or their favourite novel is that written by Tagore. Since my college days, I have met a lot of people who have simply renounced his works. Shakespeare’s plays, George Harrison’s music, Milton, Shelley and Wordsworth’s poems seem to have a greater impact on young convent educated English-speaking Bengalis. Each of the individuals I mentioned is a genius in their own right but this lukewarm response towards someone who is our own is hardly appreciated.

Being an ardent follower of Tagore myself, I strongly iterate that people who are born Bengalis enjoy two distinct advantages over their non-Bengali counterparts – they can listen to Tagore songs and they can watch and understand Satyajit Ray movies. They should never let this opportunity go at any cost to understand these great men of our motherland who command unlimited veneration even from the rest of the world. Parents should instill in their offspring, the passion for Tagore and all his works; otherwise youngsters would lose, in more ways than one, the privilege of being a Bengali.