Remembering the Master …

A few days back a colleague from US happened to visit Adobe’s Noida office. Although I don’t directly work with him, we had a small friendship built due to his interest in cricket (the updates of which frequently spill in to official status reports) and my interest in world culture. He was strikingly different from the stereotyped American. We had a good exchange views of things from ‘educating children the right way’ to Obama’s Nobel prize (Its surprising to see how so many Americans dislike George ‘War’ Bush). And when our guest goes back he surprises with his invocation of Tagore’s Gitanjali (‘Old and New’ here) to put across how he felt. That began a burst of rumination. Tagore’s life was one of the first biographies I read as it was one of our Telugu texts. It is hard for any child not to empathize with his early childhood travails and it was hilarious to read. But as he grows up you see that he was a man lifted from the age of The Renaissance and gift-wrapped to India to begin its own renaissance. The amount of Tagore’s creative output and the span of his work render any explicit glorification of his skills totally unnecessary. After all, he is perhaps the only person to write the national anthems of two countries !!

However, Tagore’s finest quality and the one that is often less acknowledged is his perspective on the cultural and spiritual diversity of the world. That is what made him the bridge between the West and East. The western world was jolted in to a sudden realization of the mystic beauty of Indian culture and the sentiments of the people of India through his magnum-opus ‘Gitanjali’. The spirituality, serenity and charm of his poems were an awakening to the west that was lost in the beauty of its own poets and never realized what was beyond its boundaries. Tagore cut across them, and in a span of less than a year. And the rest as they say, is history … from Einstein to the belligerent Chinese Communists everyone wanted to hear him!!

Vishwa Kavi

Demonstrating Oriental beauty to the west was only half of the job, however. Tagore’s wisdom is reflected in the way he did not allow himself to be carried away by the patriotic fervor that swept most of his contemporaries totally justifying his title Universal Poet. Even amidst the horrendous British oppression he maintained his vehement opposition of unbridled nationalism while he got the right message across to the British by rejecting the knighthood. Here we see another great quality of Tagore. Despite his socio-political activism and his influence on people he kept away from active politics for most part. Even when he had to express his displeasure with the nationalists’ boycott of foreign goods he chose his favorite way to do that : ‘Ghare Baire‘ (The Home and the World) is one of the most thought-provoking novels ever written. The protagonist Nikhil’s struggle is that of Tagore himself. This is where I can empathize with his feelings. Even after 80 years of its writing this novel is relevant even today.  As a witness to the astonishing disparities that tear my heart between the chrome-coated office buildings and my sleepy little village, I ask myself .. why do we still have walls around us? And why do we fail to respect each other? . Do we need more painful lessons before we realize that ‘home’ is really all the world?. Tagore would have been pained to see that of all lands his ‘Shonar Bangla’ failed to embrace his ideals. I wonder why this novel is never made a part of our readings since it so strongly (and correctly) emphasizes the need to have a balanced view of the world.

The third and a not-so enduring contribution of Tagore is on the education front. As many of his deeds were, this was also inspired by his appreciation of the merits of the west and the east. Visva-Bharati stands as a failing testimony to his efforts. A little know fact is that his multi-cultural educational efforts inspired similar efforts at a number of places in the world. Its a pity that it did not take off well. A man of such intelligence could not have been wrong in judging the effectiveness of his methodology. Probably some day, we will see its revival again.  Our education today is driven by a mad rush to get to the top lacking even a semblance of balance, there is no time to teach the worth of human qualities like compassion, no time to stop and appreciate the beauty of even the smallest gifts of creation.  Even arts like dancing, painting and poetry are being forced upon children so that they can become better ‘all-rounders‘ than others. Fear of being left-behind in the race drives our pursuits and not the intellectual-curiosity from within .  I wonder if this was the world that Tagore dreamed of : where the mind can be without fear. I shudder to think of what is to come and I fervently wish Gurudev was here to guide us once again :

Wither the heaven of freedom, Gurudev? Tired, I am, waiting for that time of the brave.
All your brethren abandoned reason, thought and action.
Tirelessly strive, they did, to raise a thousand walls to split the nation.
All hope seems now lost. Darkness sweeps the land from the hills to the coast.
Mind filled with fear, heart desperate for truth .. I join my hands in a silent prayer,
Pleading with fervor, for the second coming of you, my Master!!
Awaken your country once again, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore!!

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