Secret Lives: Rabindranath Tagore

(May 7, 1861 to August 7, 1941)

 Where the mind is without fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake…

DO YOU remember Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature for Gitanjali? He was the first Asian to be so honoured. Recall his flowing grey mane and smiling eyes? But he’s equally famous for the unusual gurukula or school he set up in 1901 at Shantiniketan, West Bengal. Besides, he’s the only poet ever whose songs were chosen as the national anthems of two countries ~ India and Bangladesh. Isn’t that remarkable?

What shaped the talent of this boy, named Rabi by his family? He was born on May 7, 1861, the second youngest of the nine sons and six daughters of Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi. Can you imagine life within a large joint family?

Rabi was never lonely. Not even when his infant brother died, leaving the future poet as the baby of the family. His closest companion was his older sister’s son, Satya.

The Tagore ancestral home lies in Kolkata’s Jorasanko. It often held over a thousand people in its inner courtyard for musical or theatrical gatherings. Rabi later wrote, “I do not remember a time when I could not sing.” No wonder his songs, or Rabindra Sangeet, are still so popular.

The teeming Tagore children faced a daily stream of tutors, each armed with a cane.  Thieir gruelling routine included wrestling and drawing. But Rabi was most fascinated by the skeleton-based anatomy lessons by Aghor Babu, the science teacher.

At five or six, Rabi often chose to play alone. He’d pick a large room, surrounded by verandahs with straight, tall railings, which he pretended were his students. The make-believe teacher would hit each railing with a cane to ensure discipline. Or else, he would stealthily creep into an old palanquin that rested in the mansion. With its curtains drawn, his imagination whisked him away to mysterious lands on impossible adventures.

Rabi hated his first school, the Oriental Seminary, where he was enrolled in 1868. If he didn’t do his lessons, he had to stand on a bench with his slate on his head. Isn’t that awful? He was often caned for daydreaming. Rabi spent hours looking out of the window at the blue sky, the leaves on the trees or the bright flowers. Perhaps that’s what inspired Shantiniketan, where lessons are held under shady trees, without classrooms.

Rabi missed his saintly Baba, Debendranath, who lived at Dalhousie, in the Himalayan foothills. At 11, the youngster took a long train trip to visit his father, despite Satya’s terrifying stories of how the vehicle would toss Rabi out of the window as it jerked along! After a cold morning bath, Debendranath would teach him Sanskrit, which Rabi loved. At dusk, Rabi’s Baba would point out the stars and planets during long walks. 

Debendranath asked absent-minded Rabi to keep their daily household accounts. Rabi’s notebook showed sums left over, even when it had all been spent! Sounds familiar to you?

Rabi was next sent to Kolkata’s Normal School. By this time, his older brothers were proud of Rabi’s poetic talent. Intrigued, the school principal made up two lines of poetry, challenging Rabi to complete the verse. He did, with ease and perfect sense.

As an adult, Rabi often doodled over unwanted words when his poems proved stubborn, until the page looked like a fantastical picture. These drawings are now at Shantiniketan.  In time, he came to be regarded as a father of modern Indian art.

And when his great-grandnephew spent a vacation with Rabi at Shantiniketan, he was promised a special treat for his constant colds. Guess what it was? Garlic ice-cream!

He was just 14 when he read out his poems at the Hindu Mela in Kolkata. That’s when the world first heard of Rabindranath Tagore, the poet who was proud to be an Indian. Does he sound like someone you’d like as a friend?