In Love... with Tagore!

Rabindranath Tagore – one claims that the Bengali life is incomplete without his touch… and one claims right. There is a song to match every mood. A poem to match every occasion. A story for every age. Simply put, a creation to match the sensibility of every generation.

It is in Tagore’s songs that the quintessential Bengali has found articulation of love in its myriad forms. Be it patriotic love, romantic love, motherly love, devotional love or simply the love of nature… Tagore has breathed life into every emotion that has ever caressed the human heart. The magic this maestro has woven into words can only be celebrated in his own words – such is his distinction, such command over the language.

When Tagore penned -

"সখী ভাবনা কাহারে বলে.. সখী যাতনা কাহারে বলে

তোমরা যে বল দিবস রজনী "ভালোবাসা" "ভালোবাসা"

সখী ভালোবাসা কারে কয়? সে কি কেবলি যাতনাময়?"

-  he simply took the concept of romantic love to a level beyond common affair. He taught one to fall in love with the concept of love, transcending the mundane pain, heartbreak, tears and hurt. In his songs one found the eternal joy of unconditional love, be it in the anticipation of meeting the beloved, the mesmerising effect of new found love, cherishing the eternality of a bond or the heartache of losing one’s love. Tagore’s songs have added to the romance of nostalgia and revealed the nuances of love with a heart-warming subtlety that helps the feeling mature, that binds people together in a strange, unwavering faith in the emotion.

Tagore’s love songs reveal such a multitude of emotions within the boundary of romantic love that one is spellbound...and ready to lose oneself in it.  His songs never fail to paint a melancholic smile on a lover’s face, draw a tear from another’s eyes and touch a chord in a loving heart.  One hundred and fifty years of living with the legend has yet not been able to wean off his magic from the Bengali’s life.

It is only because of the innocence that reverberates in every love song be it that of mirth, sadness or even pretence, that draws one to him and ties one with him in an unbreakable bond. One identifies with his words at a level of ‘পরম আত্মীয়তা’... he seems the soulmate to all. He attracts and enthrals one with his words drenched in melody and one ends up falling in love. It is indeed a helpless fall. There is no way out. Every Bengali has hummed Tagore when he or she has been in love. And without that, yes, the Bengali life would have been incomplete.

"তুমি রবে নীরবে...হৃদয়ে মম"

The genius has lived on and will live on forever in the Bengali’s life...silently, till that one moment comes where life at that instance seems a vacuum without his touch, his words, his music, his presence. It is that one defining moment in the Bengali’s life that probably defines his or her entire journey...and it is in this defining moment that the Bengali’s love affair with the maestro becomes ethereal.