Renaissance Man

When my Dad visited India in 2004, he gifted me with a copy of Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, the Nobel Prize-winning collection of English translations of his verses. I never imagined that, two years later, I would get the chance to visit Tagore's ancestral home, which has been turned into a museum, and the university he started, in Kolkata.

Holding my breath, I wandered through the narrow corridors--into the room where Tagore was born, the one where he created his art, the one where he might have made love with his wife, the one where he must have told his kids stories as they sat on his knees, and coming full circle, the room where he breathed his last.

I was staggered by the illustriousness of his pedigree (and dazzled by the names on his family tree, wondering if the son and daughter I would like to have would be able to live down the names Nagendranath and Barnakumari); delighted to discover that, on top of being a poet, he was also a painter, a composer, and even a ballet dancer; impressed with how well traveled he was; and charmed with the paintings of the Bengali School, which he espoused.

After the tour, we sat on the floor sipping milk tea in tiny green and blue cups, while a girl from the university sang two of Tagore's verses in a beautiful, plaintive voice.

Afterwards, the museum's curators invited someone in our group to reciprocate with a performance, and Beth egged me on to sing a Filipino love song. I refused vehemently of course, not just because I knew the limits of my singing voice, but because I felt that anything anyone attempted at that moment could only sully the afternoon's poetry and romance.

(Tagore's poetry can be found in all decent bookstores. Take a peek at his artworks, which are less ubiquitous.)