My acquaintance with the bard, kobiguru, as most people call him, dates back to my toddlerhood when my mother used to sit with 'Sanchayita' (An anthology of Tagore's well known poems) and recite one poem after the other. I enjoyed the rhyme 'Khantoburir Didishashuri' a lot. Gradually, I learnt most of the children's poems written by him thanks to my mother's persuasion and the elocution tests in my school.
As I embarked upon the journey of teenhood, I felt his poems seeping into me slowly. We had 'Sankalita' volumes as one of our Bengali textbooks. The best part of the 'Sankalita' volumes was that the poems were selected according to the age of the students. The poems like 'Samanyo Khoti', 'Poroshmoni', 'Nirjhorer Shopnobhongo' had an immense impact on me. Thereafter, I was introduced to his plays and novels, not to mention his songs which were the quintessential part of the mornings in our house. Frankly speaking, I didn't find his songs as interesting as his novels and plays (excluding dance dramas), at first. They were no better than the opulent lullabys to me, the ones which the so called cultured people listen to. When people swore by the 'Rabindrasangeets' I was pretty content with revising and re-revising 'Chirokumar Sabha' and 'Tasher Desh', the plays which were filled with sarcasm and dark humour.
How I was taken by the 'opulent lullabys', I don't know. Maybe during a stage of infatuation when coincidentally somebody sang 'Pran chaay chokkhu na chaay' or maybe when I was spending a restless night after my mother's death and my mobile's playlist offered me 'Jete jete akla pothey'.
When people go overboard with the Rabindrajayanti celebrations every year, I quietly remember him, my quintessential guardian, through his songs, poems and those long lost evenings which resonated with my mother's consecutive recitations of Tagore's poems.
Happy Birthday in advance, my Bard! Your literary works are like an ocean to me, where every wave seems new, every single day.
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