Visiting Tagore's house was a secret wish which I didn't think would happen...but it happily did. Even finding it was an adventure. The most surprising being that no cab guy and no one on the streets seemed to have a clue where it was....or what it was..or even w.h.o it was. In fact one guy even asked "Tagore? woh hai kaun? ".
Couldn't figure if he was more perplexed, or we were.
We came up with two theories to explain this. One that maybe we were being a little presumptuous.... was it possible that Tagore is known and revered more in the literate circles. Alternately, the Tagore's are actually Thakur's (Tagore is the anglicized name) and might be more widely known by that name, the house is called 'Thakur Wadi'.
Anyways, don't know which ....but a long and winding wild goose chase in yellow cab with a grouchy cab driver later, we found the place. (yellow cabs have no gps, and he was sceptical of following ours after having been misled once)
A few steps into the gate and we were transfixed and transported. Imagine the scene, this stately old red mansion.....a light drizzle......pretty much just us.........and then this pipe music.....an amazingly haunting and beautiful rendition of Tagore's poetry. It was just magical, a goose bumpy moment .....and added so much to the feel and experience of the place.
(If Gandhi's biography was a huge influence on me growing up....Tagore's was even more...I think I had a secret crush on him for a longish while)
A few steps into the gate and we were transfixed and transported. Imagine the scene, this stately old red mansion.....a light drizzle......pretty much just us.........and then this pipe music.....an amazingly haunting and beautiful rendition of Tagore's poetry. It was just magical, a goose bumpy moment .....and added so much to the feel and experience of the place.
(If Gandhi's biography was a huge influence on me growing up....Tagore's was even more...I think I had a secret crush on him for a longish while)
The house is a stately 1784 family mansion, in which Tagore was born, and died. It now exhibits several of the family artifacts, some of his paintings, his poetry, his way of life, his living rooms, some of his quotations which were so worth staying with. There's also a picture of him with Einstein.
It's only there that we learnt that Tagore started painting at the ripe age of seventy two, and there was then such an outpouring through art that he has this huge body of work, and this museum was able to buy back around forty two of the paintings.
Rest in pics. Photography isn't allowed within the premises, so it's all from the outside, except the one which I happened to find online. And I put it here because it captured a moment.
The arch at entrance to the lane, which I understand reads "Tagore was born here, and it's here he breathed his last"
The story of the chair.....there's a photograph on the wall with him in the chair, and it suddenly gave me this little overwhelming and ghostly feel of connection....
That's one of the wings of the house, taken from the kitchen
I'm now all inspired to go back and read more of Tagore :)
It's only there that we learnt that Tagore started painting at the ripe age of seventy two, and there was then such an outpouring through art that he has this huge body of work, and this museum was able to buy back around forty two of the paintings.
Rest in pics. Photography isn't allowed within the premises, so it's all from the outside, except the one which I happened to find online. And I put it here because it captured a moment.
The arch at entrance to the lane, which I understand reads "Tagore was born here, and it's here he breathed his last"
The story of the chair.....there's a photograph on the wall with him in the chair, and it suddenly gave me this little overwhelming and ghostly feel of connection....
That's one of the wings of the house, taken from the kitchen
I'm now all inspired to go back and read more of Tagore :)
No comments:
Post a Comment