Let me tell you this upfront - Rabindra Sangeet isn't everybody's cup of tea. Unlike other popular genres, say, Kishore Kumar songs, it lacks en masse appeal because Tagore's compositions do not lend themselves to be readily unleashed like tere naina sawan bhadon, the way a spirited Kishore Kumar fan would in response to ek gaana ho jaai; and at desi parties you will invite weird and sometimes condescending looks if you tell them you are into Rabindra Sangeet. So, I don't. This blog is for the sake of those kind minority who I know would listen to with sympathetic ears about what else I have been up to these days.
I chanced into Rabindra Sangeet many years ago in Bombay because of my cousin Nagesh Havanur who had in his possession an obscure cassette of Hemanta Mukherjee. I don't think he was into RS himself, but he had a fascination for original Bengali compositions that had Hindi children. I have listened to a good deal of RS ever since.
What is it about Rabindra Sangeet that I find soothing? The melody of the composition? The sweetness of the language? The baritone voice of Hemanth Kumar? Or hmm..that Bengali girl of Hostel 11? I still cannot explain why I find myself strangely drawn to Rabindra Sangeet even though much of its lyrical meaning remains alien to me. Furthermore, I have been intrigued to no less extent by the Nobel Laureate's artistic creativity that churned over two thousand poems, composing them into lasting melodies.
It was only recently that I was able to cast aside my inhibitions and ask around for a teacher; and not surprisingly enough, for it is the Bay area, a Bengali friend of mine was able to find a RS scholar (that's what they like to be known as) who was willing to teach me.
Historical contexts below are based on the book - Rabindranath Tagore: The singer and his song by Reba Som and conversations in the RS class.
RS scholars will tell you that Tagore's songs have to be first visualized in order to appreciate the rich gamut of emotions he captured. Like me, if you are not a Bengali, you will have to rely on the threadbare translations before soaking yourself into the melody of the songs.
Tagore saw human nature in nature's nature. While describing the drag of famine or the splendor of spring, he projected into them the sensitivities of overlapping human emotions. Reba Som gives many tidbits from Tagore's writings:
"The spring breeze passed like the whispers of long lost secrets"
"In the plunging waterfall was the sense of total surrender to the inevitable"
"The fragrance of flowers that wafted across were memories of long forgotten moments"
"In the fresh green of new leaves was the desire to begin afresh, to reinvent oneself and cast off old mores"
Purano shei
Rabindranath was seven when the nine year Kadambari came into the Tagore household as a shy bride of Tagore's elder brother. She found in her home a perfect playmate in the lonely Rabi. She would celebrate her dolls' wedding with Rabi, quarreling with him for letting out her caged birds. Together they graduated from childhood through adolescence to youth. Together they learnt to read and write, and together they fell in love with music and poetry. However, soon after Tagore's marriage, in her full bloom of youth Kadambari died an unnatural death leaving Tagore devastated. In Purano shei, written around that period, you can feel the poet's poignant wish to meet his lost and unattainable platonic friend. Here is the translation by Reba Som:Memories of those days, can one forget them, ever!
Can one forget those glances and outpourings of the heart?
Come once more, my friend, come unto my heart
Telling tales of joy and sadness let us fill our hearts,
We have plucked flowers at dawn, swung on swings
Played on the flute and sung under the bokul tree,
Alas, somewhere along the way we parted
Going our separate ways.
Come once more, my friend, come unto my heart
And her memory continued to inspire many more poems in the years that followed.
It feels like Hemant-da is holding your hand when you sing along with him, like I do here in purano sei!
Nilo Anjono
This song celebrates the onset of monsoon after a prolonged drought. In Tagore's poetry, as observed earlier, rain dances in merriment, clouds hold each other like brothers in arms, flowers feel sad if the bee doesn't stop by, trees bid a tearful good bye to winter before giving a welcoming hug to spring - nature has complex mood swings much like humans.
Translation, even if you are the master of the language can seldom be accurate. (e.g., what is the English word for gambhir? or shokha? no, sakhi is more than a mere friend and not necessarily a lover.) With fidelity to the original near impossible, the translator at the best hopes to recapture the poem's ambiance. As another chap nicely said, "I sometime realize the feelings and emotions expressed by a word in a language are like birds and bees clinging onto that tree in a big forest. If I uproot the tree and plant it in another forest the birds and bees don't often go with it. Their attachment is more with the forest and less with a tree."
Notwithstanding the above I have dared to paraphrase Tagore's poem Nilo Anjono with the help of verbatim translations from my RS teacher:
The dark shadows of the deep blue clouds
have turned the majestic sky solemn
The forest! Restless inside, her body shivers
Whilst the crickets chirrup as though they were her anklets
The scorching earth thirstily awaits
the downpour of nectar from heaven
and greets the rain,
as she splatters her song to the
rhythm of the roaring thunder
The kadamba flowers are deeply engulfed
in their own fragrance of happiness
The new buds raise like victorious flags
The captive seeds within, yearning to sprout
spread themselves all over the welcoming earth,
emancipated at last
And the festive temples celebrate the joyous season
How serene! How solemn!
And here is how it sounds - a recording from our class
Kar milono:
This song dwells on the fruitlessness of a virohee's pursuit. (And how on earth can you translate the word virohee?) Tagore must have been an advaiti. I am guessing here the gist:With whom are you yearning to conjoin, hey virohee?
You have lost your way in this dense and difficult forest
Your mind is bereft, void of peace and happiness
Stop searching all around and
Look inside, at the one standing on her lotus feet!
How radiant! how uncommonly beautiful!
The Divinity shining inside your own self!
Ekla Cholo
The song written during the peak of India's freedom movement oozes patriotic fervor all over while exhorting the listener:
Don't hesitate to walk alone and speak alone
even if your cohorts cower and mutely face the wall
even when your path turns red from the thorns under your tread
Walk alone, walk alone nevertheless
When there is none to hold the torch on the stormy night
ignite your heart with the thunderous flame of your pain
and let the lone light from your heart lead your path
Ekla cholo was recently revived and re-purposed for Vidya Balan to draw courage for her mission in the movie Kahani and Amitabh Bachchan's towering rendition of Ekla Cholo sky-rocketed the song's popularity.
Here is me doing Ekla Cholo, not the modern Amitabh's version, but in it's classic vintage form.
2020 Update - Cocktail of Urdu poetry and Bengali songs:
I have a penchant for Urdu poetry too for the wide rage of emotions you can feel even while watching someone struggle with the translation. With a friend of mine I have been into discovering matching Urdu poems for the Bengali songs I love, and the cocktail has been enchanting (at least for me). Here is one I invite you to sample after having come this far in my blog: Ei raat tomar amar
