Three weeks ago, Kaberi and I hosted the online launch event for Justin Smith’s latest documentary, Manikda: The Mystique of Pather Panchali. He had made the film to mark the birth centenary of Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who was born on 2 May 1921. Through Justin’s Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to complete the film…
Category: Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941): Nobel laureate, poet, philosopher, composer, dramatist, novelist, artist, dance creator, educational pioneer, … and all-round genius
Staging the first Online Sahityasabha
Yesterday, I was helping Kaberi and friends stage their first Online Sahithyasabha . We postponed the start by half an hour (compared to what I had announced in my blog post last weekend) as it would otherwise have been very early for Debangana, Irabati and Suparno to perform from Texas. The other performers were in…
Online Sahityasabha
Every Tuesday evening in Santiniketan, the home town of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, he established the tradition known as Sahityasabha (“literary gathering”) for children studying at Patha Bhavan. It is a performance at which schoolchildren are invited to perform their own creations, including works by Tagore, based on recommendations from their teachers. This is how…
A virtual performance
When the lockdown prevented us from celebrating Tagore’s birth anniversary at Shakespeare’s Birthplace as in previous years, we created a virtual performance.
Virtual birthday party 2
After the experience of my first virtual birthday party last year, as well as a virtual New Year’s Party a few months ago, I decided (rather late) to organise another virtual birthday party. In spite of the short notice, between Kaberi and me, we managed to invite at least double the number of friends compared…
Watch Tagore’s dance-dramas for free this weekend
Many of us around the world are in lockdown at the moment due to the coronavirus pandemic. So Kaberi and I thought we should share some of Tagore’s humanity and help people celebrate the Bengali New Year (on April 14) at home by making these films available for free this weekend.
Santiniketan, Tagore and tradition
To paraphrase Marcellus’ observation in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Something is rotten in the town of Santiniketan. The Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University, Professor Bidyut Chakraborty, used the Upasana (traditionally a Brahmo ceremony to celebrate the day when Maharishi Debendranath Tagore and twenty others became Brahmo in 1843 – the 7th day of the Poush month in 1250,…
Tagore in Bulgaria
Last week, Kaberi and I visited Bulgaria with a group of friends. While we were in Sofia, we took the opportunity to explore the two theatres where Rabindranath Tagore had made speeches during his visit in 1926. There are limited details of this visit in English but several websites in Bulgarian, such as this one,…
What pro-EU march in London?
Yesterday, Kaberi and I joined thousands of people from all over the UK (and even beyond) on the March for Change in central London to stop Brexit. However, according to BBC News & Sky, the march never happened – or at least was less important than “Learner driver took 21 practical tests in a year”…
How to recognise fascism
London Mayor Sadiq Khan caused controversy recently by likening US President Donald Trump to the “fascists of the 20th century”. Far right leaders in different EU countries have similarly been accused of being fascists. But how can you tell if the accusations are justified, or simply tasteless name-calling? Italian writer Umberto Eco was born in 1932, 10…