'Tagore was inescapable'

(7th May was Rabindranath Tagore's 148th birth anniversary. New Delhi Film Society remembers Tagore. Premendra Mazumder goes beyond Tagore's Nobel Prize-winning literature to explore his amazing legacy in cinema, art, music and theatre. And on the rich Tagore adaptations on film by Satyajit Ray, Nitin Bose, Bimal Roy and others)


Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), poet, novelist, playwright, composer and painter, is the most significant cultural figure in 20th century India. He was among the first to recognise that cinema should have its own language. In 1929 he wrote, "The beauty and grandeur of this form in motion has to be developed in such a way that it becomes self-sufficient without the use of words."
Seven decades later, Rituparno Ghosh's film on Tagore's novel Chokher Bali (A Grain of Sand)--like much of Indian cinema--is still greatly dependent on words. Chokher Bali appealed to Ghosh for its "delicate interplay of relationships."
This delicate interplay has persuaded a number of filmmakers to adapt Tagore's stories to celluloid, including Satyajit Ray, Nitin Bose, Tapan Sinha and Kumar Shahani. Ray's immortal masterpiece Charulata (The Lonely Wife) is based on Tagore's novel Nastaneer (The Broken Nest), a thinly disguised autobiographical account of the intimate and complex relationships between the author, his elder brother and his wife. Ray believedthe film to behis best work.
Tagore created a new literary language and received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. Ray redefined cinematic language and wonthe Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1992.
In Charulata, apart fromTagore's narrative, Ray's musical score repeats motifs of two popular Tagore songs--Rabindra sangeet--Momo chittye and Phule phule. Apart from directing the documentary Rabindranath Tagore, headapted Tagore's Postmaster, Monihara and Samapti as Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), as well as his Ghare Baire (The Home and the World).
According to senior critic Chidananda Dasgupta, Ray never emerged from Tagore's shadow. Ray himself admits that Tagore's "influence was inescapable...we, as students, felt that Tagore was there all the time, hovering behind us or over our heads." Ray had studied at Tagore's open-air university Santiniketan, and Tagore's humanistic fusion of the classical Indian tradition and liberal Western thought is deeply engraved in Ray's art.
Ritwik Ghatak said of Tagore,"That man has culled all my feelings from long before my birth...I read him and find that...I have nothing new to say." In his Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-capped Star) and Subarnarekha, Ghatak uses Rabindra sangeet to express the poignancy of post-Partition Bengal.
Tagore himself had directed a film, Natir Puja, for New Theatres in 1932--a recording of his own dance-drama. Tapan Sinha adaptedTagore stories into film--Kabuliwala, Kshudita Pashan (Hungry Stone) and Atithi. Bimal Roy produced Kabuliwala in Hindi, directed by Hemen Gupta and starring Balraj Sahni. Nitin Bose adapted Tagore's novel Nauka Dubi as Nauka Dubi (Bengali) and Milan (Hindi). Kumar Shahani's Char Adhyay, based on Tagore's novel,is a love story set duringthe freedom struggle. It unwaveringly advances Tagore's humanist legacy.
(Premendra Mazumdar is a Kolkata based Film Critic & Festival Consultant. This piece was earlier published in DNA)