Tagore’s compositions brought live on stage

NAGPUR: The magic of Rabindranath

Tagore

’s literary works continues to attract people as artistes presented his poems, music, stories and dramas with aplomb at a programme organized to mark his birth anniversary at Scientific Society Hall on Wednesday.

The Bengali Association, Bengali Education Society (BES) and Saraswat Sabha Library had jointly organized the 157th birth anniversary of the legendary poet. Tagore’s birth anniversary falls on May 7.

The main attraction of the event was the presentations by noted ‘talk theatre’ artistes Jagannath and Urmimala Basu from Kolkata on Tagore’s literature. Both the artistes are pioneers in bringing talk theatre to a live-on-stage environment, devoid of any sets, props and make-up. Their performances in

live

radio plays, broadcast on Vividh Bharati and FM channels are acclaimed in this genre too.

Commencing the programme, singer Rakhi aka Sarmishtha Jha beautifully rendered music

compositions

by Tagore like ‘Amar na bola banir’, ‘Tomari name nayono melinu’, ‘Tumi he surer agun lagiye file...’ and ‘Je dhubopodo diyecho badhi’ and were applauded by the audience.

The Basu couple enthralled the audience with their paragon diction. Urmimala started with the recitation of ‘Tumi ki keboli chhabi’. This was followed by reading a couple of letters from Rabindranath, one by Urmimala and the other by Jagannath. They rendered the immortal ‘Karna Kunti sambad’ with a dramatic flavour.

They followed it with ‘Totakahini’, a short story and ‘Malancha’, a portion of the famous novel by Tagore. A fun-filled play ‘Chintasheel’ put a lighter note in the emotionally charged environment. They finished the programme with elan, reading a dramatized edited version of ‘Shesher Kabita’, the last novella of the ultra modernist trend by Tagore.

Speaking to TOI, secretary of BES Pradip Ganguly said, “Tagore has worked extensively on dramas, essays and more, besides songs, which are neglected. We wish to provide an opportunity to the people to get acquainted with this literature as well.”

“Tagore always thought about the welfare of all. Not just a particular location or so, but of the entire universe. His thoughts focused on social welfare and balance, and happiness of mankind. We aim to throw light on those and spread the same among all,” he added.