The sentimental Bengali and Tagore

He is eighty five years old but retains his wonderful sense of humour. He comes to the library every day and checks the Financial Times for stock reports and other news. He also checks on the colour of my sarees and over the years he has identified my colours which he calls earth colours .Any deviation he is quick to point out that these are not my colours . Sometimes I protest when I feel he is typecasting me .But he is too smart to listen to me .He belongs to one of the richest and most aristocratic Muslim families of Kolkata.  He is a domiciled Bengali and feels Bengalis are a sentimental nation. As a high school boy in one of the city’s top schools his Bengali friends had advised him “Never go out with a Bengali girl. They never leave you and then you can not go out with anybody else .Even if you leave them they don’t.” .His four South Indian friends went out with Bengali girls and ended up by marrying them. They did not go out with any other women. What a sad plight.

Bengalis are obsessed with Tagore and nowadays there is too much of Tagore everywhere. With the Rabindrasangeet playing at important traffic crossings in the city, he feels we are going to tire soon.  When I asked him whether he disliked Tagore he was quick to respond and narrated his family linkages with Tagore.

Tagore visited and stayed with their extended family in the Iranian city of Shiraz during his trip to the middle-east. A stuffed musical nightingale was brought from Vienna and made to sing every morning as a wake-up call for the poet.  Tagore was influenced by Hafiz’s poetry and had learnt Farsi .The word Hafiz means someone who has memorised the Quran –Quran Hafiz. Hafiz was a Sufi and he is still remembered for his soul stirring verses .The tale about his encounter with Timur Lang is famous. When he wrote that he could give away the beautiful cities of Samarkand and Bukhara for the sake of the mole in his Hindu beloved’s cheek Timur was furious. The  beautiful cities of Bukhara and Samarkand were Timur’s treasures. Such was the power of Hafiz’s imagination. In ancient days Bengali zamindars used to learn Farsi and lot of Farsi words are now part of the Bengali vocabulary though pronounced in the Bengali way. Mazumdar , Sircar , Peshkar are many such words.

Once my old friend took his uncle from Iran to a programme of Tagore songs .His uncle spoke Farsi and did not understand a word of Bengali. After the recital his uncle remarked that the songs reminded him of his bad debts. I could imagine the poor man’s state of the mind. Without understanding the poetry how can one enjoy Tagore’s music