WHEN TAGORE MEETS KALIDAS

It will be worthwhile offering Tagore homage by being original in our approach to life's problems and by being creative in our endeavours. Mere worshipping the Ganga by its waters, as the Bengali adage goes, is not productive of sufficient good. Tagore was preeminently a creative person and a thinker par excellence, and he must be studied analytically and then a synthesis of his ideas must be allowed to germinate in our brains for effective work to be done on him and in his footsteps, seeking inspiration from his life and attainments.

For far too long we have lived under the shadow of great men and they have been in such a large abundance in our recent historical past following the Bengal Renaissance. But the flow of ideas that had once inundated our national mind has now reduced to a trickle. It is owing to this tendency to eulogise these seminal personalities without serious study of their works. A cursory glance through a few quotes or passages of the writings of these titans of the Indian awakening does in no way do justice to them nor does it show our devotion very much in a bright light. Intellectual standards have declined over the decades post independence and now they are on a precipitous course to nullity. It is here that Tagore, Vivekananda, Aurobindo and other stalwarts of the Renaissance become increasingly relevant for the polity to take an upward turn.

Tagore and Kalidas are two of our all-time poetic greats and it is meet that they both be studied in tandem by the youth for which, though, the knowledge of Sanskrit will be a sine qua non. Let the Governments at the Centre and the States take special initiative to open Tagore-Kalidas Centres throughout India for the dissemination of the poetic message of the duo. Interestingly, Tagore had in his famous poem entitled 'Sheykaal' fancied himself in Kalidas' shoes in the court of King Vikramaditya and had thought that he would have fared rather well in his role. Let us, therefore, bring them together, Tagore and Kalidas, in our bid to bridge poetic distance and foster culture, ancient and modern, in an ideal mix for future fruition of it to take place in the coming generations of aspirant poets and litterateurs.