The name Tagore is synonymous with creativity infused with unnatural contemplation. It is also synonymous with the Word, prose,poem or song - for all Bengalis and the average cultured Indian. Few can hope to parallel Rabindranath's output and stature, his status as a polymoth through his work and his background as one of the Brahmo Samaj royalty shaped much of educated Indian thought in his age. To think that such a literary genius despised schooling and the mechanical assembly process that passes for education !
Born to a family of untold riches and unsurpassed intellectual genius, the young Rabi's grandfather, Prince Dwarkanath Tagore was a trader of opium and dined with Victorian royalty, amongst the first Indians to travel Europe. Ravindra called their family business " Death Trade " - an irony that will be revealed by this series.His own father, inheritor of this fiefdom chose to follow his spiritual calling and founded the Brahmo Samaj, an institution that was an instrument of intellectual, moral and spiritual Renaissance for the contemporary Bengal. He was called Maharishi by the populace, such was his zeal and he retired to the Himalayas for months at a time. Father to 13 children, of whom many turned to literature and the arts and became pioneers, he begot Ravindra as his youngest son. Their home was a lavish manor called Jorasanko, a staggeringly expansive collection of wings and mansions that housed the large Tagore joint family, it was their own version of the Buckingham palace and they the undisputed first family of Bengal.
Surrounded by poverty and prostitution, the neighbourhood was not something a child was allowed to venture and least of all have friends to play with. On the other hand, the age gap between him and his siblings was too disparate. The young Rabi, was a prince trapped in a bubble, with no child to play within Jorasanko. Schools were chosen for him and he escaped all of them successfully, his aversion to mechanical education was even pronounced at that young age. Reacting to his stifling home environment and lack of a real childhood he was bullied by the servants and would later acidly term that phase " Servocracy". His head would be dunked in water to discipline him and he would be confined to chalk circles. One can almost laugh out loud at the thought of this paragon of learning being such a handful and relegated like Sita to a line he wasn't to cross.
But his life changed irrevocably when the 9 year old bride of his older brother entered Jorasanko as the latest daughter-in-law and his sister- in-law.
Kadambari.
The White Lotus, synonymous with the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music and the fine arts.
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