It was a chance encounter.
We were looking for a table, and the empty spaces were deep into the room. We chatted with the two who were seated at the table as we proceeded to have a tasty South Indian lunch, which included aviyal--a favorite of mine.
During the small talk with strangers that turned out to be quite informative, he described one of his projects that incorporated Rabindra Sangeet, the compositions by Rabindranath Tagore.
The last time anybody even mentioned Rabindra Sangeet was during my graduate school years. Whether they loved it or not, the Bengali graduate school friends were all too familiar with it. And now, a complete stranger talks about it? And about how he brings it into a play? Life is simply fascinating.
I wanted to listen what he had to say, and stayed away from boring everybody about the couple of months that I lived in Calcutta. Rabindra Sangeet was around me every morning, from the radios of the homes and the tea shops. Rasgullas seemed to taste even better with Rabindra Sangeet in the background.
Tagore was a man of literature. And the arts. And science too. A Renaissance man. And a mystic.
I came across a poem by Kabir that Tagore translated into the English language. One mystic relaying the work of another mystic that Kabir was. One of the many poems by Kabir that Tagore translated.
I wonder if Tagore set this poem to music too!
There's A Moon Inside My Body
THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamours for the I and the Mine, his works are as naught:
When all love of the I and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done.
For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away.
The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but it seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass.
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