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  Rathindranath Tagore’s Bengali biography of Rabindranath Tagore is a empathic and nuanced portrait of his father, creating a portrait of his life and fortune–an excerpt from Chaitali’s translation-an exclusive Special Feature on Tagore’s birth anniversary. An excerpt from the memoir ‘Pitrismriti‘: Baba named our houseboat Padma. The name reflected the love he had for the river Padma. The boat was closely associated with Shilaidaha, located at the estuary of Padma and Gorai rivers. Although it was my father’s favorite boat, our family too have close association with the Padma boat. So, many things will remain incomplete if I don’t talk about it.              The boat carried a history of its own. Most likely it was built in Dhaka as commissioned by my great grandfather Dwarakanath Tagore. Its structure was similar to that of a barrow, although a bit larger. The rooms were very spacious and as comfortable as the rooms in our home. At first, the boat remained moored on the banks of the Ganges in Calcutta. Maharshi Debendranath, my grandfather, travelled in this houseboat. As mentioned in his autobiography, it was with this boat he left for Varanasi in 1846. When the news of his father’s death in London reached him, he was on his way to Varanasi. Hearing the news, he turned the boat around and came to Calcutta. When the Maharshi did not use the boat any longer, it was kept at Shilaidaha.             Before the railways, boats were the standard means of travel, especially in Bengal, where there are no dearth of rivers and canals. Landlords and well-off businessmen kept many types of boats. They used to have bajrah, the pleasure-boats for their own use. These boats were rather wide in structure and flat bottomed. This enabled the boats to break water and move forward, even in the shallow rivers. Usually, the bajrahs consisted of two rooms fitted with all the amenities. It was customary to get them made by the craftsmen in Dhaka, they’re masters in this profession! Once the steam engines came, the use of waterways decreased, and the utility of boats also disappeared. Bajrahs are rarely seen on the rivers these days!  Read the full excerpt on Different Truths– Social Journalism platform

  It opens up like a split-second vision in a thunderous flash, a fleeting, evanescent image conjuring up the past and future. Like a photographic ideal. Both for the seer and the seen. A moving mirror, like a sacred vision, pirouettes against the canvas of the blue limitlessness, rearranging the signs of the physical universe with an infinite array of glistening reflections. She feels as if she is looking through a glass of hard rock ice beyond the tunnel of her suffering. A passage from night to a bright day, when the image suddenly bleeds before her eyes, leaps to her mind and swells, producing a strange intoxication of a vision that unfurls in the breeze around the placid lake. There, against the pure light, it is impossible to feel the edge of the abyss, the desolating depths of darkness and evil. It anchors her, shelters her in this azure canopy of bewitching luminosity. It has been like that for her for quite some time now. Images appearing and disappearing, leaving her to wonder whether those were more dreamt than seen. But the pure sensation that comes over, a compressed energy running through her, dismantling the infinite, dizzying her to merge with the bright light on the other end of the tunnel. No, that is no hallucination. There’s a hidden energy, a hidden will she knows in the limpid grace of water, as it tries to place her out of her own self, connecting her with a silence, untouched. She tries to decode the message, in its final form; it vanishes, making her its hypnotic prisoner. What was it, she wonders? Could it be the sign of a future humanity promising eternity? By Chaitali Sengupta Published at: https://visualverse.org/submissions/a-silence-un-touched/ Image by Stefan Keller given as a prompt at Visual verse

Jaani tomar ojona nahi go…… a melodious songby Tagore, with deeply spiritual meanings. This translation of mine was published in Geetabitan.com in the year 2016. The secrets in my heart, is not unknown to thee Much as I wish to keep it a secret, My eyes reveal every bit of it. Afraid of saying what I don’t mean I keep away, far away from you. On the wayside, I stay away And yet you come to know What lurks in the secrets of my heart. The shadowy silence, in my hidden, secluded altarIs shattered by your pealing laughter. Every desolate hours of mine Is spent in deep rumination As I, unmindfully wield a song You hear every now and then And come to know What lurks in the secret of my heart. – Translated by Chaitali Senguptahttps://www.geetabitan.com/lyrics/rs-j/jaani-tomar-ajaana-english-translation.html Picture credit: Free Photo, Pixabay, James Wheeler.