An anthology of Tagore’s visits to and his association with various facets of life in Shillong makes interesting reading despite poor proof-reading, says Bimala Basu Dutta
TAGORE AND Pineland Shillong by Uma Purkayastha carries a vivid description about Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s three visits to Shillong and his association with various facets of life here. The book by the former principal of Government Girls’ Higher Secondary School, Shillong is well researched, and is basically a compilation of the works by various authors who penned Tagore’s link with the pine city. Therefore, this book can at best be defined as an anthology. Published by Asian Confluence, an initiative of Divya Jeevan Foundation, in the spring of 2014, the 138-page paperback book is priced at Rs 250.
The book gives the readers arguably for the first time full description of the three visits by the Nobel Laureate to the pine city in 1919, 1923 and 1927. The author has given the history associated with the three houses where Tagore lived during his sojourn here. The book has some historical letters which are perhaps not known to many in this age besides Bengali songs written in Roman script. But the translation work of poems by the author of this book is lost in its essence. E.g. Tagore’s poem ‘Prachi’ (The East), which he wrote during his stay at Jitbhumi in 1923 whereas another poem by Tagore, which he wrote three months prior to his demise among others translated by the author lacks finesse – which one usually hunts for in poetic and literary works.
Though the book is a well researched anthology but the hard work is lost in lack of proof reading and editing, which could have done away much of the sentence framing errors, spelling mistakes, incorrect names of people, missing punctuation marks, mismatched font sizes that adorns the whole book, slapdash paragraph layouts and the rest of it. These shortcomings if not anything else belittle the book. The photographs at the end of the book are magnificent but they should have been in colour. I read with great interest the chapters – Tagore’s Influence on the Indigenous People of Meghalaya, Tagore and the National Anthem of India and Passing Away of the Poet Laureate – but the errors diverted my attention and appreciation for the book. The entire book including these chapters besides Tagore’s visit to Bangladesh and other description in details indicates clearly the pain undertaken by the author, who remains steadfast in her effort.
In his foreword, the chairman of Asian Confluence and former Rajya Sabha member, Dr BB Dutta has full praise for the author and described her book as “a rich addition to the corpus of literature…” He said that the three houses – Brookside Mansion (1919), Jitbhumi (1923) and Sidley House (1927) – in which the poet put up, were all enveloped in green then. “I would be happier if this book had some sketches of the town in those days and of the bungalows he stayed in, particularly Brookside Mansion, which had housed him during his first visit to Shillong. May Uma’s next book will have all these,” he wished. Dutta concluded that the author can draw reassurance from the fact that the young generation of intellectuals and researchers from the hills have already plunged into Tagore’s oeuvre and have embraced him as their very own.
The author in her preface has rather acknowledged why I prefer to like her book more as an anthology. She said, “As I researched in academic circles, I noted very little had been written about the time Tagore spent in Shillong though there were enough references to his works inspired by his Shillong visits.” The author besides depending on references by other authors has also interviewed several yesteryear senior citizens of Shillong. She did not have the blessings of internet when she started with this venture rather had to depend on the print medium. “Eventually, the material I had painstakingly gathered began to take the shape of this book,” she writes.
However, the author says, “…I may humbly claim that this is the first book written in English, from the Northeast, on Tagore’s visit to erstwhile Greater Assam and Shillong,” which has been received with an amount of skepticism by those who have come across Uma’s book. Nevertheless, it will serve well to those who want a complete account of Tagore’s visit to this region.