Keya Sarkar: Touching Tagore

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On one of my routine trips to Kolkata to see my mother, I happened to take the early morning train which leaves Santiniketan at 6.30 am. Normally this train is empty and if one is traveling by AC, it is a great time to catch up on reading.

I got in armed with my book but was surprised to find the compartment almost full. Soon, I realised that a large contingent was travelling together and hence the crowd. From the conversation I gathered that they were poets and writers from the US who had come to Kolkata for the book fair. Since the fair was cancelled, foreign visitors were obviously being taken for assorted junkets and this group from the US had Santiniketan in their destiny. The group comprised many NRIs (with their obvious ways) and many of various ethnic origins but now all living in the US. They were being accompanied and escorted by a Bengali poet who is seen often on television taking up fights (as part of the Bengali intelligentsia) on behalf of the ruling party.

I was seated next to an American poet and we got chatting. He started telling me about his experience of Santiniketan and soon came to the museum. For any poet, the Tagore museum must be a place of pilgrimage, but before he could proceed, I cut him short and said that it is indeed a pity that a museum for a person of the stature of Rabindranath Tagore so lacks in imagination. Since I am embarrassed by the feedback from most visitors to the museum, Indian and foreign, I thought I would preempt similar comments.

He agreed but it was what he said after that blew my mind. "There are some new recruits at the museum and we plan to get them to visit the Smithsonian in order to educate them on how to make the Tagore museum better."

I thought he was joking but he was actually dead serious. My jaw dropped, I recovered and gathered strength to ask, "But why must the nation wait till these new recruits with no background in the subject learn tips at the Smithsonian? If it is recognised that the Tagore museum (desperately) needs a makeover, why can't we hire the best men in the world?" Talent in Santiniketan has not even been able to learn that the museum as well as the Tagore university campus need to be free from garbage, for Christ's sake.

The soft-spoken American poet probably did not expect such aggression. Before he could gather his thoughts, I continued, "Tagore is world heritage. Surely we do not have to restrict ourselves to talent from Santiniketan or even India for that matter.

"As for funding, if Visva Bharati, or the state government or the central government cannot afford it, all we need is to raise a rupee from every Tagore lover in the country. Surely that would be enough to hire the best talent in the world to structure the museum, conserve, restore, landscape or whatever else is needed to create a museum that does the world proud."

The poor guy heard me out, and said I had a point. Strangely my outpouring made him want to tell me more. He confided that the group of American writers and poets had been taken to the museum and besides the usual display open to all, were actually shown original Tagore manuscripts. What is more, they were even allowed to touch them!

As I was wondering what made the museum authorities so lenient: was it the fact that they were accompanied by a friend of the ruling party or that they were NRIs and foreigners, my poet companion said (a trifle sheepishly) that he was really surprised as well.

"Of course as a poet I got gooseflesh as I touched the original manuscript. It was truly exhilarating. But in my country, I am afraid, even the President would not be allowed to touch a manuscript of Walt Whitman."