Mainak Chakraborty’s interpretation of Tagore
In this insightful review, Navamalati Neog Chakraborty explores Mainak Chakraborty‘s interpretation of Tagore, revealing profound meanings within Gurudev’s timeless lyrics. Discover how Mainak’s latest work, “Gan Diye Je Tomai Khunji,” beautifully connects human emotion with spiritual depth.
We often find the unconscious and our subconscious search for a path in the quiet alleys of Rabindranath Tagore’s deep mind, seeking to find out a foray amidst the fundamental truth of the poet’s existence in his beautiful heart touching lyrics. Exclusively original in his sentiments and reasoning, he became the forerunner of an organic vision, that formed a unique bridge to reach out to mankind, as they sound like soothing mantras. There is sadness, the harmony of persuasive reasoning amidst the apathy of the world, the divulgence of looking out amidst the seething darkness of our lives, our craving for light, and most certainly a glib sense of joy. It becomes a reasoning for freedom. Our mind needs to seek out a space, a wide space to nestle in, holding our griefs in the company of knowledge.
Mainak Chakraborty, a young promising writer with a beautiful mind is a Tagorean to his bone marrow. At times I find myself looking up to him, to seek out his vision lent by the seer of our hearts. In his recent work on Gan Diye Je Tomai Khunji where adoration squares up amidst the constraints of life, I find simple loving and understanding clinging on to his soul. Our lives are a constant negotiation and we are left befuddled. But there is a deeply felt way that Tagore the philosopher poet had himself written and sang out for us to heed to. Jodi Tor Dak Shune Keo Na Aashe, Tobe Ekla Cholo Re! This has always been my mantra day in and day out for decades. I am certain that Mainak Chakraborty has his thirst slaked every time he is in search, within the meanings of the fine lyrics of our Gurudev. All of us find our grief and joy become an anxious part of our life. Often, we find that our hurts have no reason and no parallel justifications for a host of thoughts. With dismay we pause, even as our tears bring in the light of reasoning’s bindings. The epic poet finds amidst his sorrows a vocabulary which carry the alphabets of consolation, and the brilliance of a radiant dawn. It is thus that Baul singers appeal to him with the firm holds of emotion and arguments. He looks into his self. When we, who have known so much about him and his inner self and have read his works with their profound depth over and over feel so blitheful, we realise how Mainak too feels. We abide, holding on to his search of the Tagorean interpretation of life. We do not seek a new language, but in the old we find our heaven of freedom linger lovingly.
Rabindranath writes, Kae boshilo hriday ashone aaji…and Mainak’s penetrating lens of understanding with mesmerizing sublimity had sung…Gan diye je tomai khunji. He neither demurs nor is he effusive, but with gentle vibrancy eggs on with the artistry of words. Tagore, who was introduced to the songs of Lalan Fakir of the 18th century and Gagan Harkara, had his heart throb to the different draws of folk music. It is thus that in his mind he created a blend of thoughts and tunes, wedding his lyrics to the melody that evolved with a subtle nuance, blending with existential ease of both beauty as well as pathos.
As the words were lisped out with the patience and strength of a subtle emphatic perception, it blended with thoughts and spread out its hue through the vast range of the poet’s magnitude of words. To surrender to a beloved, to create a unity of minds even in the absence of company, with the mere thirst for a drop to be quenched do not really die down within the hunger of time’s need. Time that can emote the needs of life from upended outages can sustain hearts from breaking. It helps to sustain the verve of endurance; the endurance of grief, of anxiety, of cogitation. To be weak is an insult to the self, to remain unrequited a pleasure, to be grieved is a beautiful state of ecstasy, for mankind to bear.
Mainak’s Bhoibhanga Ei Naiye is a deep state of discernment that holds the brilliance that he finds in Tagore’s surrender of the self to the storms and stresses of life, with the mantra of knowing the unknown; of finding the nectar of novelty in lost affirmations, when the mind can be calmed and pacified. To integrate and find coherency at the feet of the Lord lead to divine exultation. It’s a fortuitous conditioning to be distant from fear.
In his rovings in Pagol Je Tumi, Mainak finds in the Tagorean seer’s persistence in the casual passage of time day in and day out, an engagement that clamours not for gain but the search for happiness like a spell. Our days on earth are not about longing, but for a winsome craziness that may seem daft and demented, with eagerness, to merge within the circle of creation. In other words, it is a search, a search in which one loses ones own self and arrive at a point where the deep music of words alone feature. The lute and the beating of the drum amidst the clouds with the intensity of fierce winds, is a constant vibration that touch really deep. The poet loses himself in the dance of the Nataraj, stormy, intense, rhythmic, billowing; encapsulating joy and craze, love and sorrow, under the sky, in a field-spread of new grains; where the wails of the happy and the demented merge together. The branches of trees are covered with new leaves and promising enthusiasm amidst the wealth of nature. The poet’s question ends in affirmation, with a distinctive character of infinite happiness. It’s a crazed finding, an adherence of love with a song that holds on within the throat, a song that can discover meaning and flow on with the river, stretching out like lush green spring creepers, all in a festivity.
And Mainak looks around with a smile as he sings aloud, Ei Khela Khelabe in the huge and wide playground the world by the blessings of the Lord. It turns out to be just the rudiments that a playground holds, though it however, keep changing. That which was played, that which is being played, glimmer on each blade of grass differently. The capriciousness of the disquiet mind create variance between play and dalliance. Can dalliance be mere sport or debunking in this eternal game of life. The theatre of life is ever staged in life’s happy playfield, with the stars and the planets, the moon and the sun, all ashine and bright.
And Mainak nudges me along to realise, Ekla Pather Chola in a rendezvous where I do not gawp but walk on with summoned courage. Here I find the poet’s courage of the unknown hold on through the portals of life. Life’s path is ever onwards with a song held in one’s lips of concern and anxiety that propels life. Here the unknown grips with disquiet as one step indoors with the reassurance that make death, nigh a stranger and life stand as of no avail.
I arrive at Shobare Aami Nomi with gratefulness and reverence. Here Mainak points out beautifully how all of us on earth, caged within limitations fulfil our life’s game with the novelty of delight, amidst the tall hills and winding rivers, always heading out, always onward with sheer music that leads us on to those happy sunshine all about. The Lord lends out to men small little delights, songs to sing, to frisk about to the song of music, the playing of the flute, and holding on to the eternal sense of love and belonging. Tagore remains beholden, and the lustre of the green emerald glimmers in its aquamarine hue; the heart wafts with a feeling of ingratiating fulfilment.
Amidst such joy will the ascetic not awake, and there he sits up…such light of realisation, Sannyasin Je Jagilo. The poet is now our eternal saint, the lover of mankind, largehearted in generosity, of a focused mind, deep in spirituality, humanity and full of nature’s oeuvre. A look at his eyes find you reassured and his aquiline nose stands as the sentinel of all that he sees with a dare to breathe in with candour. Beatific! All alone, his road lies ahead. there’s no desire of sorts, of grief that gnaws to be overcome, or of drawing people closer for gain, or to absorb grief. That death waits for all at the fag end of life is the accepted truth. The spiritual fervour glows in silence, the holy flames lick on with the constancy and consistency of time’s passage. The mind slowly winds up and takes to the path of the holy ascetic. The journey is on, the song is sung. Tar apon shurer Bhuban-majhe tare thakte de. It’s the fulfilment of a search to unite and be one with the Lord in the mantra of Shuinya. That’s asceticism, the minds inconsistent wavering calm down in a calm benign prayer.
Jorotatamas hou urtinnya
Klantijale koro dirna bidirna
Din-onte aparajiti chitte
Mrityutaran tirthe koro snan.
Mainak lisps the words, Shanti Koro Barisan, and finds man in an anxious labouring expediency, between constant disillusionment between seeking and finding, finding and losing, between success and failure. Disquiet absorbs his being and wipes off peace. What ought the poet to do. He realises in his calm persistence how men can come out of this dilemma. Heed to my words, gather your grief closer, calm down your disquiet and find out how…
Jole uthuk shokol hutash,
Garji uthuk shokol batash,
Jagiye diye shokol Aakash
Purnota bistaro.
And Mainak recalls the words and substance of, Koun Bhangoner Pathe, and the question sits up to ask if such crumbling and assembling shall lead to an awakening. What though the red soil that lead homewards on the path rise up in a storm. If grief stalk our path despite our pleas, then what is men to do. He must endure and do away with fears and the turn grief into a blessed companion. Grief is a part and parcel of life, for life dwells just there.
Mainak finds out the role of light, that fills the world with such splendour…Alor Amal Kamalkhani…! Such light needs to be preserved within our self, for it is such light that stands up against darkness at the birdsong hour. Such light is a permanent feature of our life. It stands by us through the storms and stresses of life. Its realisation is itself a serene avowal…
Andhokarer majhe aamai dhorecho dui haate
Kokhon tumi ele, hae Nath, mridyu charanpate
and there he stands, the very source of light that fills our being. The blind receives it and the night of grief pass by, and instead of wallowing we begin to love the darkness, and lose our contained self willingly in the arms of the same darkness that we had dreaded.
Here we are at Bedona Hote Bedone, even as the poet sings out his happy-plaintive lyric and the world sits up to listen, he appears serene, calm and poised. The impassioned fervency is lost and grief eases. A realisation dawns that men need not fret when struck by different facets of grief. None need comply and surrender within those arms and meet with censure and admonition, and be constantly reproached. This is the poet’s urge to guide men on to the path of initiation, a rite of passage, a beginning, a delving. This brings us to the poet’s doorstep with, Hae Bidaai Animesh and we look away with a distant smile. Isn’t life a mere desultory conversation? Where’s that place call home, what’s that living on that we term as life, what be the colour of the happiness we seek? Wipe your tears as you stand a while at your doorstep, step in and bless the whiff of peace that greets.
Do we not know that we have to give back to life all of it that we had clung to, return it in my Param Seshe Anweshane. All, all of it. What had begun has to end. Light must give way to darkness, happiness to grief, and birth to death. There isn’t time to vacillate, to keep account of what life offered or life didn’t, in the midst of the great infinite spread out of time. To open our eyes is to look out. There you be, you have not really gone, you haven’t left, for you are…Royecho Nayane Nayane. Even when darkness creep in, light wafts in. The pair of eyes are the windows to the mind, and through them we vision the first stirrings of dawn. Like a little bird, they perch here and there and the inner eye spies and finds meaning within the words the poet Rabindranath had sung for us; that the poet had written for us. Death is never the mere end of existence, but a mere pause. In its intensity, grief carries along with it a sweet hope-laden promise through the laborious struggles of a lifetime, as man pass by grief and bitterness in its most abject form. Death is a virtual messenger, carrying in its cupped hands, the tears of a loved one, like nectar to warm our being. It is not poor consolation, but a warmth that hold us up. Enclosed in the matrix of a divine feel, the poet sings for us…
Ajanar majhe abujer moto fere
Ashrudharai moje
…for he spies himself within it the stirrings of deep love and attachment. He desires to look on after having spent an entire lifetime within a bauble of dissuasion, looking for light that dwells on the other side of the dark night. He seeks to look on, so that his tears might flow free from the grip of human relationship, his heart is set aflutter, and vision within his eyes bloom meaningfully in their sensibility. This shall be the last time that the eyes shall remain beholden to behold the blossoming of sensibility. It is a vermillion edged rosy scenario with the door in the horizon set ajar, for the mind to peer out meaningfully. The divine painter with his brush smudged with colour from his palette holds the wonder colours of grief.
I look on at Mainak’s choice of expressions, his sensibility seated there at the horizon’s edge looking out at creation’s varied hues of expressions of human thoughts and longings. In a Pran Bhari Prakashe, of surging emotions, all the oblations, the offerings of the mind lie. There is no denial to hold back any of it for death is but the taste of a divine nectar, a merging with the divine in a worship and an adoration. Mankind stands there. The infinite amidst the eternal, and a perpetual novelty with the fragrance of colour, song and rhythm, beauty and that lustre that needs to be felt to be seen. Perception is that constant desire ceaselessly woven. The stars glimmer in that darkened night sky, till that last star half-asleep leave behind its message for the first bud of dawn. Amidst the contrast of light lie the consummation, the fruition of harmony that the poet had sung about. There lies the constancy of advancement, the constancy of desire of the finite for the infinite, for the timelessness of time. Tagore’s songs provide the harbour for our privations when we find our souls wounded in the stillness of grief. To understand Tagore is to see through that happy mantra of his soul’s radiance. Mainak creates within us an intensity to breathe deeper and find meaning in the Tagorean concept of understanding, of regard and love within the self. It is deeper, and more profound. The poetic rhetoric thaw and melt within that persistent grip of creation within defining moments and prayers are those promises of the self within the lyrics. A patch of divine silence lie between the poet and the world. Listen!
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
(Ode to a Nightingale – John Keats)
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