Remembering Tagore on his birth anniversary

A micro-documentary that went online on Friday showed students and scholars from various cities in China singing in Bengali and Indian students and academics doing the same in Mandarin. They were marking the 159th birth anniversary of the poet Rabindranath Tagore and the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Sino-India diplomatic ties.

It seems a befitting tribute to a man regarded as "a father figure of India-China cultural relations in the modern era".

The poet was born on May 7, 1861, but his birth anniversary is usually marked according to the Bengali calendar, which fell on Friday.

The micro-documentary, aptly titled Gitanjali, was produced in a week. It's an ensemble of poetry, song, music, dance and art dedicated to a man who was himself a poet, novelist, playwright, musician and artist, and who played a pivotal role in building a golden bridge between the two ancient civilizations and neighbors.

The program was directed by Beijing-based author and media professional Suvam Pal. It has been produced by Pandit Sarit Das, a percussionist who is also a visiting faculty at China's Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. He has composed or arranged a major portion of the music for the program, complete with popular Indian string instruments like the sitar, percussion instrument tabla, a rare string instrument predominantly used in Rabindra Sangeet called esraj, and a slew of traditional Chinese instruments like pipa, guzheng and yangqin, apart from popular Western instruments like the piano and guitar.

Beijing-based Bharatnatyam exponent Jin Shanshan has specially created dance moves in the mould of Rabindra Nritya, a dance genre from Santiniketan, for the independent project, while an Indian classical dancer and Tsinghua University scholar, Reshmita Nath, dances to a Tagore classic sung by a group of Chinese students who are studying Bengali.

Shenzhen-based graphics designer Qin Xiaoping, who studied fine arts at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan a couple of decades ago, has used the Chinese pen drawing style to draw a portrait of Tagore, who began painting after the age of 60.

The project is a result of the collaboration among students, scholars and faculty members from China's Peking University, Tsinghua University, the Communication University of China, Yunnan Minzu University, the United Kingdom's University of Bath, and India's Visva-Bharati and Doon University, as well as professionals from different cities in India, China and the UK.

The program was separately shot by the performers using their cellphone cameras in Delhi, Mumbai, Dehradun, Bengaluru, Bolpur, Jorhat, Bath, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Yuncheng and Kunming.

The performers are aged from 9 to 91, indicating how Tagore's works transcend age and generations. Portions of a poem from one of Tagore's anthologies, Stray Birds, a Mandarin translation of which is popular in China, have been recited in Mandarin by Deborshmi Nath, a 9-year-old Indian student from Beijing, while 91-year-old Tan Chung, an eminent historian and son of late professor Tan Yun-Shan, the founder of Cheena Bhavan at Visva-Bharati, shared his thoughts on Tagore, who visited China in 1924 and 1929 and was given the Chinese name Zhu Zhendan by Chinese scholar Liang Qichao.

"This is a special tribute to Tagore by his admirers in both India and China as we have also made an effort to recalibrate our story-telling process under the new normal due to COVID-19," says Pal.

The program's creative producer and editor is Showbhik Chowdhury and advisor is professor Yukteshwar Kumar.