It’s the month of Baishak of the Hindu calender, the birth month of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
To commemmorate the 157th birth anniversary of Tagore, Niyogi Books launched six translations of Tagore’s beautiful works at Oxford Bookstores, Kolkata on April 21st, 2018. Eminent poet, scholar and critic Shankha Ghosh, translator Prof. Somdatta Mandal and writer Amiya Dev adorned the occassion as honoured guests and panalists.
The six books released were — Gleanings of the Road (translated by Prof. Somdatta Mandal), Sadhana: The Realisation of Life, My Reminiscences (translated by Devabrata Mukherjee), The Post Office (translated by Devabrata Mukherjee), Glimpses of Bengal and Rereading Tagore by Amiya Dev.
According to Trisha De Niyogi, Marketing Head, Niyogi Books, the objective of these translations is to reach out to Indians who have only heard about Tagore but could not enjoy his masterpieces because of their lack of knowledge in Bengali.
Gleanings of the Road talks about Tagore’s travel experiences to England and USA between 1912-13 and 1920. This collection of essays is ideal for those who enjoy exploring unknown territories geographically and psychologically. This is the first ever translation of the original book Pather Sanchoy.
Sadhana: The Realisation of Life is a concise introduction of spiritual heritage of ancient India by Rabindranath Tagore, containing the essence of the texts of Indian philosophy.
The Post Office represents a young boy who seeks freedom from the comfortable enclosure of habits and rigid walls of conventional opinions built and sanctioned by the elite society.
My Reminiscences speaks of Tagore’s primary experiences about his future poems, plays and novels.
Rereading Tagore is a reader’s book that looks at Tagore through his texts like his novels Gora, Jogajog and Char Adhyay and plays Dakghar and Muktadhara.
Glimpses of Bengal is a collection of letters written in the 1890s as Tagore travelled through Bengal to manage his family’s far-flung agricultural estates, vividly describing the beauties of Bengali countryside.
The event saw the panelists speaking about their experiences with Tagore and there were readings, poetry sessions and a Q & A sessions. The audience had readers of various ages that actually show that Tagore still has an influence among the Bengali crowd. The publisher and writers (or translators) hope that the same influence is seen among Non-Bengali reading population through the translations.
