Calcutta: Soumitra Chatterjee has recorded all the published letters that Rabindranath Tagore had written to women - all 1,416 of them. They have come out in a 76 CD album.
"It took us four-and-a-half years," says Biswa Roy, proprietor of Bhavna Records. "The recipients number 29. The maximum are addressed to Ranu Adhikari (267) and Hemantabala Devi (264)."
Tagore was a prolific letter writer, often writing even while on a train. "It is impossible to understand Tagore completely. It is the letters that take us closest to the man. It is through his letters that one gets to know his artistic, creative and materialistic mind," Chatterjee tells Metro, while recording Tagore's letters addressed to men at a Golf Garden studio.
He mentions one letter on Durga puja as being extremely moving. As a Brahmo, he did not believe in idolatry. "Yet he writes how Durga puja is the only occasion when there is a resurgence in the entire community. And he concludes that all love at the end is worship of dolls. We worship it while it lasts and then bid it farewell."
Tagore's materialistic mind may be more evident when he writes to his eldest son Rathindranath but that he had to look into zamindari affairs is evident in even the letters to the women. "It is during breaks from work that he wrote on the earth and the sky."
Metro broaches Bhanusingher Patrabali, the collection of letters he wrote signing off as 'Bhanudada' to little Ranu (later Lady Ranu Mookerjee). "There he is so down to earth. Yet in his mission to mould the child, he alluded to deep subjects, too," Chatterjee said.
Tagore formed a tremendous "rapport" with women, Chatterjee feels. "The letters show how close he was to his niece Indira Devi Chaudhurani, who got married to Pramatha Chowdhury, as also to Rani Mahalanobis, wife of Prasanta Chandra."
Chatterjee feels people fail to sense the romanticism in Tagore's letters to wife Mrinalini. "It is idiotic to expect the romance to be explicit. What we see is love as a broad term, embracing friendship and fondness. The way he addresses her in the letters, Bhai Chhuti, is itself so tender. The word chhuti (holiday) has a sense of relief from workaday life."
