It's been only a few days since I have come back from a very hectic 25 days tour of the UK, having successfully completed an itinerary of 10 shows to celebrate Tagore's 162nd birth anniversary.
I was thrilled at the opportunity to present my art to the Bengali diaspora in that part of the world.
My tour began with a solo storytelling session at the Midlands Indian Association of Birmingham, organised by Dr Aniruddha Chakraborty and Dr Amit Paul Chowdhuri. Next, I presented a screening of Aritra Sen's debut romantic film Ghore Pherar Gaan. A workshop on spoken words was organised by my friend, spoken word artist Soma Ghosh, at a short stint in Manchester the following week. This workshop will always be special to me because I innovated an immersive pedagogy of adapting words through it, which is hardly used by practitioners in Calcutta or elsewhere.
My next stop was at Leicester where, apart from a solo recital, I presented an afternoon of anecdotes on how Tagore's birthdays would be celebrated when he was alive. This soiree was organised by Madhusree Mitra Ghosh and members of Leicester Probashi. At Cardiff, where I was invited by Kiran Cymru, an Indo-Welsh organisation founded by Anirban Mukhopadhyay and Tamasree Mukherjee, my presentation was a work-in-progress version of a project on global verse, blended with Tagore songs.
Next on the cards was my stay in a boutique hotel in Maidenhead with a string of performances in London. It began with my readings at the prestigious Hampstead Town Hall, along with Rabindrasangeet by Sangeeta Datta, the founder of Baithak, UK, a leading organisation that upholds South Asian arts in that country. The following day, I presented Rabi O Rathi (a narrative on the filial relationship of Rabindranath Tagore and his son Rathindranath, penned by media personality Chaitali Dasgupta) with songs by Tanusree Guha and Angana Bose. This show was organised at the Nehru Centre by Bengal Heritage Foundation.
The next show, presented by Anandadhara UK, was at the Richmix multiplex, where I blended stories of Tagore's travels in the West with recitals of Tagore songs by Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, a senior oncologist and music trainer. I find it quite unbelievable that even in the middle of all this mayhem (read, a plethora of unending performances), I managed to squeeze in a tour of Bath and Cambridge.
On a whirlwind tour that weekend, I stepped into Liverpool in the dead of the night and performed the following afternoon for BAMNE, a local organisation. It was love at first sight for me to be in this picturesque port town and the next day I was driven to the north of Wales to have lunch at a quaint 15th-century tearoom. I had a train to catch that same evening to London because my work was not over yet.
The best was saved for the last, as they say. On the invitation of the Camden Local Archives and Centre, and Tagore Centre, UK, I delivered a talk on Tagore at the Holburn Public Library on May 30. My talk was crowned with a reading of a translation of Tagore’s poem Dushhomoy (Dark Times) by actress and filmmaker Aparna Sen. An impromptu solo recitation of an excerpt from Tagore’s drama Raktakarabi also garnered a lot of appreciation from the audience.
This trip was an eye-opener to me in many ways but what counts most is the diversity, inclusiveness and restoration of ethnicity that I discovered during its course. I also found respect — something that is unfortunately not found in abundance in my city.
