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How Gajra Kottary Weaponises Words

In a medium that is known for its regressive content, Gajra Kottary, novelist and short-story writer, has time and again gone against the tide and broken taboos. Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri looks at five shows she has written that went against the grain and emerged triumphant…

Growing up in the 1980s, one of the many pleasures of a less cluttered and leisurely time was the birth of the TV series. Many people I know would swear by the fact that the first of these represented the best of Indian television. Even close to forty years later, I can still rattle off the days on which each was telecast: Karamchand on Mondays; Hum Log[1]and then Buniyaad[2] on Tuesdays and Saturdays; Khandan[3] on Wednesdays; Ados Pados[4]on Thursdays; Yeh Jo Hain Zindagi[5]on Fridays. You had stalwarts like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and Basu Chatterjee make fine works for the television.

Sometime by the end of the decade kitsch entered in the shape of Ramayan and Mahabharat. I moved on and lost touch. A resurgence of sorts happened with the coming of cable television, and we had path-breaking shows like Shanti and Tara. And then it became increasingly difficult to keep track of TV shows. The shows changed beyond recognition. Led by the likes of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi,[6] they became more and more ridiculous in the worlds they represented. One word came to be bandied about regularly with respect to soap operas: regressive.

However, like all generalised judgements, a blanket application of the word is unfair to a number of serials that tried to, and often succeeded in breaking taboos, while operating within the limitations dictated by the medium and the grammar of its narrative. And the one writer who has time and again bucked the trend, gone against the tide, is Gajra Kottary, the creator of historic shows like Astitva: Ek Prem Kahani[7]and Balika Vadhu.[8]

Gajra Kottary with Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri. Photo provided by Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri

Journalism and Fiction Writing

One of the reasons Gajra manages to break new ground in her television narratives might have something to do with her training as a journalist. “IIMC [Indian Institute of Mass Communication] was a tough course to get into and we had a few fresh graduates like me, and a whole lot of older and established professional journalists from other non-aligned countries studying with us, a great mix,” she says. It provided her with a grounding in fact-based narratives while polishing her skills as a writer, of which she had provided glimpses in college, when two stories she wrote got published in Eve’s Weekly, along with two fiction-style middles in The Times of India. “The IIMC stint helped because as I have observed over the years, I have more respect for the sanctity of facts even while taking my flights of fancy than others in the business. I take fewer creative liberties than others. I have done more realistic shows on television which helped forge a distinct identity for my writing.” But it also left her confused since political and economic writing held no interest for her and Delhi offered avenues only for those.

Destiny intervened in the form of Cupid. Falling in love with Sailesh Kottary, a “hotshot and hardcore journalist”, she moved to Bombay. It was here, as a “stay-at-home mom”, that she gave wings to her imagination and honed her writing skills. Watching serials like Saans[9] and The Bold and the Beautiful might also have helped imbibe certain aspects of writing for a visual medium. Her first work of fiction, Fragile Victories, a collection of stories, led to her first assignment in television. She had sent a copy of the book to Mahesh Bhatt, who passed it on to Soni Razdan. Impressed by the collection, the latter signed Gajra up for the story and screenplay of her first TV production, Hamare Tumhare[10](2000), which marked her TV debut, before Astitva made everyone sit up and take notice.

If IIMC shaped her in some ways, another skill-set that has held her in good stead probably came from her experiments in writing fiction. Fragile Victories was followed by another collection of stories, The Last Laugh, and the novels Broken Melodies, Once Upon a Star, Girls Don’t Cry and Not Woman Enough. These helped her to keep to a discipline that could go missing in the never-ending juggernaut that is the TV soap opera. They also are testimony to her willingness to push the envelope when it comes to narratives and characters. Not many know that much before Indian writers, particularly women, began addressing issues of sexual identity and same-sex relationships, Gajra had written about these in her fiction. As she puts it, these themes “continued to ‘consume’ me”. Not Woman Enough may have been published as an e-book only recently, but it evolved from a story that she had published way back in 2003. “I felt that I hadn’t done justice to the theme in the short format, so I wrote a full-length novel titled Not Woman Enough and felt finally relieved of my obsession.” Another story, ‘Two Gold Guineas’, evolved to her third novel Girls Don’t Cry, a pun on the expression ‘boys don’t cry’ and “an ode to the bravery of women and the friendship between a grandmother, mother and daughter”.

What is startling about these works of fiction is her ability to address taboos. Not Woman Enough not only deals with a same-sex relationship, but Gajra has the audacity to set it in rural Rajasthan as opposed to an urban setting, where it would have probably been just another story. She has the perspicacity to understand that the stakes are so much higher for first-generation characters experiencing the forces of social liberation while battling age-old customs. It is the same acuity that she brings to bear upon her iconic TV shows, which have time and again shown what is possible in a medium that allows little leeway for out-of-the-box thinking. 

Astitva: Ek Prem Kahani (2002-2006, Zee TV)

Running 668 episodes, over a period of three-and-a-half years, this is the series that launched Gajra into the big league. Today, twenty years after the first episode was aired, an older woman-younger man relationship might appear staid. But back then it was bold, and Indian television had not seen anything like it. It made an icon of its lead, Niki Taneja, who plays a doctor who falls in love with a man ten years younger. What stood out is the maturity with which the series unfolds, largely devoid of the excesses that came to mark television in later years. “The first TV show maker I decided to call upon was Ajai Sinha, who had directed shows like Hasratein [11]and Justajoo[12]. He had been planning a show called Astitva with a bold theme and my timing was bang-on. It spoilt me enough to believe that television too was conducive to the kind of work I felt happy doing.” That this show managed to hold its own against a raging Kyonki[13], speaks volumes of the writer.

Balika Vadhu (2008-2016, Colors TV)

2167 episodes! Yes, you read that right. One of the longest-running shows on Indian television, this cemented Gajra’s reputation as a writer. Here again, Gajra was going out on a limb addressing a much-abused tradition prevalent in large parts of India. And sure enough, the press wasn’t flattering. It is one show that divided opinion like few others. “Yes, we received some negative press, because Anandi was this irrepressible kid, a happy child who kept bouncing back despite dealing with the dark consequences of child marriages of the past playing out in the present. It was a calculated approach as child marriage is a dark and gloomy issue. It was a conscious decision here as we needed to keep the cheer, but critics felt that we were glorifying child marriage. I think they were missing the woods for the trees.”

One possibly needs to understand the medium and its viewership to get a sense of what Gajra means. Unless the packaging is glossy enough – colourful clothes and jewellery – audiences might have been put off entirely by what is a repulsive subject. “And that would mean we would not be able to get across the underlying message of the show. These tactics are important due to the challenge of the medium of television, and the terror of the remote control. It was a classic case of the sugarcoated pill doing its work.”

Apart from the writing, the series was also recognised for its iconic performances and comments on several social issues that ail Indian society, which were woven in organically without being preachy. It also had an authentically rustic feel thanks to Purnendu Shekhar, whose concept it was. Those decrying the glossy packaging forget that the issues the series addressed included girl child education; peer, sibling and parental pressure to do the best; child labour; the begging racket; forced prostitution behind a legal façade; quacks and medical malpractices; date rape; adoption; alcoholism; divorcee and widow remarriage; trafficking in women; surrogacy; juvenile delinquency and teenage crimes, among others. From the comfort of our air-conditioned condos and offices, far removed from these realities, it was easy for the elitist press to criticise the series.

One standout episode dealt with the protagonist’s first experience of menstruation. This is a subject still, despite Padman and the increased conversation around it, spoken of in hushed tones. It is fascinating to hear Gajra’s take on this: “I remember how we involved Avika’s [the child actor who played Anandi] mother to explain to the child privately about menstruation before we shot the scene showing a young girl’s trauma when it happens to her as a bahu in a conservative household. Lots of people wrote to us about delaying the marriages of their girl children after watching Balika Vadhu. There was a girl who was emboldened enough to annul her marriage that had happened as a child when she turned eighteen. We received mails even from parents of city girls who were now reversing their decisions to get their girls married by the time they were sixteen.”

There was of course the flipside of popularity, when the writer received a death threat on Twitter if she dared to kill off the character of Shiv (played by Siddharth Shukla). “Those were the early days of social media, so real people started to write in with their reactions which were usually very intense and sometimes downright ridiculous.”

Buddha (2013-2014, Zee TV, DD[14] National)

This series, spanning 55 one-hour episodes, was a huge challenge, involving as it did a historical figure, and one of the most important religious figures of the world. But trust Gajra to approach the subject from a refreshing point a view: as she points out, in school textbooks we go straight from the story of Gautama leaving home to being under the Bodhi tree and achieving enlightenment. But his experiments to arrive at the truth had many stages to it. As she says, “What it did was to dispel my own myths about the Buddha’s life. I had always felt disturbed about his abandonment of his wife and child for his own spiritual search.”

It helped that the show came to her at a point in life when the strong opinions and idealism of youth, both professionally and personally, had given way to the realisation that nothing is or can be ‘perfect’. By the time the show was done she too had evolved to accept that the Buddha had to be true to his heart’s calling. “I understood the ‘larger purpose’ of his life. I came to terms with the ‘abandonment’, though my heart still bleeds for Yashodhara and Rahul. What also helped was learning about Yashodhara’s evolution, albeit painfully, to want to join his sangha voluntarily, and him helping her find her ‘larger purpose’.” The series focuses on aspects of his life after the Enlightenment that many are not aware of. It is this larger view that shapes the series, making it a departure from the dime-a-dozen ‘mythological/religious’ shows with ‘special effects’ that blight our senses.

Silsila Badalte Rishton Ka[15] (2018-2019, Colors TV)

Extramarital affairs are the oxygen to the beast that is the TV serial. Offhand, I can think of not one serial that does not have a million and more permutations and combinations of the theme. So, it takes a really perceptive writer to give this tired trope a new perspective, and Gajra manages that in Silsila, upending the traditional way that extramarital affairs are portrayed. “Is the ‘other’ woman necessarily a femme fatale, a super-cool career woman, and the wife a boring domestic goddess or could it be the other way round also?” she asks.

The series provides further proof of her ability to give a new spin to a theme that’s been done to death. As she says, “I am emotional about this show as it was inspired by what happened with some close friends and associates. I needed a relief from all the social stuff in Balika Vadhu. Also, I believe that an author’s voice in terms of standing for the right thing can and should reflect in any kind of story, even if it’s not apparently one on a social issue. The classic extramarital affair with the eternal conundrum is a fascinating aspect of human relationship … does a third person enter the picture because a marriage is already collapsing or does the entry of a third person lead to the collapse of a marriage. Is it the cause or effect?”

Molkki (2020-2022, Colors TV)

After Silsila, it was back to a classic social issue for Gajra. At the heart of this show is the tradition of bride-buying in Haryana, which in turn has its roots in the scarcity of brides due to female feticide/infanticide. As Gajra says, “Molkki was a Covid baby, my second project with Ekta Kapoor and it was made keeping in mind all commercial considerations.”

Female infanticide is a recurrent theme in several of her stories. She writes about it in her novel, Girls Don’t Cry, while Not Woman Enough, published as an e-book by Juggernaut, has this as a strong strand, being part of the protagonist’s backstory impacting her psyche. Again, what needs to be noted here is the writer’s willingness to explore issues that contemporary television is not known for, even if the execution falters given the demands of the medium. 

Addressing the Regressive Nature of Television

But Gajra does agree that on the whole, television is regressive. Though it is described as a writer’s medium, there’s only so much that writers can do in terms of trying to infuse new ideas and nuanced storytelling in the face of TRPs[16] and other market considerations and entrenched beliefs that ‘bas yahi chalta hai’[17]. So, writers take the easy way out, churning out what the studio executives want. “For the handful of people prepared to take the risk and at least try to do things differently, there are scores of others who would like to use every gimmick in their book and keep regurgitating bad content.”

In terms of audience profiling too, what’s happening with television is that most of the intelligentsia has shifted to web shows. The television viewership class has gone lower down in the social scale. So when content is being made and consumed by a non-thinking class, it also starts reflecting in the TRP studies. The classic chicken-and-egg syndrome.

Looking Ahead

Gajra is currently basking in the success of her latest show, Na Umr Ki Seema Ho,[18] which recently celebrated its hundredth episode. The show is being hailed as ‘different’ by many. As she says, “The most heartening comment that I often get to hear is that ‘it’s the first TV show I have started watching after many years’, from people who had switched full time to watching web shows.”

Shantanu and Gajra with the lead actors of Na Umr Ki Seema Ho. Photo provided by Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri

Any grand obsession, a show she would like to write? “As far as TV goes, I have always dreamed of doing a version of one of my all-time favourite films, Abhimaan[19], with or without the music background. The subject becomes more and more relevant every decade. Frankly, no channel wants to touch it. Though the people one speaks to share my admiration for the story, the ‘system’, they say, is not conducive to making it. I also want to adapt my first novel, Broken Melodies, as a web show or film. It’s the story of a girl growing up in the seventies, torn between the values and stifling world that her classical musician father [an autobiographical element given that Gajra is the daughter of the classical maestro Pandit Amarnath] represents and the liberation that the English education sponsored by her mother affords her.”

One can only say, more power to writers like her, and the breaking of glass ceilings and taboos.

(Originally published in The Telegraph, Kolkata)

Addendum

Shantanu: You grew up in Delhi in the 1980s. That was the birth of the TV era with Hum Log, Buniyad, and all those glorious serials. Did any of these influence you?

Gajra: You’re so right, Shantanu, they hugely did, except that there was no plan that I had then, to actually use that impact to write something similar. I loved both these shows purely as a viewer. Hum Log did tackle social issues, for example, dowry, but why I liked it was that it showed the clash of values within a family with different generations, and through that, it entertained and made one feel and think – the sensitization process as its termed. Later, I learned that Hum Log was inspired by the Sabido method (originating in Mexico) where TV is used as a medium to bring about positive social change by making viewers ‘feel and think’ rather than preaching to them.

I loved Buniyaad for a purely sentimental reason. My parents were from Lahore and Multan respectively and had come as refugees to Delhi, so we had grown up hearing stories of Partition and here was a show that brought that era alive for me in an extremely moving and entertaining way. So maybe subconsciously both these shows did impact my psyche – as in it was possible to talk emotions that were universal, even while having a responsible author’s voice.

Shantanu: What do you attribute the change in the style and content in TV soaps, first with Tara and Shanti, and then Kyunki Saas Bhi…

Gajra: Tara and Shanti were the first movers, coming in like a breath of fresh air after the DD days which were associated with somewhat stodgy storytelling, Buniyaad etc., being the shining exceptions. Tara and Shanti were great in terms of revolving around thinking and evolved women, but perhaps were ahead of their times…they still are, given where TV storytelling has gone.

By the time Kyunki Saas came to TV screens, middle- and lower-middle-class homes could afford a TV set, so there was a genuine need for TV to go more middle class in its appeal. So, we had a plethora of shows with joint families and generations under one roof, which truly was the reality of such homes, and which therefore connected with the masses easily. Ekta Kapoor also upped the drama quotient hugely, so there was no way it wasn’t going to work with the masses.

Unfortunately, however, everyone went about copying the formula and there was the overdose factor. So, TV honchos were afraid of trying different subjects and worlds and that for a very long time became the bane of TV writers.

Shantanu: On Buddha: ‘dispel your own myths, you say …’ What apart from his abandonment of his wife and child haunted you. Do you reconcile with the abandonment once you had done the writing for this? Did it make sense now?

Gajra: Buddha, the show, came to me at a point in life when the strong opinions and idealism of youth – both in professional and family life – had given way to some acceptance and the realisation that actually nothing is or can be ‘perfect’. And certainly not any decisions of life that we might make. So, we might as well make the decision, and accept and live with the consequences as positively as one can. I know that that’s so ‘anti’ the way today’s youngsters think!

So yes, from his wife and family’s point of view his decision seemed ‘selfish’ but he had to be true to his heart’s calling and that so-called ‘selfishness’ of his is what made him give so much to the world to make it a better one. I understood the ‘larger purpose’ part of the Buddha’s life after I started researching more and more while writing the story for the show. I came to terms with the ‘abandonment’, though my heart still bleeds for Yashodhara and Rahul, when I think about them. What also helped was me learning the historical truths about how Yashodhara evolved, albeit painfully, to want to join his sangha voluntarily at some point, and him helping her find her ‘larger purpose’. 

Also, what I realised is that in school textbooks we go straight from the story of Buddha leaving home to being under the Bodhi tree and achieving enlightenment and uplifting the world. This had been my myth too. But, in reality, the Buddha’s many experiments to arrive at the truth had many stages to it. He went through extreme deprivation, abnegation, self-loathing and much else, before he arrived at the eight-fold path – the most practical and fair way to lead life in any time and space.

And he certainly did not advocate renunciation for all or even the perception of Buddhism as a religion. His was the ultimate live-and-let- live approach to life – just that his methods helped his followers lead a life of peace and equanimity within their chosen path. Through writing the show I realised that there could be no other way of life that was so compatible with the modern way of thinking and doing. So I am not a ‘Buddhist’ but I still try to recall the eight-fold path at various difficult points in my life and it really helps me.

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer. Books commissioned and edited by him have won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema twice and the inaugural MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images) Award for Best Writing on Cinema. In 2017, he was named Editor of the Year by the apex publishing body, Publishing Next. He has contributed to a number of magazines and websites like The Daily Eye, Cinemaazi, Film Companion, The Wire, Outlook, The Taj, and others. He is the author of two books: Whims – A Book of Poems(published by Writers Workshop) and Icons from Bollywood (published by Penguin/Puffin).

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[1] TV series, translates to ‘We – the People’

[2] TV series, translates to ‘Foundation’

[3] TV series, translates to ‘Dynasty’

[4]   TV series, translates to ‘Neighbours’

[5] Comedy TV series, translates to ‘This is life’

[6] TV Series, translates to ‘Because the Mother-in-law was a bride too’

[7] TV Series, translates to ‘Identity: A Love Story’

[8] TV Series, translates to ‘Child Bride’

[9] TV Series, translates to ‘Breath’

[10] TV Series, translates to ‘Ours & Yours’

[11] TV Series, translates to ‘Desires’

[12] TV Series, translates to ‘Search’

[13] TV Series, translates to ‘Because’

[14] Doordarshan or DD, Indian public service broadcaster founded by the government of India

[15] Translates to ‘Changing Relationships’

[16] Target Rating Points

[17] Hindi phrase: ‘This is what works…’

[18] ‘Age is just a number’, literal translation ‘Age has no boundary”

[19] Translates to ‘Ego’, 1973 Bollywood film

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Discussion

Rabindranath Tagore: A Universal Bard

Aruna Chakravarti in discussion with Sunil Gangopadhyay

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 to 1941) was born on May 7th. He was a brilliant poet, writer, musician, artist, educator – a polymath — and of course, we all know of him as the first Nobel Laureate from Asia. His writing spanned across genres, across global issues and across the world.

Today to jubilate this great writer on his one hundred and fifty ninth birth anniversary, we have a conversation by two greats of our era. They, like Tagore, are from Bengal — both Sahitya Akademi award winners; Aruna Chakravarti , a writer who has translated his famed Gitabitaan, and she talks about the great poet with Sunil Gangopadhayay (1934-2012), a renowned Bengali author who authored a novel on Tagore in Bengali, Prothom Alo or First Light.  Aruna Chakravarti has translated Gangopadhyay’s novel too and she also has her own novel on the Tagore family women, Jorasanko, which has been a best seller in India.

The conversation brings out the relevance of Tagore in the current day world and more interesting details focussing on responses of modern day writers to his poetry and philosophy. A part of the celebrations organised by Sahitya Akademi to jubilate the 150th birth anniversary of Tagore in Kochi in 2011, it spans the passing of an era in literature. Borderless is very privileged to host the transcript of the discussion that took place between the two giants of Indian literature, on one of the greatest and most impactful writers of this Earth, a thinker and creator who ascends the boundaries of time – our Kobiguru Rabindranath Tagore.

Aruna Chakravarti:  Sunil da. You have maintained in a number of your public statements that, as a young writer, you had no great admiration for Rabindranath. Neither did your contemporaries of the Kallol group. You considered his work sentimental and archaic and wanted to get out of his shadow. Which you did by writing in a very original and dynamic way. Yet, now that you are in your seventies, we see in you a great admirer of Tagore. You have read his works conscientiously. And I’m told you can sing at least two lines of each of the two thousand songs composed by him. Not only that. You have made him the central character of your novel First Light and used the awakening of his poetic inspiration as a metaphor for the awakening of an entire nation. When and how did this change take place?

Sunil Gangopadhyay :   Yes. We were rebels who wanted to write in a stronger, more down to earth and powerful language. We rejected Rabindranath as a model and had mixed feelings about his work. Some of his poems we thought were dated and some others were too long. But that does not mean we did not admire him. We did admire him particularly his lyrics which we knew, even then, would be immortal.

In one of my poems I have said that even if everything else Rabindranath has written dies out with time — his songs will live. My friends and I used to compete with each other as to who knew the greatest number of his songs. We would spend our evenings singing Rabindra Sangeet and reciting his poems. Some of us could recite reams of pages. But it is true that we admired him in private and rejected him in public. We made our dislike of the Rabindra scholars, who lionised  him shamelessly, quite apparent. They declared that he was the last word. That the pulse of poetry had stopped with him. They turned him into a god.

We couldn’t accept that. We were young and hot headed and reacted strongly. And sometimes we used abusive language. One of my friends declared publicly that he had kicked out a collection of Rabindranath’s poetry. But, in reality, nothing like that had happened. And we hated the term Gurudev. Why Gurudev? Why such blind adulation?

Aruna Chakravarti:  Has any of your work been influenced by Rabindranath’s?

Sunil Gangopadhyay:  No. We tried, very cautiously, not to imitate Rabindranath and if we found the faintest traces of imitation in the work any of our friends, we ridiculed him.

Aruna Chakravarti:  I don’t mean consciously. And I’m not referring to your early writing. Later, when you realised the value of his work, did it not rub off in any way? Subconsciously perhaps?

Sunil Gangopadhyay :  Can any Bengali writer escape Rabindranath? I’ve learned the basics from him. Poetic structures, the use of rhymes and metres—from where else did I learn all this?

Aruna Chakravarti :  Sunil da.  Though you started writing while still in your teens it was exclusively in Bangla till 1987, when your novel Arjun was translated into English. Which makes it a little over a couple of decades that you started reaching out to a Western readership. Something similar happened to Rabindranath. He wrote from childhood upwards in Bangla then, suddenly, chose to turn bilingual at the age of fifty when he translated the lyrics of Gitanjali. Why do you think this happened? As I see it neither of you had any particular compulsions to make your work a part of the literature of the West. Please share your thoughts on this in the light of your own experience.

Sunil Gangopadhyay:  Rabindranath had travelled widely by that time. He, as we all know, was the most widely travelled man of his times — a kind of roving ambassador for India.  He had met many eminent men and women from other countries who were impressed with his personality and curious to know what and how he wrote. They urged him to translate his work. And he did so. That was the primary reason. His family didn’t think much of this endeavour.  Dwijendranath Tagore, his eldest brother, writes in his Memoirs that one day he saw Rabindranath lying on his bed with books and papers spread out before him. On asking him what he was writing Rabindranath told him that he was translating some of his work because the sahebs wanted to read it. Dwijendranath was quite annoyed and told his younger brother, ‘If the sahebs want to read your work they should learn Bengali.’ People did not care for translations then. Bankim translated his own work but did not like them at all.

Aruna Chakravarti: And what about you? You have said, often enough, that you are perfectly content with your Bengali readership and with using Bangla as the sole language of your literary expression. Yet you did commission translations of your work. Why was this?

Sunil Gangopadhyay: Aruna, I must tell you that I’ve never, in my whole life, requested anyone to translate my work. People have done it. I have not stopped them. There is a reason for it. I consider myself a poor writer and believe that my books do not merit translation. I do my best but genuinely believe that a really good and perfect book still remains to be written by me. Besides my English is not so good. I can’t tell if the translation is worthwhile or not. You have done an excellent job. People who know English tell me that your translations are better than the originals.

Aruna Chakravarti:  Really Sunil da! Please don’t embarrass me. But let’s move on from this to another point.From the advent of English education in India writers have sensed a tension within themselves regarding choice of language. Michael Madhusudan and Bankimchandra began their literary careers in English then switched over to Bangla. With Rabindranath the opposite happened.  But not quite. He continued to write prolifically in both languages. But it seems as though he chose English for certain genres and Bangla for others. English—to express his ideas on politics, religion, education and philosophy. In short, he chose to use it as a language of communication with a wider world. But Bangla was the language of his heart. It was his language of communion—the language of his music and poetry. Here I’m reminded of the song Gaaner bhitor diye jakhan dekhi bhuvan khani (I see the universe through my songs) in which he concedes that it is only through his music that he can commune with God and all created things. And, though he doesn’t say so, the fact that he can do this only in Bangla is implicit.  It is interesting to note that he did not write a single song in English. He could have done so. He was sufficiently knowledgeable about Western music and his English, too, was impeccable. We see traces of Western influence in some Bangla songs. But he never, ever, wrote an English song.

Sunil Gangopadhyay:  Quite true. He loved Bengal and the Bengali language. He travelled to so many countries and wrote so much during those times. But the places he visited are conspicuous by their absence in his poetry. Even during his travels, the focus of his songs and lyrics were fixed, unwaveringly, on his own land. Wherever he went — be it Iran, Italy, England or Argentina — he never recorded his experiences there in song. Rather, whatever he composed during those times, reflected the melancholy of parting and a bitter sweet nostalgia for what he had left behind.

Another thing.  Rabindranath always maintained that the English renderings were not good. And I agree. Leave alone the works of others even his own translations are a feeble shadow of the original. Sometimes I wonder why Yeats and Rothenstein liked his English Gitanjali so much. It is nothing compared to the Bangla. And I don’t think his best work has been translated. There are no good translations of the poems of Balaka and Purabi. His work in English are remarkably slender.  It runs into 56 volumes in Bangla and in English we have only four.

Rabindranath may have been a world writer in his views, but he had the heart and soul of a Bengali. He loved Bengal and loved her language. During the Partition of Bengal in 1905, when the language was threatened, Rabindranath came out on the streets, for the first time in his life. He was not that type at all. He hated publicity. But he led his people in protesting against what he considered was an infringement on the lives of Bengalis and a move to crush them by diluting the power of their language. Fortunately, the Partition of Bengal did not happen in his lifetime. It happened six years after his death along with the Partition of India.

Aruna Chakravarti:  Coming back to your comment that, during his travels, he never composed a song on the land in which he was staying, I am put in mind of the song he wrote in Germany once just before Durga Puja. He wrote Chhutir banshi bajlo…ami keno ekla boshe ei bijane (the holiday flute played… why am I sitting alone in this foreign land). Pure déjà vu! To move on to another aspect of Rabindranath’s engagement with the West — we know that Rabindranath fell back on the notion of Gurukul when he started his school in Shantiniketan. He conceived it as a brahmacharyashram with himself as Gurudev or Preceptor. 

This was an expression of his lifelong discomfort level with the western system of education. He had fared badly in all the English schools to which he was sent including the ones in England. Yet Rabindranath responded enthusiastically to European literature, art and music and even studied the new scientific theories with interest from his early youth. The poetry he wrote in his teens was largely inspired by that of Dante and Petrarch. Another interesting fact is that he had not only read the major poets he was also aware of the obscurer ones. For instance, he had read the boy poet Chatterton and saw a close resemblance between himself and him…

Sunil Gangopadhyay:  Bhanu Singher Padavali (Bhanu Singh’s verses)?

Aruna Chakravarti:  Yes. This was particularly apparent when Rabindranath was writing the lyrics which were published as Bhanu Singher Padavali.  Both young men were incurable romantics and obsessive dreamers who lived in a visionary world they half believed in. Like Chatterton, who concealed his identity behind that of the non-existent medieval poet Rowley, Rabindranath used the pseudonym BhanuSingh — a non-existent Vaishnav poet. Do you see a contradiction between his absorbing interest in everything European and his rejection of it in terms of an educational process?

Sunil Gangopadhyay:  Rabindranath couldn’t stand the rigid discipline of the British public school system. He hated confinement of any sort and the notion of being dosed with quantities of knowledge within the four walls of a school room was obnoxious to him. That is why he fared badly in all the English schools to which he was sent—both in India and in England.

Aruna Chakravarti:  Yes. His brother Somendranath, who wasn’t quite normal as a boy and became distinctly unhinged in later life, fared better.  But Rabindranath’s inability to benefit from a structured system of education wasn’t restricted to English schools. His brother Hemendranath, who had taken charge of the primary education of the children of Jorasanko, told his father often — Robi mon dei na (Robi doesn’t pay attention). His music tutors complained that he didn’t attend his classes regularly and even when he did, was inattentive and careless.

Yet Rabindranath rose to be one of the world’s greatest composers and could be numbered among a dozen of its most learned men. What, in your opinion, lay behind the strange amalgam of qualities that made up Rabindranath? The meticulous self-education he put himself through with no aids other than simple lexicons and dictionaries indicate rigorous self discipline.  A wondrous ability to imbibe knowledge and an instinctive rejection of a formal, structured process of education! How does one explain it?

Sunil Gangopadhyay:   Well. He was a genius Aruna. And who can gauge the psyche of a genius? Or even try to analyse it?  And what is more he developed his art slowly and carefully. He did not rest on his extraordinary abilities. He worked hard at them. He was one of the most disciplined and hardworking men born in this world. He made some mistakes in his life, but doesn’t everyone make mistakes? When he established the brahmacharyashram he did it on the advice of his friend Brahma Vidya Upadhyay. The idea appealed to him, but he did not realise that it was a highly impractical one. Impossible to implement. 

He began by enrolling students without charging fees. But he could not keep it up. He had to sell his wife’s jewellery, even his own favourite watch, to pay his teachers. But how long could these funds last? He couldn’t make ends meet. Finally, he had to start charging fees.

Another defective system he introduced was the observance of caste. Brahmin boys would not touch the feet of Kayastha teachers. But Kayastha teachers would touch the feet of their Brahmin colleagues. Even that had to be given up.

But the great thing about him was that he never failed to admit his mistakes and rectify them. He realised that even a guru has to grow and evolve. And he learned steadily and continuously from the journey of his life. He was truly successful with his experiment of Viswa Bharati, the meeting of Bharat with Viswa—India with the world. He realized that India’s greatness lay not in her ancient system of education but in her ability to assimilate and bring together all the nations and cultures of the world.  Ei bharater mahamanaber sagar teere (In this land of Bharat, rests the ocean of all races of mankind).

Aruna Chakravarti: Very true. But some of the systems he introduced in Shantiniketan have remained to this day.  For example, his belief that a child can learn only if he’s in the midst of nature, which must have been behind the concept of the “open air school” he started, is still respected. No class rooms. Learning only on bedis (platforms) under the trees.

Sunil Gangopadhyay:  That was a foolish idea! And it didn’t work. It rains three months in the year in Birbhum and the rest of the year, it is either burning hot or bitterly cold. There are only short spells of pleasant weather in spring and autumn. The open-air school was impractical. It was at best a gesture. And it has remained a gesture. And to tell you the truth—I’ve never understood why Rabindranath had to open a school. He was a poet and should have remained content with writing poetry. Why did he have to pose as an educationist? Where was the need?

Aruna Chakravarti:  The time is running out, Sunil da, and I can see the Chair gesturing to me to start winding up.  I had many more questions and was looking forward to hearing your views on the conflicting Western responses to Gitanjali prior to the Nobel Prize and after. But it looks as though I’ll have to keep it aside for a private discussion. I’d like to end with one observation. Though it is not a question I would be happy to have your response. Many of your admirers, among whom I count myself, are of the opinion that no other Indian writer has come closer to Rabindranath’s prolificity, his vast range of genres and the depth and expanse of his vision than yourself. Many of us see you as Rabindranath’s legitimate successor and feel sure that you will be recognized as such and invested with his literary mantle in the not so distant future. Would you like to respond to this prophesy?

Sunil Gangopadhyay:  Thank you Aruna. But no. I have nothing to say.

Aruna Chakravarti:  Thank you, Sunil da, for your inputs. They have been most interesting and have certainly pushed the borders of our understanding of Rabindranath substantially. Thank you once again. 

 This conversation took place at a Tagore Conference organised by the Sahitya Akademi in Kochy in 2011.