Thursday, April 29, 2010

Early Education of Rabindranath

Rabindranath Tagore had a sweet voice from his childhood .Thakurbari was always full of literary activities, songs and dramas. But that was amongst the elders, children were not allowed to enter. Dwijendranath, the eldest son of   Devendranath, was then writing a Kabya, "Swapnaprayan", which he used to recite for others to listen. Rabindranath, standing by the side of the door, listened and learnt the verses by heart. Rabindranath said that he could not remember how he learnt to sing. Sreekantha Singh, a friend of Devendranath and el Singing was his passion. He was always absorbed in music. He was appointed for teaching songs but he did not teach songs, he gave them lessons only. Bishnu Chakraborty was a singer of  Adi Brahmo Samaj; he gave them the first lesson in how to sing. Rabindranath did not take regular tuition. Finally, Jadu Bhatta became their vocal music teacher. But Rabindranath  learnt singing in his own way- from servants, from gypsy women, from Bauls and from here and there, from whatever he heard. These were the first lessons of Rabindranath  before he went into formal education.
He and the other children had to pass most of their time with Ishwar or to be more precise,  Brajeshwar. Once he was a village-teacher. He was entrusted to train the children. At that time there was no electricity, there were Kerosene or other oil lamps. Childrens used to sit around him and hear the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata in the dim light of the lamp. After dinner, when they went to bed, a maid told them bed time stories of galloping horses on vast stretches of land, till all of them were sound asleep.       
This was the beginning of his education before actually reading books.der brother of Lord Satyendra Prasanna, came from Raipur of Birbhum district to stay in Calcutta.