Monday, September 19, 2011

Rathindranath and Prtima (contd-1)

Rabindranath came to Santiniketan with his son and daughter-in-law on 8 feb, 1910. Rathindranath was one of the founder student of Brahmacharyasram, so the students became busy to welcome him and his wife in a befitting manner.  Sudhiranjan Das wrote,
"It was decided that Gaur Da ( Gopal Ghosh) etc the players and body-builders will show their technique in body building and the other boys will stage the drama , "Malini" of Rbindranath.  gaurda, Biren (Sen), Haragobinda, etc started practicing the technique of the exercises and we began doing rearshal of our drama "Malini". On the day when Rathida and Bauthan (elder sister-in-law) had arrived we had shown the techniques of the exercises and so many techniques of Carate. All the spectators became excited with joy when a bullock-cart went over the breast of Gaurda..... In the evening, we staged our drama." In his description, the roles of the drama were played by, 1. Supriya - Manoranjan Choudhury, 2. Kshemankar-Saroj Chandra Majumdar (Bhola), 3. Mahishi- Narendramnath Khan, 4. Malini - Sudhiranjan Das.
A teacher, Jatindranasth Mukhopadhyay w rote,
"On this occasion there were arrangements of good meals, games,and different kinds of amusements. I remember a lottery was aranged in a day. In the lawn in front of the old guest house all of us - students, teachers, bride and bride-groom, and Gurudev were sitting.On a table, so many articles were arranged, starting from a chocolate bar to a football.Writing the names of each of the articles on small piece of papers were kept in a basket. Gurudev was picking up one after another meant for a person called for his turn and gave the article due to him. When a teacher got a marble or a chocolate stick
everybody bursts into laughter."