Editor's preface
The year 2011 is supremely auspicious for lovers of literature and music around the world, for it is the 150th birth anniversary of the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.Tagore holds a unique place in the hearts of all Indians and Bangladeshis. In 1913 he became the first Bengali to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and he is the composer of the national anthem for each of these countries. In addition, his songs — filled with love for nature’s beauty and praise of the Divine — are sung in towns and villages throughout the sub-continent even today.
In this volume, the great spiritual Master Sri Chinmoy, also hailing from East Bengal and himself an enormously prolific poet, expresses his life-long appreciation and admiration for Tagore. From the age of four, when he was growing up in Shakpura, East Bengal, until his final years, he never tired of singing and listening to Tagore’s songs. Throughout his life, in fact, Sri Chinmoy drew tremendous inspiration from Tagore, and his outpouring of poetry, music and paintings in many ways recalls Tagore’s own seemingly limitless creative fountain.
These writings by Sri Chinmoy about Rabindranath Tagore are gathered from his poems, songs, essays, stories and reflections spanning more than four decades. May they encourage readers from West and East alike to immerse themselves in the immortal treasures of this Master-Poet whom Sri Chinmoy praises so exquisitely as “Banger hiya chand” — “The Moon of Bengal’s Heart.”
