Tagore left to walk alone
ANJANA RAJAN
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A series that features songs of Rabindranath Tagore in Hindi seems to be ‘dumbing down’ the great poet.
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Besotted? A visual from the song “Meri Mukti” .
Not long ago, Prasar Bharati launched, with some fanfare, a series based on the songs of Rabindranath Tagore. The series, currently running on Doordarshan, presents the great poet’s works in Hindi, retaining the original tunes. The works are in
troduced with some sweetly smiling commentary, in the typical style viewers who preceded the cable boom are used to, by Divya Dutta and Mamta Gurnani.
Popular singers like Anup Jalota, Kavita Krishnamurti, Anuradha Paudwal and others add to the musical value of the project. But since this is a visual medium too, director Alo Kundu has tried hard to introduce variety. Unfortunately this aspect is more like eye candy. Therefore, if, as the Prasar Bharati brochure states, the purpose of the series is to introduce the “splendour of Gurudev’s inimitable genius” to the larger, non-Bengali speaking audience, it only partially succeeds. Whereas the music is melodious and soothing, appealing, as Tagore’s works have always done, to lay listeners and connoisseurs, the visuals do his intellectual depth serious disservice.
In the first episode, the famous song “Chal Akela” (“Ekla Cholo Re”), sung by Anup Jalota, was reduced to a filmi village scene with a schoolteacher singing and dancing with her innocent pupils. Soppy enactme
nts, like the girl being stopped from attending school finding her way to the teacher anyway, attempted to interpret the message of the poet. All that remained, it would seem, was for the schoolteacher to call out to a jaunty young man, “Raju tum bhi gao,” in true Bollywood style.
Loss of dignity
The message of “Chal Akela” continues to inspire generations with its call to the conscience that can be interpreted at many levels, and it has increasing relevance in today’s intolerant climate. But if this song, which gained the status of an anthem in the hands of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave, lost some dignity in this saccharine visualisation, “Meri Mukti” (“Aamaar Mukti Aloy Aloy”) received even more merciless treatment. Here, as Anuradha Paudwal sang the philosophical lyrics, one was left wondering, why? Why did Mamta Gurnani have to sway and gesticulate, looking beautiful but ridiculous, conveying no sense? At one point she even wrote ‘mukti’ in Hindi on the wet sand, and one could not help remembering a besotted lover drawing a heart with an arrow through it! Was there no other way to make the lyrics – which speak of the poet finding deliverance in the infinite beauties of the finite world, in the strengths of the human spirit – come ‘alive’?
Then there was “Pran Bhar Do, Pyas Har Lo”, the translated version of “Pran Bhoriya Trisha Horiya”. Sung by Kavita Krishnamurti, this beautiful devotion-filled offering was illustrated by a damsel in bright pink and green dancing about some ruins. Besides Alo Kundu, other directors who have contributed to individual episodes include Tapas Sen Gupta and Atanu Ghosh. While the concept is a fine one, one wonders why such frivolous visuals have been used. It seems Doordarshan is following the old tenet that ‘dumbing down’ of all subject matter is required to make it worthy of mass appeal.
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