Rabindra Jayanti is a cultural festival celebrated annually, predominantly among Bengalis around the world, commemorating the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. While his date of birth is marked on 7 May, Bengalis celebrate Rabindra Jayanti 2019 on Pochishe Boishakh, 25th day of the first Bengali month of Boishakh, the day he was born according to the Bengali calendar. Today, May 9, is Pochishe Boishakh.
Ranbindranath Tagore was a polymath who expressed himself through poetry, music, novels, paintings that gave a whole new avatar to the Bengali Renaissance. His contributions to the Indian creative sensibility, at a time when independent thought and free-nation ideas were spurting through the sub-continent, are invaluable.
The “real” Rabindra Jayanti is celebrated with numerous cultural programmes and events, such as Kabipranam marked by singing of his songs (Rabindra Sangeet), recitation of his poetry, enactment of dance-dramas at various schools, colleges and universities of Bengal, as a tribute to the artist and his world.
Tagore was a great thinker of his time, and his words reflect his humanist philosophy.
On his 158th birth anniversary, let’s take a look at some of the most memorable Rabindranath Tagore quotes.
“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”
“Love’s gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.”
“The small wisdom is like water in a glass:
clear, transparent, pure.
The great wisdom is like the water in the sea:
dark, mysterious, impenetrable.”
“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.”
“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of
Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”
“You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.”
“Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.”
“The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.”