Homage to Tagore
Top: “Noyono Tomare Paye Na Dekhite” by Karen Shah. Bottom: “Nrityero Tale Tale Hey Nataraj” by Nike Borghese.
The lilting strains of a Tagore song waft across the room. It's not the usual Rabindra Sangeet concert, but an art exhibition inspired by the songs and poems of the great bard. On the walls are paintings by two Italian artists, Karen Shah and Nike Borghese, that take the viewer through some stunning landscapes and images.
The hills, countryside, forests and seas come alive in Karen's works. She creatively captures deep Tagorean spiritual and meditative qualities in her works, be it the Indian locales of Mumbai and Goa or the Italian landscapes of Florence, Ninfa, Lake Canterno, Nemi and Vico nel Lazio. Tagore's “Noyono tomare paye na dekhite” (translated as.. “My eyes see you not, for you remain within them..”) epitomises a memorable image of leafless trees that reach towards an azure, cloudy sky. The song “Tumi sondhyar meghomala tumi amar shadher shadhona” creates the perfect ambience for hills in hues of brown, blue and black with a shadow line of sunflowers in the forefront. Then there's the Van Gogh -like painting of a man in a hat with a violin in hand and violin case placed on the ground, titled, “Asha jaowar pauther dhare”.
If nature is the common thread in Karen's paintings, Nike seems to specialise in more complex subjects. Swirls and swirls of colour dominate her works like “Aretusa” (that draws from “Bashonti bhubonomohini), “Floating lotus” (“Nrityero tal-e tal-e hey nataraj”) and the aptly named “The Unparalled One” (“Shunil shagorer shaymal kinare”). This depicts a female figure clad in attire the colours of the rainbow which seem to flow flawlessly into a wide sea.
Apart from the art works (unfortunately the hugely talented artists were not present in Delhi), the centre of attraction was seasoned Bengali actress Sharmila Tagore, who inaugurated the exhibition. This correspondent had a chance to get a word in with Sharmila. Sharing her perspective on the exhibition, Sharmila said, “I am responding to Karen a bit more but Nike is more revolutionary and different. I love some of Karen's stunning landscapes, which are reminiscent of the late Russian painter Nicholas Roerich, the husband of late Indian actress Devika Rani.” She however went on to point out that she had her reservations about the framing of Karen's works.
Sharmila is a firm believer that Tagore's songs need to be translated into Hindi, so that they have a wider reach and can be sung by many an Indian. No distant dream. In her new film, “Life Goes On”, lyricist Javed Akhtar has done several love songs, including a “brilliantly translated” Tagore song. The film stars Sharmila and her daughter Soha Ali Khan, together for the first time. The other heavyweights in the film are Girish Karnad and Om Puri.
The credit for the exhibition “Limitless within LimitsHomage to Tagore's songs” must also of course go to Dr. Reba Som the director of the Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Kolkata. Apart from curating the path breaking exhibition, she has translated the song captions and is a talented Tagore singer in her own right.
The exhibition was a fitting tribute to Tagore, the eclectic cultural giant.
Comments