Tagore’s birth anniversary today

The 160th birth anniversary of Bishwakabi Rabindranath Tagore, who reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as arts of Indian subcontinent with contextual modernism, is being observed today (Saturday).

On the 25th of Baishakh in 1268 Bengali calendar, Rabindranath, the fountainhead of Bengali wisdom, was born at Jorasanko in Kolkata.  He was the youngest of 13 surviving children of Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi.

He became Asia's first Nobel laureate after winning the Nobel Prize in literature for Gitanjali in 1913.

Two of his songs are now the national anthems of Bangladesh and India.

Tagore was a poet, visual artist, playwright, novelist, as well as a composer whose works reshaped Bangla literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Tagore wrote novels, short stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays on political and personal topics. Gitanjali, Gora, and Ghare-Baire, Chokher Bali are among his best-known works.

The legendary poet breathed his last at his paternal residence in Kolkata on Sraban (Bengali month) 22 of Bangla year 1348 (August 7, 1941).