Fic­tion has a lot of power. Fic­tion re­flect­ing life can change the course of an in­di­vid­u­al’s life. Young writer Gurleen Kaur shares with WSN read­ers how read­ing Ra­bindranath Tagore’s Kab­u­li­wala when she was barely 15 years old in­flu­enced her to read and how copy­ing a paint­ing from the novel in­cul­cated the pas­sion for paint­ing which she pur­sues to this day. She pays trib­ute to Ra­bindranath Tagore on his 159th birth an­niver­sary through her re­flec­tions and paint­ing a por­trait of the poet-saint.

IFELL IN LOVE WITH THE BEAU­TI­FUL WORLD OF LIT­ER­A­TURE read­ing Ra­bindranath Tagore’s short story ‘Kab­u­li­wala’. Barely 15 at that time, the sto­ries en­gaged me and I had goose­bumps read­ing the feel­ings that the char­ac­ters in­cited. En­grossed in the sto­ries, I was to­tally en­gaged with the au­thor, feel­ing him telling me the story as a story-teller.

I re­mem­ber how I tried to copy his paint­ing from a mag­a­zine. That was the be­gin­ning of my jour­ney into the world of art­ful ex­pres­sion, which con­tin­ues to this day. My imag­i­na­tion knew no bounds and to­day it reaches unimag­in­able heights. ‘Writ­ings never die and through them, a writer lives for eter­nity.’

I re­mem­ber a time when I was sit­ting in the au­di­ence and en­joy­ing a de­bate whose topic was ‘ Icons are al­ways re­mem­bered’, the can­di­date who was speak­ing against the topic started his speech by quot­ing Shake­speare: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely play­ers. They have their ex­its and their en­trances.” So, when you are talk­ing about the death of icons and their works be­ing for­got­ten, you are still us­ing their words, so one can imag­ine how strongly they are in­stilled and em­bed­ded in our minds.

The first Asian No­bel lau­re­ate and the first non-Eu­ro­pean to win the prize for lit­er­a­ture, Ra­bindranath Tagore has also left a sim­i­lar im­pact on our minds and has suc­cess­fully marked his pe­riod with a legacy that would be al­ways cher­ished and re­mem­bered. He proved by his writ­ings that ‘pen is might­ier than the sword.’ If we talk about ‘Lit­er­a­ture’, it might seem to be just a word but the sphere of its mean­ing is im­mea­sur­able.

Art gives us the sen­sa­tion of some­thing deep and cre­ative. Writ­ing is a great art which pro­vides an artis­tic lens and has the strength to leave a last­ing im­pres­sion and trans­form the world. A British poet, Arthur O’Shaugh­nessy, in his poem ‘We are the mu­sic mak­ers’, re­fer­ring to the artists says: “And out of a fab­u­lous story, we fash­ion an em­pire’s glory.”

I re­mem­ber how I tried to copy his paint­ing from a mag­a­zine. That was the be­gin­ning of my jour­ney into the world of art­ful ex­pres­sion, which con­tin­ues to this day. My imag­i­na­tion knew no bounds and to­day it reaches unimag­in­able heights. ‘Writ­ings never die and through them, a writer lives for eter­nity.’

Ra­bindranath Tagore was a true uni­ver­sal­ist. He was not parochial in his writ­ings nor was he di­vi­sive in his ap­proach in his fic­tion or other writ­ings. He loved his mother tongue Ben­gali and this love is re­flected in his vast works in Ben­gali.

An anec­dote whose ve­rac­ity I can­not vouch, but it is in­ter­est­ing to share. Dur­ing one of his jour­ney by sea, prob­a­bly to the United King­dom, a co-trav­eller asked him, “What have you ex­pe­ri­enced in this voy­age?” Look­ing at the ex­panse of the sea around him, he said, “I re­alised God.” The per­son asked, “What is the first thing you did when God dawned on you?” Tagore replied, “I threw my shav­ing kit into the sea.”

His Sikh con­nec­tion is in­trigu­ing and re­mark­able.

Fa­mous Pun­jabi ac­tor in In­dian cin­ema Bal­raj Sahni in one of his in­ter­ac­tions with Ra­bindranath Tagore asked him, “You have writ­ten the na­tional an­them of In­dia, why don’t you write one for the world?” Pat came the re­ply, “Guru Nanak has al­ready writ­ten it through his ce­les­tial hymn Aarti – gagan mai thaal rav chand deepak ba­nay taarikaa man­dal janak motee.-‘In the bowl of the sky, the sun and moon are the lamps; the stars in the con­stel­la­tions are the pearls…

I yearn to go to San­ti­nike­tan one day to par­take a lit­tle more of Ra­bindranath Tagore.

Tagore’s writ­ings cre­ated an im­pres­sion on me at a young age, gave wings to my imag­i­na­tion and I re­alise that with good lit­er­a­ture one can fly any­where and paint a new world on a new can­vas with a new pat­tern.

Gurleen Kaur is a Pun­jab-based bud­ding artist and writer, with a taste for God­li­ness, pos­i­tiv­ity and the good­ness of the hu­man race. She spends qual­ity time with her par­ents and sib­lings en­joy­ing the re­al­i­ties of life as they un­fold.