The city’s most happening spot in matters culture, Ravindra Kalakshetra, was built in memory of Rabindranath Tagore during the poet’s birth centenary celebrations. True to the poet’s vision, the auditorium has remained the epicentre of the cultural upheavals witnessed by the city.
But the city’s association with Gurudev, as Tagore was known, predates Kalakshetra. He first came to Bangalore on January 12, 1919.
“It was his first visit and he received an overwhelming welcome,” recalls Achintya Lal Roy, president, Bengalee Association, Bangalore, on the eve of Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations. In Bangalore, Gurudev delivered a lecture on ‘The Message of Forests’.
The poet wrote out the lecture and presented it to the then dewan, Kanth Raj Urs, when he went to Mysore on being invited by the Maharaja of Mysore.
“It is clear that it is the poet’s handwriting. He has addressed it to him. It says, ‘To Dewan Kanth Raj Urs’ and ‘Author’s Kind Regards,” says M Chidananda Murthy, litterateur and historian, who found the book at a second hand book sale in Landsowne building near Mysore Palace in 1952.
“I kept it with me for many years. A couple of years ago, I framed it and presented it to The Mythic Society where it has now been put up on the wall. You can get a photocopy of the page on request,” he says.
Tagore, incidentally, delivered a lecture at Mythic Society during his second visit to the city on March 8, 1919. “He mostly spoke about caste history, differences between Western and Eastern civilisations and also about what they had in common,” says Swapan Chakraborty, general secretary, The Bengalee Association.
Tagore returned to Bangalore again in September, 1922, to deliver a lecture on ‘The Vision of India’s History’. After a bout of illness Tagore went to stay in Colombo in May 1928, to recoup his health. It did not improve.
The next month, he came to Bangalore on an invitation from Brajendranath Seal, the then vice-chancellor of Mysore University.
“He rested in the city for nearly three weeks,” Roy says. “He stayed in the state guest house, Balabrooie. During this stay, he started writing Shesher Kobita and continued writing the installments of Yogayog,” he says. “Both these books were completed during that stay in Bangalore.”
