June 5, 2011
Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations at the Embassy
We celebrated Tagore’s birth anniversary today. Noted Tagore Singer Kaderi Kibria enthralled the audience with his sublime singing of Tagore songs that I am sure made a good portion of the audience nostalgic. Incidentally this is the first that I came to personally meet him as well as welcome him to the embassy. [In fact in Bangladesh there was little scope of me attending any live concert of Kibria’s; he permanently settled in the USA in 1990 couple of years before I started permanently living in Dhaka.] I think I became relatively familiar with Tagore songs the two years when I was an intermediate student at Science College in Dhaka. Aside from the popular Tagore songs that Kaderi Kibria sang, his reminiscences of the singer days in Bangladesh dating around three decades back kept the senior segment of the audience relatively captivated. As he flew home early morning from outside DC he hardly had enough rest before coming to the programme; it was noticeably difficult for him to keep requests that kept coming from the listeners one after another. He, however, promised to compensate at a later time. Hope the love of the non-resident Bangladeshies for Tagore would never fade and they would succeed in spreading the poet’s great works and those of other Bengali writers to the next generations.
My wife and daughter missed out on 150th birthday of Rabindranath; hope both of them can make it to the 200th and 250th anniversary. Till then, not only the legendary singer of Kaderi Kibria; let also the very man physically remain with us!
My good friend Andrew whom I met at an Embassy Orientation programme at the Near East South Asia Center of the National Defence University, Washington DC showed up and attended the musical soirĂ©e. While my off and on side talk to him was much less adequate than a working sub-title for an American ;next time I see him around, I would like to convey to him the meaning of at least one particular Tagore song which featured in Kibria’s renditions , Ami chini go chini tomare ogo bideshini (O dear foreigner, I do know you). You see the insurmountable barrier relating to language remains even while trying a one sentence sub-title for reaching Tagore song to an American listener. Who can help me with a feminine form of “foreigner”?