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Puffin Classics: Boyhood Days

Puffin Classics: Boyhood Days

Rabindranath Tagore
,
Radha Chakravarty
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‘I was then about seven or eight. I had no useful role to play in this PBI – World; and that old palki, too, had been dismissed from all forms of useful employment . . .’

Hidden inside an ancient palanquin on a hot, lonely afternoon, a young boy sets off on an imaginary adventure. He encounters gangs of bandits, arrives at palaces where kings bathe in sandalwood-scented water, and the hunter accompanying him gets rid of the tiger lurking in the forest with a bang! of his gun. The boy, gifted with a vivid imagination and a sensitive mind, grew up to become one of PBI – India’s greatest poets and thinkers.

In Boyhood Days Rabindranath Tagore recounts his growing up years with gentle wit and humour. He describes life in nineteenth-century Kolkata when the only light in the evening came from castor-oil lamps; when hackney carriages raced through the city’s streets and women travelled in palanquins to the Ganga for their bath. He writes about his early love for music and poetry, the myriad influences that shaped his thinking and about the other members of his large, gifted family. Boyhood Days brings to life an era long past and traces the journey of an icon from childhood to the time he takes his first steps in the PBI – World of literature.

Imprint: India Puffin

Published: Jan/2007

ISBN: 9780143330219

Length : 144 Pages

MRP : ₹199.00

Puffin Classics: Boyhood Days

Rabindranath Tagore
,
Radha Chakravarty

‘I was then about seven or eight. I had no useful role to play in this PBI – World; and that old palki, too, had been dismissed from all forms of useful employment . . .’

Hidden inside an ancient palanquin on a hot, lonely afternoon, a young boy sets off on an imaginary adventure. He encounters gangs of bandits, arrives at palaces where kings bathe in sandalwood-scented water, and the hunter accompanying him gets rid of the tiger lurking in the forest with a bang! of his gun. The boy, gifted with a vivid imagination and a sensitive mind, grew up to become one of PBI – India’s greatest poets and thinkers.

In Boyhood Days Rabindranath Tagore recounts his growing up years with gentle wit and humour. He describes life in nineteenth-century Kolkata when the only light in the evening came from castor-oil lamps; when hackney carriages raced through the city’s streets and women travelled in palanquins to the Ganga for their bath. He writes about his early love for music and poetry, the myriad influences that shaped his thinking and about the other members of his large, gifted family. Boyhood Days brings to life an era long past and traces the journey of an icon from childhood to the time he takes his first steps in the PBI – World of literature.

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Paperback / Hardback
Ebooks

Rabindranath Tagore

Born in 1861, Rabindranath Tagore was a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance. He started writing at an early age and by the turn of the century had become a household name in Bengal as a poet, a songwriter, a playwright, an essayist, a short story writer and a novelist. In 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and his verse collection Gitanjali came to be known internationally. At about the same time he founded Visva-Bharati, a university located in Santiniketan, near Kolkata. Called the ‘Great Sentinel’ of modern India by Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore steered clear of active politics but is famous for returning his knighthood as a gesture of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Tagore was a pioneering literary figure, renowned for his ceaseless innovations in poetry, prose, drama, music and painting, which he took up late in life. His works include novels; plays; essays on religious, social and literary topics; some sixty collections of verse; over a hundred short stories; and more than 2500 songs, including the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941. His eminence as India’s greatest modern poet remains unchallenged to this day.

Radha Chakravarty

Radha Chakravarty is a writer, critic and translator. She is Professor of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies at Ambedkar University, Delhi. She has co-edited The Essential Tagore (Harvard and Visva-Bharati), nominated Book of the Year 2011 by Martha Nussbaum for The New Statesman. She is the author of Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers (2008) and Novelist Tagore (Routledge, 2013). She has also translated several of Tagore’s works, including Gora, Boyhood Days, Chokher Bali, Farewell Song: Shesher Kabita and The Land of Cards: Stories, Poems and Plays for Children. Other works in translation include Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Kapalkundala, In the Name of the Mother by Mahasweta Devi, and Crossings: Stories from Bangladesh and India. She has edited Bodymaps: Stories by South Asian Women and co-edited Tagore the Eternal Seeker: Footprints of a World Traveller, Writing Feminism: South Asian Voices and Writing Freedom: South Asian Voices. Shades of Difference: Selected Writings of Rabindranath Tagore is an edited volume forthcoming from the Social Science Press. Her essays and review articles have appeared in books and periodicals worldwide.

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