Santiniketan

“The child learns so easily because he has a natural gift, but adults, because they are tyrants, ignore natural gifts and say that children must learn through the same process that they learned by. We insist upon forced mental feeding and our lessons become a form of torture. This is one of man’s most cruel and wasteful mistakes” —-Tagore

Birbhum is a quiet district in the mid Bengal, and Bolpur a tiny slumber town in Birbhum, about 150 km away from the Bengal capital, Calcutta. The place was very peaceful, as peaceful as a bloomed rose, probably this attracted Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath to name the place, Santiniketan, and later it was there his more famous son started the school of his ideals, ‘Patha Bhavana’.

The Gandevta Express from Calcutta reached Bolpur by 9:00 AM, it was drizzling, in February it’s an untimely rain, as it was not a festival time, not many tourists were seen, and the small station itself conceded a miniature mould of the sleepy town. With multiple carry bags and camera, we attracted rickshaw drivers’ attention and soon we were encircled by a large gang. Somehow we found our way to the station clock room, we wanted to keep our baggage somewhere safe.

People were friendly everywhere, we never felt alienated, when the officer in charge of the clock room insisted to have locks for the bags, Jayadeep went outside to get one, it started raining, the land of Gurudev welcomed us with nature’s musical note.

To have the true sense of a Bengali town, we started walking, Santiniketan campus is 20 min walk from Bolpur railway station, the streets were narrow, cycle rickshaws are the most popular mode of transport, dirty road side eateries, pan shops, few better off tea stalls, groceries, and the ever ferrying cycle rickshaws, very few odd motorists, it was a miniature cross section of Calcutta.

When it started pouring heavily we got into 2 cycle rickshaws and headed towards the University, it took hardly 5 minutes for the young rickshaw driver to cycle us to our destination, though not having much idea about the topography of the campus he took us to the gate of one of the Santiniketan canteens. The canteen was a modest one, few young students were found having snacks there, talking loud, it was difficult for me to cop up with the mustard oil used in the dishes. We met there a faculty of French studies of the University; he gave us basic idea as where to go and what to see. We thanked him and walked towards Uttaraayan, the Museum complex once used by the poet.

This place near Bolpur was selected by Maharishi Debendranath Tagore to practice mediations. Rabindranath started an experimental school known as ‘Brahmacharya Ashram’ here with an aim to train students in close association with nature in the style of ‘Gurukul Tapovana’ of ancient India. Later an international university named Visva-Bharati came up as a centre of Indian culture. A great lover of nature, Tagore planted trees in and around the Ashram and gave it a green appeal. He initiated several festivals to celebrate seasons, and these were free from any religious narrowness. Our vision was vividly rich with a mix of orange, yellow and green colours all over the campus, the uniform for junior students were orange and yellow, department buildings were grey, typical of any old educational institution, theory classes were held in the open air, and we learnt that if it rains, it would be an off day. Bubbling little kids were found sitting around large trees listening to their teachers, a tremendous scene for people coming from metros. Photography was taboo near the classes, a peaceful serenity filled the air, and we roamed around the campus in disbelief and headed towards ‘Uttaraayan’.

Santiniketan is famed for the Baul singers, the nomadic minstrels of Bengal who sing songs of love and devotion on the ektara, a musical instrument similar to violin but with a single string. The campus is dotted with palm, eucalyptus and Sal trees. Uttaraayan is a complex of five houses where Rabindranath used to live, and the lion share of ‘Gitanjali’, the collection of poems which fetched Nobel Literature prize for him was penned here. Uttaraayan has a museum and an art gallery inside. It took more than 2 hours for us to see them. The Rabindra Museum, inaugurated by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1961 has manuscripts, letters, paintings and gifts presented by various dignitaries of foreign countries, Tagore’s hand written letter refusing to accept Knighthood, his Nobel Prize medallion and citation, and personal items of the poet. Even today the students graduating from this University are given leaves of the ‘Sataparni’ trees at the annual convocation ceremony. Prime Minister of India is the chancellor of this university.

In the afternoon we met few Kerala students there, doing their Masters in Fine Arts; it was a pleasant surprise, to meet people of the same tongue at this interior Bengal village. They gave us more directions about the must see locales and gave us their cycles to travel. Santiniketan is a pollution free campus and students and faculty irrespective of their position use them. While roaming around in the campus we passed past the settlement of the Santhal tribes, just outside the campus. Santhals are a tribe still not polluted by the modern societal life. On the way we just stopped outside a Santhal hut and talked for a few minutes with an old man who was found sitting outside, we were amazed to see the information he has about Santiniketan and Amartya Sen. Incidentally Amartya Sen’s home is inside the Santiniketan campus and quite nearer to the Santhal settlement.

In the evening we went with the Kerala students to see their works, Ramdas, Sajeesh, Anoop, Aruna, each student in MFA final year will have their own room for their works, they call it studio, and they can go there as and when they feel like and give way to their creativity. Students stay inside the campus itself, we watched their paintings and sculptures, listened to the interesting descriptions each one has to give for their works. ‘Kala Bhavan’, the department for arts in Santiniketan is one among the best in the world. It was all disbelief for me, while standing among those students, Santiniketan, the one which I have read about, heard about, talked about, thought about, that dream unfolding true just in front of me, in that lush campus, among the students, in an air filled with their ideas, their thoughts, their dreams. Our train to New Jalpaguri was at 10; we thanked them for their hospitality and left the campus by 9.

Back inside my train couch I recollected one virtue I noticed in Santiniketan, there was no false improvement on anything, everything natural, without any pattern, be it the structure of the campus, the mode of thought, or the way students live, the growth there was following no pattern, it simply happens simultaneously, which is holy, may be that is why the Santhal tribes still exist inside the campus. Indira Gandhi was groomed there, so also Satyajit Rai, Amartya Sen was christened by Tagore himself in that campus, I felt the greatness of the soil I stood the whole day, and the thought itself was enthralling for a peaceful siesta.