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‘Sing of Life’: Priya Sarukkai Chhabria reweaves Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’ for the reader on the go
Chhabria keeps the core and pares down the body in this unique homage. Priya Sarukkai Chabra.
Several years ago, a Bengali friend invited me to her home for lunch and “adda”. Her other guests were Bengalis too. But I was not acquainted with them. Post lunch, the conversation moved to art and literature. Unsurprisingly, a harmonium appeared. Requests for songs did the rounds. After a while, all of us pitched in to sing, unsurprisingly, only Rabindra Sangeet.
We sang with sincerity at different scales and with wrong or missed lyrics. We created more cacophony than music in the process. But nobody could fault our passion. A little later, when everyone’s ears had had their fill, someone began a conversation about a particular poem by Tagore. And soon, an animated discussion followed, in which some of us remained listeners.