Dear Rabindranath Tagore[written on his 147th birthday]
It’s true enough that you don’t know me! And I have never met you! Neither do I have the scope of ever witnessing you live! Yet I feel you are related to me…related to my roots…my soul. Sir you are perhaps just about 126 years older than me…! But trust me it makes no real difference to me! It is “pochishe boishakh”
And it marks your 147th birthday. I take this grand opportunity to wish you a very happy birthday! I am no great scholar. I have not even finished reading all your creations. Yet I dare to write this letter to you.
Sir, do you know? I was just 5 years old when I first became acquainted with you through a poem from Shishu Bholanath! A particular line that used to arrest my entire attention was: “harie pawa aalotire nachaye dale phire phire”. Later as I started maturing the meaning of this single line started changing. Gradually I became familiar to your songs, poems, short stories, dramas, and novels. The experience was inexplicable but one strange thing kept recurring. No matter what genre of your work I read or heard that one line flashed back like epiphany! Your works finally give me illumination! A LIGHT OF REALIZATION THAT I ALWAYS TEND TO LOSE…TEND TO FORGET…RETURNS TO ME…WHENEVER I RETURN TO YOU VIA YOUR CREATIONS! I can cry to you… I can laugh with you…I understand my inner self through your unseen guidance! Who can dare say I am a stranger to you?
I know I am not! You are my “PARAM-AATMIYO”. My soul mate! Nothing more to say…I don’t have the skill of felicitating you through words. I only want to make an honest confession: just like food, drink, shelter, clothes, and medicine-the five basic needs that help us to live you are to me the SIXTH AND PERHAPS THE MOST BASIC NEED. You change my mere breathing into a conscious living! HAPPY BIRTH DAY ONCE AGAIN ETERNAL SOUL!!!!