i hav been thinking bout this blog business all day long...every action i make every word uttered or heard uttered by sumone was scrutinised by my alter ego (yeah! i do hav one up there) as a potential content for todays blog.... but lets face it.. i aint no big creative writer (or even a writer at the least for tht matter) to conjure up verbal magic out of wafer thin ideas n occurrences... so let me write sumthing about the only thing tht truly inspired me today...

i have been going through the sunday supplement of Hindu newspaper which is titled as 'Magazine'... to b entirely truthful this unusual act of newspaper reading was strictly induced by the nerve whacking boredom tht i was experiencing... 

the article tht got my eye was one tht was titled Gems from Tagore n the reason was not tht i have an admiration for Tagore as such but the picture that has been given along with it... it shows Tagore with Albert Einstein... yes the same Albert Einstein who belong to the class of those ppl i hav cursed all along my school days & even now for my graduation, purely for inventing these many uncanny and intricate formulae and theories, forcing poor and not-so-bright students like me to sit late during the nights and mug up them..the interstin thing abt these formulae are that they contain so many alphabets but are never ever even be remotely as close to a word...n i always used to wonder y?...may be the set of all formulae contain all the possible combinations of alphabets tht  never make a word... oops! sorry i'm, far from my topic...

So, what attracted me to the photo was Tagore standing with Einstein... i had always the picture of Tagore being the literary phenomenon of India while Einstein is sumthing like God for me as he has singlehandedly thought up the basics of modern science.... the 2 of them together jus created a feeling of 'oh! my gosh!' n i never knew tht the 2 even existed during the same period in history... then due to acute boredom induced frenzy i started reading the article & to say the truth it was such an elegant & effective piece tht made me change my whole mindset about Rabindranath Tagore...

the article begins by shedding light on this great man who is well renounced as a poet, novelist & composer and playwright... but the author makes it clear tht he had also ventured into the areas of travelogues, essays & polemics.... 

the article says that Tagore has made himself clear that the ultimate virtue that one should hold is Humanity & not anything else..not even Patriotism.. To quote the legendary figure himself: 

he has always shared a desire to be above every segmentation that tended to divide the basic humanity... even patriotism beyond an extend is a prejudice against humans of other nations....such was the magnitude in which he contained humanity inside him.. that doesn't mean he was against the freedom struggle that was raging in this very soil at tht very same period of time... but he liked to see this as a struggle to free the devilish grip of European colonialism upon humanity... in other words freedom in a broader sense and perspective.. against the exclusiveness that the colonialists had... the carnivorous and cannibalistic tendencies to keep the 'aliens' at bay or to exterminate them altogether as if  they were afraid of other races achieving prominence...

The claims of Indian Nationalism, European imperialism and Soviet communism all came under the unbiased criticism of Tagore.. he questioned all this by a mere simple question

he doesent sto there and then goes on to clarify the message that he wants to put across

Tagore always believed that in this ever changing world  if one have a mission that includes all humanity, then acknowledgement of the existence of differences in opinions is crucial. And the opinions are changed and rechanged only through the free circulation of intellectual forces and moral persuasion...

these ideas that this great man put forward a hundred year ago holds much significance, if not more, in these days....Addressed to those of his time, these remarks can be addressed against those of the present times who wish to forcibly impose their own convictions on the rest of humanity, all those who fanatically and violently seek to take possession of the past and future of mankind...

The columnist, Ramachandra Guha, has done an excellent job of infusing the reader with the same passion and spirit with which Tagore conveyed this message to the world... and has definitely brought the meaning of patriotism under clear scrutiny in the light of humanity....