Visiting Jorasanka Thakurbari- Rabindranath Tagore's Home
Yesterday my whole afternoon was spent at Thakurbaari, the place where Rabindranath Tagore was born and breathed his last. It looks like a movie set. Photography within is not allowed. If you look from the top floor and see the sprawling mansion you can almost see hundreds of people walking around Thakurbaari during its hay days. The kitchen, the linens, and the lower sitting dining table. Everything looks like a fairy tale. Not the Cinderella one. But the one where people save each other and themselves. There is no prince or a damsel in distress.The long staircases make me think about young men and women walking up and down. There must have been love stories too. But who knows? When so many people live together anger, jealousy, and hurt will show up too.I thought about so many artists who lived there. Including his brother. The who's who, who visited Thakurbaari. The foreign travels. The dresses that became iconic in Bengal. It takes a lot to make a Tagore- the Nobel laureate. This house gave that to Tagore.I thought of his wife Mrinalini Devi, who married him at the age of 7. She must have played with him as a kid. Before becoming his wife. When you are a wife to a man who belongs to the world, loved, respected, and adorned - did she ever feel if she was enough for him? Did she ever try to find him for herself like a woman does for a man? There is a lot written about them. But the dead never speak. So we never know while cooking a fine meal in her Kitchen if she ever grieved that her man belonged to the world and may be less to her. Who knows? The dead never speak. We can only conjecture.I thought of his son. Men share different Psyche with their fathers to what daughters to their father. No matter where you go your father is talked about, did he ever feel that he might never grow enough? Did his father's legacy dwarf him? Every human has their dark moments. Did he long for his father who took such long trips abroad? Did he just want a father around him? Because as time passes great men become stories. And Tagore became an International heritage. The house became a state museum. Did he not miss his house at times? Or just a normal life. I wonder.The place is stunning. Every room has a piece of Tagore. But I sat down and rethought beyond the man. I wondered what it is to have a man like him as a father or husband and at what price.I will have to visit again. Who knows someday the dead might start speaking again.