For Bengalis, Tagore's birth date in the Western calendar shifts every year, just like it does for holy festivals—the poet is celebrated like a god A Goan Catholic friend who graduated from JNU’s English department had a recurring quip about her Bengali classmates. “I cannot understand a group of people who can break into song at the slightest provocation." The prompts could be anything: a hot plate of food, the first drop of rain, a fluttering leaf. “They are always talking to each other in Bengali.
And they all know the same songs!" Indeed, the Bengalis, they know the same songs. It’s a shared register of largely Tagore songs, with a sprinkling of some adhunik (contemporary) songs and some by Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of