Vijaya: the Victorious by Ananda Gupta was a multi-media performance of Tagore’s music, poetry and audio-visual screening. By Utpal K Banerjee
The iconic Indian poet-novelist-philosopher-educationist, Rabindranath Tagore, was an extraordinary man whose rich and varied life — as densely packed with growth and activity as a tropical rain-forest — straddled the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. In far-away Argentina, much like Tagore, Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979) was an eminent scholar and a remarkable intellectual described as “the quintessential Argentine woman”, best known as an advocate for women: at the vanguard of the legendary literary magazine Sur. She was undoubtedly one of the most prominent South American women of her time, but how many did notice that Sur meant Indian “melody”: the quintessential music that pervaded her whole life since she had intimately known the Indian poetIJ
Ocampo and Tagore’s first encounter was one of those historical accidents. Here was Ocampo who, earlier in Paris in 1914 — soon after the poet was made a Nobel laureate — had read his Gitanjali in Spanish and was completely bowled over, as Tagore’s song offerings seemed “to fill a large void in her life.” In 1924, a decade later, here was Tagore: travelling via Peru to Madrid, but suddenly taken ill and stranded in Buenos Aires sea-port: needing a week’s hospitalisation. Ocampo owned home in Rio and a picturesque villa in Rio’s outskirts — being rich enough, besides being stunningly beautiful — and she offered her villa for the poet’s treatment. One week led to two months and Ocampo thought nothing of disposing of her accumulated pearls: to lay on meticulous care for the poet. Drawing a simile from the lush foliage of the Amazonian forests — through which both sunrays and moon beams could only trickle in to shimmer: day and night — she had visualised Tagore as a “tall tree” since her Paris days. Here was he, in person, as gurudev: as per the Indian epithet, at whose feet she demurely squatted. In turn, she was Tagore’s Vijaya: one who had brought glory of victory to Tagore’s dreary life and suddenly gushed open Tagore’s immense creativity once again, leading to his opus, Purabi, which he dedicated to Vijaya…
The programme, Vijaya: the Victorious — 90 Years on, commemorated recently the 90th anniversary of Tagore’s visit to Argentina and his extraordinary meeting with Ocampo: presented by the Argentine Embassy and Instituto Cervante. Directed by the UK-based scholar-singer, Ananda Gupta, it was a multi-media performance of Tagore’s music, mood-dance, poetry and audio-visual screening. With scintillating verses and occasional prose, narrated energetically by prof Gustavo Canzobre, it crossed language-barriers: blending freely dominant Spanish with English, French, Hindi and Bengali. It was a treat to hear (and see) the celestial danseuse Urvashi or the unknown foreign maiden Videshini whom the poet had seen in the latin universe, or, witness Canzobre to emote to a quartet of Gitanjali librettos, culminating with the full-frontal bow: In a salutation of mine, in a salutation of mine/let my whole body lie, prostrate in the world of thine…
Indeed the skilled web of words and songs that Ananda spun, the viewers were regaled through the immensely-rich interactions between Tagore and Ocampo. If she would persuade him to write poems afresh everyday, she would also want them translated later and gently chide him if he omitted any stanza considering it abstruse to the foreign souls. She would make him come out of habitual doodles into the domain of full-fledged paintings: to be exhibited on both sides of Atlantic six years on — when many portraits would reflect Ocampo. In turn, if she was his muse, Tagore amply repaid his emotional debt by writing at least 400 poems and songs in his later life: mirroring a foreign feminine presence. listeners here were taken through those ineffable lyrics and poems: ever so gently. Choreography, led by Sadananda Biswas’ vigorous Kathak quintet — through evocative mood-dance — was a decided advantage. So were Sonali Sharma’s soft lasya gestures for numbers like: O distracted one, the distracted one/My songs’ florid garland for you, I won’t have spun… As Ananda confirms, “There was something between the two — Tagore was 63 and Ocampo 34 — that remained a mystery: best left unexpressed. It was at one level East meeting West, or, South meeting a different South. It was also like their surrounding Nature: serenading the mature duo. Most of the communications was in silence and Ocampo writes that only once Tagore physically touched her body.” On a lighter level, “There were this maid of Ocampo without a word of English and Tagore knowing no Spanish; yet they communicated perfectly.” Or, “There was Ocampo’s arm-chair — in whose spacious bottom Tagore spent most time there and about which the French poet Baudelaire had written an ode, earning him the sobriquet of “Furniture Poet” from Tagore — Ocampo gifted Tagore before departure. Despite Tagore’s apparent reluctance and despite having to saw down the ship’s entrance to let it in, the arm-chair reached Santiniketan — Tagore used it all his life — and it still reigns among Tagore’s precious belongings!”
This performance will be broadcast on DD National on May 8.