Shyama

Obhi and Kaberi:

Hope you will excuse my using first names here. I have been highly impressed by your work on Shyama, and your effort especially in retaining the authenticity of Rabindranath's work in putting this together. I have not read your Shyama translation yet. I hope that your efforts will bring the priceless gifts of Tagore to the world- a task we Bengalis, more than anyone else, must assign ourselves. As with so many others, Tagore to me is in my very life-breath. It is a lifetime labor of love to reveal this astonishing giant to human beings around the world.

Beyond the dance and the visuals- it is Tagore's words, the work of indescribable genius bordering on divinity, that I am afraid a non-Bengali speaker will greatly miss. I truly have no idea how this chasm could ever be bridged. I am myself attempting to do my part in bridging this chasm, but the challenge is overwhelming. I find somewhat better success in bringing Tagore's intellectual and humanistic message to the world- but his artistic work is an entirely different story.

My genuine best wishes for your effort. Please note that in the mid-1990s, a yound Bengali documentary filmmaker, Arun Roy, had made a short documentary on Tagore's thoughts on film as a medium. It was titled, Of Tagore and Cinema. Arun was kind enough to give me a VHS version of his work, with the hope that I might help give it a broader audience in the U.S. Given my academic life in engineering, I have been able to do very little towards that objective. If you are interested, I would be glad to share Of tagore and Cinema with you. It might have some bearing upon your work w.r.t. putting Tagore's classic works on film.

Very best regards-

Monish

Monish Chatterjee, Ph.D.
Dept. of ECE
University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469, USA

35 Crane Court
Springboro, OH 45066, USA

(937) 886 2427