Round up: Book Release

Book Launch of Selected Songs of Tagore, translated from Bengali to English

Text: Joy Moitra; Pics: Gopal Lahiri

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Rabindra Okakura Bhavan in Salt Lake, Kolkata was the go-to place on 11th February, 2020. Kolkata's eminent poets, theatre personalities and singers performed on stage this evening. The occasion was to celebrate the launch of a book, containing the edited version of English-translated songs.

Selected Songs of Tagore

Gopal Lahiri, eminent bilingual poet and writer, has edited 50 of the 150-odd original Tagore songs translated by Late Aditya Kumar Deva Majumdar into English. On this day, this collection was launched officially in the form of a book called 'Selected Songs'.

‘Selected Songs’ has seen the light of the day due to the untiring efforts of Mita Das, Kamal Kumar Das, Aloke Kumar Bhanja and Gopal Lahiri himself. Abhijan Publishers, the publishers of this book, also contributed significantly to this compilation.

Rajorshi Patranabis was the host for the evening, Prof. Amita Ray commented on the translated work from an academician's point of view.

Renowned singers Srinanda Mukherjee and Shibani Bhaumik, together with theatre artist Santanu Gangopadhyay and Gopal Lahiri  made the evening more memorable with their rendition of Tagore songs and recitations.

The poetry reading session started with eminent poets Sharmila Ray and Sulagna Mukhopadhyay coming on to the stage. While Sharmila mesmerised the audience by reading out translated poems from Spanish to English, Sulagna enthralled by doing an encore from German to Bengali.

The evening concluded with poetry reading sessions by new and emerging poets like Sabarna Ray, Nandita Samanta, Soumyanetra, Nishi Pulugurtha, Joy Moitra, Sekhar Banerjee, Mandakini Bhattacharya, Sandeep Prasad, Gargi Chaudhuri, Aneek Chatterjee, Ajanta Paul, Subhadeep Paul and Dilip Kumar Datta. They read out poems in all the three languages - Bengali, Hindi and English.

Voices Within 2020 :: Setu, February 2020