Shantiniketan: The university town that Rabindranath Tagore set up has become Tagore town.
Call it cheap commercialisation of his fame, or the impact of his global personality, Tagore is omnipresent. The very moment you board the train at Howrah junction, Tagore unknowingly dictates your journey — the train has been named the “Shantiniketan Express” by the Indian Railways — as Rabindra Sangeet play in the back ground.
The railway platform says “Welcome to Shantiniketan” the administrative name of the town Bolpur is within brackets.
On trains, hawkers will advertise handmade artefacts and small statues of the bard even though you are still 150 kilometres away from Shantiniketan.
The hotels have been named after various poems written by the poet and even hotel rooms and bungalows bear a resemblance to the architectural style he brought in. Even my local driver was named Rabindranath.
Shop after shop is stocked with clothes made from Batik — a cloth that is traditionally made using a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. Statues, paintings and murals of the poet fill every counter. Replicas of the furniture made under his directions are also available.
Restaurants offer à la carte dishes that Tagore liked and old-timers at the place will even tell you the menu at his wedding ceremony or the dish that he himself prepared on a particular occasion. “Santiniketan style” has become a byword in West Bengal.
“The entire economy of this town revolves around Tagore. His style of clothes, liking for food and his architectural styles are followed to the hilt. Though production techniques have changed, its Tagore, who sets the tone for everything that happens in this town,” said Samiran Aich, a Tagore researcher.
“One of the biggest achievements of Tagore is that he has set the tone for anything that happens here. Just 250 kilometres away from Kolkata, it’s not the Writers building that dictates here, but Tagore and his lifestyle. But all that is changing fast and in an ugly way,” added Aich.
But it is not only the university that draws people to this dreamland. Santiniketan, even today, is awash with green and platitudes such as peaceful and quiet can be still used to describe this town.
Internationally-famous designer Bibi Ray, in her early 70s, decided to retire to Santiniketan from Kolkata. “It’s most for the peace and tranquillity,” she says. “The fact that my mother had a house here helped make up my mind. You get most of the facilities that you do in Kolkata. Even medical facilities are improving.”
Apart from residents, Santiniketan’s calm also attracts people looking for a weekend getaway.
However, this development is harming the town, long-time residents say.
Until the early Eighties, Santiniketan was a sleepy town, drawing mostly students and researchers from different states and abroad.
People who have been here for a long time insist that, when they stood outside Bolpur station, the nearest rail carried sound from three kilometres away and, if they craned their necks, they could see Udayan, Tagore’s home in Santiniketan.
Though clearly an apocryphal tale, it is repeated every now and then to emphasise how empty the streets of Santiniketan were in those days.
Today, the narrow stretch between Bolpur station and Santiniketan is clogged with rickshaws, auto rickshaws, taxis, buses and lorries. A cloud of dust and fumes swirls over the once-tree-lined road, now crowded with shops of all shapes and sizes. Santiniketan stays all but hidden behind a row of hideous, roadside guesthouses and hotels offering “hakka noodles and chilli chicken”.
Nine decades after Tagore set up Visva Bharati in Santiniketan, efforts are on to save the university town. Some local residents have got together and formed the Santiniketan Anchal Abasik Samity to fight encroachment and illegal construction. The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, too, has pitched in, launching a campaign to keep Santiniketan’s “air and water” free from growing pollution.
“The building of an eco-park and golf courses are developments that are not really needed for this township. Such developments will bring in the kind of people who have no reverence for Tagore and his works. It will only destroy the sociological balance and ensure further degradation of the university,” says resident Sukumar Mitra.
