Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861 in the vast city of Calcutta. His Brahman family was wealthy and prominent; his father, Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, was a scholar and religious reformer. Tagore, the youngest of his family, began composing poetry at the young age of eight. His earliest education was provided by tutors, followed then by a variety of schools including one year at a college in London. Tagore wrote his first collection of poems at the age of 17, and it was published by one of his friends as a surprise gift. He later collected a large selection of folklore and local legands from the area now known as Bangladesh. Then, in between 1893 and the beginning of the 1890s, he published a total of seven volumes of poetry. Among these were The Golden Boat (Sonar Tari) and the well known Khanika. This was probably one of the most productive writing segments in his life, and it resulted in an inaptly applied epitaph, The Bengali Shelley’. Probably one of the most valuable things regarding Tagore’s writings is that he wrote in the more common dialects of the local people, refusing to write in the traditional language of India. Although this was very popular among the common people, the scholars and critics who reviewed his work found it less acceptable.
A very judicious collection of poems from the large corpus of Tagore's poetry has been rendered by Dr.N.Ramani in this audio book.
