I was once invited to the Bengali Association to give a talk. I reached a little early and I had the opportunity to listen to a soulful rendering of “Rabindra Sangeet”, the poetry of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, by a lady who enthralled the audience, and yet was lost in her own world of the great poet’s thoughts. The beauty of the moment was that I could hardly understand a word of what was being sung, but yet I could revel in the serenity of the moment.
It made me think once again of what I often perceive – how each language has a beauty of its own, how fortunate we are to live in a country that has a treasure trove of innumerable languages, dialects, literature, culture and quotes. If we make up our mind we can unite all the myriad languages of our country, pull out each pearl of wisdom from every one of them, and merge them to form a legacy that can be passed on to future generations, to overcome the strife of competition, parochialism and regionalism
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake…..”
