Poet and the Prophet

Last weekend I was relaxed, I took it easy and gave Shankar Mahadevan’s concert at the Science City and another party at the ITC Sonar a miss.

Saturday evening The Bengal hosted a play Prophet and the Poet in association with Hotel Taj Bengal.The General Manager, Mr Mohanchandran and I were looking forward to this play for more than two months now because although this play has completed 40 shows but none had been staged yet in Kolkata.

This play has much relevance not only to Kolkata but throughout the state of West Bengal because of Rabindranath Tagore.

The Prophet and the Poet is based on a compendium of letters and articles that were exchanged between Mahatma Gandhi and Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore over a period of about 25 years on the backdrop of India’s freedom movement. The exchange, from actual correspondence, is interspersed with imaginary dialogues but based on historical facts.

The play was not only very good but also very informative and enlightening. The Gurudev-Gandhi letters of correspondence did inform the audience about lot of interesting things that they had no idea of when they walked in to see the play.

Before the play started there were cocktails, which, in turn, was preceded by a The Bengal board meeting. Commissioner of Police, Mr R K Pachnanda along with Mr Supratim Sarkar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, South and Mr Debashish Roy, Additional Commissioner of Police III, also attended the meeting as special invitee.

The Bengal board members discussed various issues. Mr Pachnanda presented a gift to all the members of The Bengal as a token of appreciation.

For me, it was after a long time that I got to see a play that was neither a comedy nor a social drama. The play was based on research and packed with historical information involving the two legends of India – how they respected each other even through their differences on many topics.

ess bee