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Tagores Before Tagore: A Screenplay deals with the financial meltdown that the Tagores faced following the death of the fabulously rich merchant Dwarakanath Tagore. The collapse of Dwarakanath's empire led to a series of tumultuous happenings. In each of its episodes the chief player was Debendranath Tagore, Dwarakanath's son and Rabindranath Tagore's father. Debendranath dabbled in crass materialistic matters; but he was also deeply spiritual. Playing upon Debendranath's opposing sentiments, the screenplay narrates a historical period crucial to the making of indigenous modernity.
List of contents
- Foreword by Sibaji Bandyopadhyay
- Tagore Family Trees
- Dramatis Personae
- Tagores Before Tagore: A Screenplay
- Afterword by Sibaji Bandyopadhyay
- Notes
- Bibliography
- About the Author and the Translator
About the author
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay writes poetry, plays, stories, novels, and film scripts in Bengali, and essays in Bengali and English. Earlier, he was a professor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta and in the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University.
Summary
When Dwarakanath Tagore, the entrepreneur hailed as India's first 'bourgeois', died on 1 August 1846, Jorasanko found itself rattled by a series of upheavals. In each of these episodes, the chief player was his son--and Rabindranath Tagore's father--Debendranath Tagore. He was a social reformer who founded the Brahmo Dharma. Yet, despite his deeply spiritual nature, he dabbled in crass materialistic matters. Drawing upon Debendranath's opposing sentiments, Tagores Before Tagore narrates a historical period crucial to the making of indigenous modernity.
Scripted at the insistence of the famed filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh, this screenplay, based on true events, chronicles the tumultuous happenings that shook Jorasanko between September 1846 and June 1860, following Dwarakanath's sudden death. Tales of bankruptcy, litigations, deceit, and domestic squabbles abound; and through these tales emerges a rich cultural history of nineteenth-century Bengal.
Additional text
This screenplay is a unique and marvellous combination of historical scholarship and creative writing. ... It is a master lesson in critical unpacking of historical material ... While there is a huge body of literature on Rabindranath Tagore, there is scant little available on the Tagore family, especially in the English language. ... This is what scholars in the field of performance studies have dubbed 'performative writing'. ... One of the elements that makes this work unique is that it has kept Rabindranath Tagore out of its area. He appears in the screenplay only towards the very end and, that too, only as a sprightly child whom the camera chases and loses in the modern environs of metropolitan Kolkata.
