Rabindranath Tagore, a renowned poet and a Nobel award receiver for literature was born in the year 1861. He grew up in the heart of Calcutta in a colonized country. Tagore is well known for his poetry works, but very few know that he was also a man of actions. His works focused on certain issues such as racial humiliation, search for self-esteem, education, and religion that was concerned with India. Two songs from his rabindrasangeet canon are now the national anthems of Bangladesh and India: the Amar Shonar Bangla and the Jana Gana Mana. Tagore was also a cultural reformer and polymath who modernised Bengali art by rejecting strictures binding it to classical Indian forms. Literary works, nationalism and Santiniketan remianed the passions of Tagore for more than six decades of his life.Tagore breathed his last in the year 1941.

His early days: Tagore was born the youngest of fourteen children in the Jorasanko mansion of parents Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi.Rabindranath Tagore was born in a family that could easily be passed off as one of the leading Indian merchants. The Tagores were a cultured and wealthy family, and Rabindranath`s father, Debendranath, was one of the leaders of the Brahma Samaj. Rabindranath`s family was a blend of the Hindu and British culture. Rabindranath Tagore was born at a time that he described as: "the modern city-bred spirit of progress that had just begin to drive its triumphal car over the luscious green life of our ancient village community". In other words, Rabindranath was born in an atmosphere of the advent of new Bengali ideals. Rabindranath`s progressive views and ideals can be attributed to his family`s belief in synthesis of old and new influences. The poet`s early life was spent in an atmosphere of religion and arts, principally literature, music and painting. Tagore`s philosophies and way of living was heavily influenced by the Vedic and Upanishadic concepts. In music Tagore`s training was classical Indian, though as a composer he rebelled against the tyranny of classical orthodoxy, and introduced many variations of form and phrase, notably from Bengali folk music of the Baul and Bhatiyali type. Rabindranath wrote his first poem at the age of six and as a young boy studied the classical poetry of Kalidasa. He also studied the Upanishads, languages and modern sciences. He did his basic education at home. His home schooling, life in Shilaidaha, and travels made Tagore a nonconformist and pragmatist. However seeking to become a barrister, Tagore enrolled at a public school in Brighton, England in 1878; later, he studied at University College London, but returned to Bengal in 1880 without a degree.

His foray into literature: Rabindranath`s earlier works reflected his belief in his own country and in a culture of universal humanity transcending all barriers of time and place. He published his first substantial poetry-under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion") -in 1877 and wrote his first short stories and dramas at age sixteen.This self-expression of Rabindranath Tagore became apparent especially between 1878-80. This was the period when the national movement coincided with the neo-Hindu revival in Bengal. If on one level he criticized the caste system and rituals through his poems and writings, then on the other level he tried to justify its existence. During the Swadeshi movement, Rabindranath wrote several books, articles, poems and songs about Bengal that then created a patriotic fervor. Some of his famous works at that time included an essay called `Swadeshi Samaj` and a famous novel called `Gora` and short stories like `Kabuli Walla`. Rabindranath pointed out that his brothers set a bold example by strongly advocating Bengali literature at a time when the educated men began to keep at arms length both the language and the thought of their native land. It can hence be noted that his brothers were the inspiration for Rabindranath at the onset of his literary career.

Rabindranath as a Poet: Rabindranath Tagore was known for his different forms of creative writing such as essays, letters, short stories, novels and dramas and is best known for his poems. Among his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Tagore`s major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders]. His poems reflected his beliefs and his feelings, be it of protest against wrong done or of support for a humanitarian cause. Tagore`s poetry was influenced by traditional Indian poetry. For example, the devotional Indian poets of Ramprasad and Kabir especially influenced his early poetry works. Later he was influenced by the Baoul tradition, which is a tradition of traditional Bengali folk music, known for its simple ballads and invocation to union with the beloved. He won a Nobel Prize too for his poetic work- Gitanjali (song offering). So much was Rabindranath`s dedication towards his work that it is believed that only hours before he died on August 7, in 1941, Tagore dictated his last poem. Infact his critics say that he wrote some of his finest poetry and drama in the final decade of his life from 1930 to 1940. They term this period as the `Last Harvest`.

Life at Santiniketan: By 1863 Rabindranath turned his attention to the Santiniketan School after withdrawing from the Swadeshi movement. Later on, Rabindranath founded the Santiniketan School in his father`s ashram in 1901. Santiniketan was located within two miles of the Bolpur railway station on the East Indian Railway line. The school had the advantage of being situated in the heart of nature but not too far from the city. In his school, he set out to resurrect the best things in the Indian inheritance, but gave it a universal humanist outlook. He hoped to give life to the Upanishadic concept in his Santiniketan institution. Rabindranath was convinced that all human problems such as poverty, religious discord, and disunity would find their resolution in education. Happiness and freedom were the two fundamental principles of Santiniketan. The arrangements at Santiniketan were extremely primitive. However, soon Rabindranath realized that a Brahmacharya Ashram was not his idea of a new and modern education. Though he valued the primitive nature of Santiniketan, his ideal school had to do much more than that, especially with regard to opening up the student`s minds to a relationship with the world. In the year 1918, Rabindranath Tagore established Santiniketan College, which later on in 1926 had to be affiliated to University of Calcutta. Step by step Santiniketan moved from being a collection of separate educational experiments into a well-knit whole- a school, a college, a department of higher studies and research, a center of art and music.

Nobel Prize and life beyond:
"Gitanjali (Song Offered) was not simply an Indian voice, strange and far, but it was also our voice".
-W.B Yeats.

This was the remark made by poet W.B Yeats after reading Tagore`s award winning poem Gitanjali. It all began with Rothenstein who found the poems of Rabindranath Tagore interesting and sent them to renowned poet W.B. Yeats. He invited a group of culturally influential friends to dinner at a restaurant in London on 10th July 1912 where Yeats presided. The dinner was followed by an evening in Rothenstein`s house where Yeats recited Rabindranath`s poems. Those present were charmed and unanimously appreciated the work. Soon afterwards Yeats and Rothenstein worked together to publish a private edition of the English Gitanjali through the India Society of London. Even before the Nobel Prize was announced, Gitanjali became widely accepted all over. The poem was read at several literary felicitations. Finally the news of the Nobel Prize reached him on 13th November 1913. After this episode Rabindranath came to be known as bilingual author. He won the award for the English translation of the poem. In the summer of 1912, Rabindranath took to England some translations of his favourite poems. He did the translations when recuperating from a bout of ill health. The Nobel Committee gave Tagore the prize:
"Because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West".

This prestigious award brought Tagore into the public eye in both the East and West. He later on often traveled to the U.S and Europe to share his poetry and raise funds for his own ashram.

After winning the award, there was a great demand for his work in English. In response to that demand he put together more and more translations of his writings. Rabindranath`s poetry became a part of England`s literary canon, but predictably, and as anticipated by the poet himself, his post-Gitanjali work did not attract the same interest. Tagore was also awarded the knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators protesting colonial laws.

His last years: Rabindranath Tagore, who died in 1941 at the age of eighty, is a towering figure in the millennium-old literature of Bengal. Anyone who becomes familiar with this large and flourishing tradition will be impressed by the power of Tagore`s presence in Bangladesh and in India. His poetry as well as his novels, short stories, and essays are very widely read, and the songs he composed reverberate around the eastern part of India and throughout Bangladesh.In contrast, in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and America, the excitement that Tagore`s writings created in the early years of the twentieth century has largely vanished.Tagore`s last four years (1937-1941) were marked by chronic pain and two long periods of illness. The poetry Tagore wrote in these twilight years are distinctive for their preoccupation with death; these more profound and mystical experimentations allowed Tagore to be branded a "modern poet". There never was a poet more of the earth, earthier, than Tagore. The beauty and splendor of the earth he has proudly and lovingly sung in many a poem. His final lecture, Crisis in Civilization was read on his eightieth birthday. Rabindranath passed away in the same house in which he was born.