On May 9, when people across the country will celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, Kolkata-based St. Xavier's School and College will join in the celebrations for its former student, whose association with the institution, though brief, was close to the poet's heart.
Though the Nobel laureate strongly disliked the system of institutionalised education — resulting in his being home-tutored for most of his academic years — he studied at the school for almost two years; perhaps his longest stint as a student in any school during his lifetime, and penned down his memories of the period on several occasions.
Organised by the Alumnorum Societas and the St. Xavier's College (Cal) Alumni Association, the celebrations will be marked by a recitation of Tagore's ‘Sesher Kobita' (Last Poem) by actor Soumitra Chatterjee and Dhritiman Chatterji in the presence of several noteworthy alumni of the institution.
The programme will also coincide with the school's celebration of its 150th year of existence.
Tagore was admitted to the fifth standard in 1875, at the age of 14, along with his elder brother Somendranath Tagore and nephew Satyaprasad Gangopadhyay. The St. Xavier's was the fourth and last school he attended before his father decided to home-tutor him.
In one of his accounts, Tagore wrote about his disinterest in school education. “I could understand that my value in the civilised society is going down. But I can never connect myself with a school that shuts out life and natural beauty and conjures up frightening images of a prison or hospital,” he had said.
His experience at the St. Xavier's School, according to him, was relatively happier. Though most teachers appeared to him as “mere teaching machines,” he was fond of a Jesuit priest, named Father Alphonsus De Peneranda, who had come from Spain and was appointed a part-time teacher.
Tagore reminisced in one of his accounts that while most students in Father Peneranda's class were inattentive due to his lack of fluency in English, the poet felt a deep sense of empathy and respect for his teacher.
Historians researching Tagore have found out from school records and accounts of his classmates that the school's annual calendar misspelt the poet's name twice as ‘Nobindronath Tagore,' that he failed in the fifth standard, that his roll number was 36, and that he came to school in a horse-drawn carriage.
While Tagore left the school in 1877, he came back to his alma mater in 1931 to preside over a function organised by the teachers and students to collect funds for people affected by the devastating floods in Bengal that year.
