The Sanskriti Express, a travelling museum put out on the track by Indian Railways to celebrate the many facets of Rabindranath Tagore, arrived here to a rousing reception on Saturday.
The five-coach train, which was flagged off from Howrah by Union Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee on May 9 to mark the 150{+t}{+h} birth anniversary of Tagore, reached Chennai Central at 3 p.m. and will be stationed on Platform 11 for public viewing till October 6.
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Entry to the exhibition, which will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., is free.
The train's criss-cross journey across the country will feature three other halts — Puducherry (October 7 and 8), Madurai (October 10 and 11) and Rameswaram (October 12, 13 and 14) — before it enters Kerala via Thiruvananthapuram on October 15.
S. Anantharaman, Divisional Railway Manager, Chennai Division, Southern Railway, who led a delegation of officials to greet the Sanskriti Express, told reporters that the train was hugely popular along its journey route, drawing large crowds to the exhibition.
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The array of exhibits featuring rare photographs, handwritten letters, poems and paintings seek to condense the many dimensions of Tagore into a unique hour-long experience for the visitor, he said.
The ‘Jibon Smriti' coach portrays life in Shantiniketan; ‘Gitanjali' sketches Tagore's poems, verses and songs; ‘Muktodhara,' his short stories, novels, dramas and essays; ‘Chitrarekha,' his paintings and portraits and ‘Sesh Katha,' the last days of his life.
Many rare moments from the life of Tagore, who was Asia's first Nobel Laureate, have been documented at the exhibition.
There are rare photographs of Tagore with Albert Einstein, Argentine poet Victoria Ocampo and Jawaharlal Nehru, a mounted frame of the Nobel Certificate of 1913 and a copy of the wire from Mahatma Gandhi greeting Tagore on his eightieth birthday and so on.