daily living: Visit to ShantiNiketan

We happened to visit Shanti Niketan on a work trip to meet my professor from my masters days to collaborate on Blue green algae project. Prof. Adhikary has the largest BGA collection in India and he heads dept. of Biotechnology in Shanti Niketan. It was a great trip. We boarded KanchanJanga express at 6.30 AM from Sealdah that took about 3 hours to reach Bolpur, Shantinikatan. It was a small railway station with small shops and thelawallahs surrounding it.

The University was set up by Gurudev Ravindranath Tagore many many years back, but the condition has not changed ever since. Although it is a known tourist spot, it has since been neglected a lot. The govt. apathy in creating nice walking trails and roads has taken a toll on the site. The entire area looked very unkempt and dusty. Although there were nice road side shops that were selling hand made bags, purses, crafts and door wall hangings. I wanted to buy them all, but realizing that we don't have enough space in our present house, kept myself under check.

The campus was very pretty with lots and lots of mango trees. The campus has a place called as the pathasala where students sit under the tree and take lessons. Most of the girl students were wearing saree and boy students wearing traditional attire. Although they were all looking very cute, I could imagine how uncomfortable it must be to clad in saree in a very hot and humid environment. But the girls were looking very comfortable in the dress and even I saw girls playing and running in saree. It must have been a matter of practice I guess.

We were taken to Ravindranath Tagore museum, where most of his photographs, his daily use objects and his living room etc. were carefully preserved. We could not take pictures there because it was forbidden. We saw the tree under which Ravindranath Tagore used to meditate. This cropped up a thought in me - the watchmen that are lucky enough to be there the entire day when not many visitors come, could potentially become Ravindranath Tagore, if they had the inclination:-)) We came back taking a chair car ( A train that has only sitting arrangements - Maa tara express). If you happen to get down at Sealdah, never take a local train to your place. It gets insanely crowded even on a saturday evening. Kolkata is so much exploding with people that you don't know where they were coming from. It is sad to see so many poor people sleeping on the platforms...