NEW DELHI: Legendary Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran and Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore had a friendship that was based on understanding each other’s words without having to talk directly. The two bards met many times between 1916 to 1921. Nearly a century after their last physical meeting, an exhibition on the life and works of Tagore was inaugurated on June 11 at Khalil Gibran Museum in Bsharri, Lebanon, by Ambassador of India Dr Suhel Ajaz Khan.
The exhibition has been titled ‘Gibran Hosts Tagore’. It is the first exhibition on Tagore to have been organised in Lebanon. Dr Khan mentioned the connection between the two literary giants. “Gibran would have loved Tagore to visit Bsharri, a town that he loved so much, where he was born and decided to rest eternally. Happy, today Tagore made to Bsharri”. He termed the exhibition a “meeting of the two giants after over a century”.
Comparing Gibran and Tagore, the Ambassador said, “Both of them were from “East” and yet they chose to address their Western audience in their own language, English. Both of them were from the countries under foreign occupation at that time; Lebanon under Ottoman rule and India under British rule.
Both of them had seen the suffering and pain of their people, especially due to famines, in Lebanon and in Bengal from where Tagore came. Yet they decided to give their people a message of hope, peace, freedom and enlightenment”. Khan also added that both of them had a profound impact on each other and, “In an unknowing manner, they complimented and completed each other.”
“It was as though Gibran hosted Tagore. Both Gibran and Tagore represent Lebanon and India to the world and give a message of pluralism, diversity, tolerance and the values of freedom, justice, and testimony to the truth,’’ said Khan. Amongst the exhibits was a painting of Tagore that Gibran had made himself. Gibran had a strong connect with India. Amongst the things on display was a book philosopher
J Krishnamurti had presented to him and also a book on Gibran written by Osho.
“It is no secret that Gibran, after listening to Tagore one evening in New York, took the pencil and left him a souvenir that his museum still embraces, and said: Although Tagore’s face was tired that evening, it remains what he represents, the Greatest Living,’’ said head of Gibran National Committee Joseph Feninos. Like many of Tagore’s works have been translated into languages like Arabic and Turkish, Gibran’s most celebrated The Prophet has been translated into Hindi and Malayalam.