ABOUT THE BOOK:
First published in English in 1913 by the India Society of London, Rabindranath Tagore's Chitra is a one-act play adapted from a story from the Mahabharata. Chitra tells the tale of Chitrangada, a warrior princess, who falls in love with Arjuna and begs the Gods of Love and Spring to help her win Arjuna’s heart. It is one of the three Nritya Natyas or dance-dramas created by Tagore to enact stories through dance and music. Tagore imagines Chitrangada as the ideal, exemplary woman, whose desire is to be equal with the man of her choice while still retaining her own identity. In exploring Chitrangada's struggle to come to terms with her identity in the eyes of others as well as in her own eyes, Tagore offers a lyrical portrayal of the emotions of a woman—a portrayal that is still relevant even today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rabindranath Tagore, sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He is sometimes referred to as "The Bard of Bengal". |
