New index to help Tagore researchers

KOLKATA: Two researchers have prepared a concordance an alphabetical index showing contextual occurrence of a word based on 19 volumes of letters written by Rabindranath Tagore published by Visva-Bharati.
This detailed compilation, called Rabindranather Chithipatra: Nirdeshika, was prepared by Sati Chatterjee and Debi Rani Ghosh, city based academics with a passion for Bengali literature.They say their work will help research students to know the literary giant better.
Speaking to TOI on what prompted her to start the work, Ghosh said, "It was disappointing that in Bengali literature there was no concordance work, be it of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay or Tagore. While some such research was initiated in the past, it mostly remained incomplete. It was very difficult for the research scholars to look for any particular subject on Bengali literature. So we decided to undertake our research."
To start with, Chatterjee and Ghosh have worked on about 2,500 letters written by Tagore to his friends and family. The Nirdeshika, published recently by the Bengal chapter of National Council of Education, also charts out a map of the poet's developing ideas on moral-spiritual values, literature, music, painting and on several of his own works.