Rabindranath Tagore, the first Indian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature will be at the centre of celebrations of the Sweden India Nobel Memorial Week in the country.
Organised by the Swedish Embassy, the seventh edition of the week is dedicated to Rabindranath Tagore to mark the centenary of his Nobel Prize in Literature.
“Tagore was not only the first Indian to bring home the prestigious award but also the non-European to get one in Literature,” according to an official statement from the Embassy.
The week is scheduled to begin here on Novermber 8 with a panel discussion “Tagore, now!”, moderated by scholar and translator Radha Chakravarty which aims to explore the relevance of the timeless poet, writer, philosopher in today’s day and age. Panelists include filmmaker Kaushik Mukherjee (popularly known as Q) who recently worked with Tagore’s “Tasher Desh”, theatre-person Prakash Belwadi and Shirshendu Chakrabarti.
The Embassy would display a statue of Tagore along with the English translation of the original text Tagore’s Nobel Prize Nomination, procured from the Swedish Academy.
The Delhi Metro Corporation is putting up a ‘Nobel Memorial Wall’ to commemorate Nobel Laureates from India with a weeklong display at the Rajiv Chowk Metro station.
The Embassy has also commissioned famous sand artist Sudarshan Pattnaik to create a sand Sculpture of Tagore on the sands of Puri beach, which will be unveiled on November 12, the eve of day that Tagore’s prize was announced in 1913.
As part of the celebrations “Tagore in Sweden – 1921 and 1926”, written by Swedish Tagore expert Olavi Hemmila, was also re-released this year.
An exclusive, sit-down Nobel Memorial Dinner, prepared by Nobel Chef Mark Phoenix, this year replicates the dinner menu from the 1913 Nobel Banquet.
Apart from these the Sweden India Nobel Memorial Week 2013 comprises seminars, lectures, intercollegiate quizzes and round tables discussions spread across cities – Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Mumbai.