 What inspired me to sing when I started was obviously my parents, you know, my mom and dad who encouraged me to sing. And, you know, I grew up in a singing family. Everybody sang. Everybody was into some kind of musical thing. I'm not a doctor or the engineer who brings in the mula. So, music is something, it's a passion. You do it for the love of it. Art or music, things like that, you do it for the love of it. And if you don't get the support of your family and you don't get inspired by them, then nothing would happen. So tell me why Tagore inspires you. Tagore inspires me in so many ways that I cannot even finish it within the short span of time. So, he was a poet, he was a composer and he wrote about more than 2000 songs and multiple poems and novels, short stories. And in fact, his letters became literature because he wrote letters to so many people and then he became pieces of literature. He also wrote articles. He inspires me because he was just not a poet. He was an activist during the British colonialism. That's the time when Tagore was living, mid-19th century. So, he protested and he protested with his songs, his poems, his writings. And he also protested by actively showing protest. In other words, when a very brutal massacre happened, it was a place called Jalyanwala Bagh where peaceful protests were happening inside a walled park, right? And British, a general dyer, he ordered the police to block the doorway of the park and everybody was shot. It was just a cold-blooded murder, right? And Tagore was given the knighthood by the British and he renounced it. He wrote a beautiful, poignant letter explaining why he rejected the knighthood. And so, there are many, many ways in which he protested and on top of that, he created a university in Shanti Nikedan where one of the things I loved about, I always wanted to go to Shanti Nikedan to study because one of the things he did was he abolished the classroom setting. So kids would sit under the tree, under the tree and have a class, among nature. So he was an environmentalist. That was one of the things I love about this man. He was so forward-thinking. So it is university. He brought people from different parts of the world. One of the interesting things is that during that time, women were not maybe allowed to dance outside, allowed to sing or, you know, there were more at the patriarchal society and women were subjugated. He actually started teaching martial arts to women. Yes, and he was very, very, people were annoyed with his gesture, and but he was probably one of the front runners of women literature. In a woman's lib came again and again in his literature, in different musicals, and the musicals he wrote in the poems and also his songs. What do you want people to remember about him? Hegur has been forgotten by the West largely. Interestingly, in various parts of Europe, he has not been forgotten. There are statues of him in various places in Europe and his literature has been translated into more than 56 languages. But then again, yes, he has been forgotten, but what I want people to know is that especially during a time like this, where it's very divisive, we are separating color from color, religion from religion, gender, anything. So he was that voice, he was that voice which who unified, who said, you know, it doesn't matter. He was the voice of unification. He's the voice which spread liberation. And that message should be said again and again in different forms. It is being said here, but why not bring in another voice who said it? And he kept saying it in all of his songs, all of his poems. What inspires you to sing now? I came to this country about 30 years ago, almost, yeah. Initially, I sang among people who knew the language, right? Among Indians, among Bengalis. And I did a lot of concerts, TV programs, just that and the other. And I had this desire, I had this desire that, you know, why keep to go cloistered within our community? When you study in high school, Jules Verne is translated. Mopasa, I know all these people have been translated and you read foreign literature, right? So why not Tagore? Why not? I may not be a fantastic translator, but I wanted to at least give people an idea of what kind of message this man is giving. My translations are not poetic, I cannot even begin to claim that, but at least I want to give people an insight into this man's mind. And that's when I started translating and I did some concerts in Los Angeles in University of Irvine, Claremont College. And then people loved it. People just wrote to me that why don't you share more of this with them? Then I got inspired. I'm like, oh, this is working. People are reaching out to me. So after I came to New England, which was in 2016, I started applying for some grants. And so one of the things that I applied with is that I am going to make it accessible to people who do not know the language. And I have had concerts with diverse audience and they came back. They wrote to me, they came back and they asked me if they could get a translation. In fact, Newton Library, patrons have come and told the librarian, can we have some books on Tagore? So that to me, these are just baby steps. These are really baby steps. But I hope that that will have some kind of a ripple effect and people will love what they see, love what they read and they'll spread the word. You said once that Tagore gave Bengalis the language of all emotions. Oh, yes, absolutely. In Bengal, among Bengalis we say that any emotion known to man has been written by Tagore. So even if you just think about an emotion, common emotion like love, all these different shades of love, he has talked about it. I mean, in spiritualism, he has talked about different shades, different forms of spiritualism. Interestingly, he does not mention Jesus or a Hindu God or Allah or Buddha, nothing. The spiritualism is absolutely universal. In other words, if somebody's a believer, he will get something out of it. If someone is a non-believer, he will still get something out of it because that spiritualism is layered. Most of his poems, be it spiritualism or love or nature, have lots of layers in it. With maturity, I can actually almost have a different meaning of the poem. And that is why his poems have lived this long. His songs have lived this long because it's not, you've heard of Sufism, right? So he has taken a lot of his concepts from Sufism. He has taken a lot of concepts from Indian philosophy, but the way he has written his poems are not academic exercise. They're more poetic and pragmatic. How we can use those concepts within our everyday lives, every moment. So they are very user-friendly. Let's put it that way. So because they're user-friendly and because he has talked about so many emotions, we Bengali sometimes would write love letters. I've done that when I wrote love letters to my boyfriend. I would quote him, very appropriate quotes. When you are sad, when your day is not going well, you can get inspired by some quotes from his song. You go near the ocean and you see a wave, a beautiful wave. It will remind you of a song. And so it's unbelievable how many subjects you touched on. I know you also teach. Do you find that when you teach, it also relates back to your music? Absolutely. I mean, I love teaching because I basically love interacting. I love interacting with people. I love interacting with children. And I taught in California. I taught high school and community colleges. But after I came here, Mike said, my husband said, you know, you've done enough, let's just focus on your passion. Just focus on your passion, do whatever you want. So I've been just focused on music these last four years. And I've been teaching a lot of students and I learn from them every day. I mean, even small kids, young kids, who don't really understand the language and I would translate it for them. So I have these funny things happen most of Tagore's songs, the melody and the words kind of are, they go hand in hand. In other words, say he's talking about a certain emotion which is very excitable or something. You know, the note would go high. It's a very common thing. There would be a crescendo, right? So I sometimes would ask kids without translating the poem, what do you think the song is about? And they will give me a meaning which is extremely similar, not exactly, but very similar. And it's amazing. And then I start learning, okay. So the melody is actually so complementary that the melody is almost married to the words that they're able to interpret it that way. How important is teaching to keeping Tagore and also keeping Bengali culture alive? Bengali is one of the most lilting languages. When you speak it, it sounds very pretty. It's got a lot of L's and M's and N's and it's very flowy. It sounds very pretty. And it's a very rich language. It's an extremely intensely rich language to the point that sometimes I would find words. I would, you know, some of the words I cannot translate in English. There are no words for it, right? So Bengali, and there are throughout the world, I cannot give you the number. I should have looked it up, but millions of people speak Bengali all over the world. And lots of literature has been written. And it's a very rich, powerful language. And music is so, it reaches the heart without trying to, without me trying to teach the grammatic language, right? So I have heard, I have seen this people who are born and brought up here. One of them actually, her name is Mona Roy. She is harmonium with me and she's also my colleague. She's born and brought up here. And she is a second gen. Her first language is English. Her Bengali, she did not sort of grow up learning Bengali academically, right? But she listens to a song and she always tells me, when I work with you, I learn so many words. So many words come alive and I start appreciating the language much more. So for our second generation, this is important for them to keep their heritage alive, to keep their language alive. The language may not come to them the way we enjoy it, or we experience it. Maybe it's diluted, but so be it. Why do I have to teach them exactly the way I have been taught? Let them learn it through music. That's well and good. What is your process with collaborations? Usually Tagore music is a soloist's music. They're also sometimes sung as groups, but usually they are soloists. And I sing by myself, but I collaborate with a lot of incredible musicians in the New England area. I've been fortunate to find them. And so I want to name some of them, Mona Roy, who is my colleague and friend, and she plays the harmonium, which is an indigenous Indian instrument. It's a bello instrument, which is an accompanying instrument. And she also plays the piano. I then, I have Dhruva Acharya, who plays some of the incredible Indian drums, Dabla, he plays Cole, and he also plays Bacowaj, which are three different types of instruments. I also have another musician called Ayon, who is, I don't know how many instruments he plays. He plays the keyboard, but I've seen him pick up all kinds of instruments. So he's incredibly talented. Devodeep is an amazing guitarist. Amazing guitarist. Koshik is another wonderful percussionist who has accompanied me. And last concert at Newton, I actually collaborated with a brilliant elocutionist. Her name is Raka. And she's probably the best reciter. She recites poems. I'll tell you a little bit more about that. And she, I collaborated with her poems, and it was like music, songs and poems. So speaking about poems, so in Bengal, there is a culture. It's a very interesting culture of reciting poems and that recitation is not just regular recitation. It's an art form. You know, you actually learn how to do that and they do it with background score and sometimes with percussions. It's amazing. So I've been able to do that with her. So it's been a fantastic. Oh, and also I have also collaborated with some dancers like the Panita and others. So yeah, it's been phenomenal. When I collaborate, I just think about a concept and these musicians, dancers, they put colors on it. So without the colors, it's just black and white. My concept is black and white. So then what is your musical process? I have two albums, which I produced, actually Asha Audio, a very renowned CD company, produced it in India. The first one is called His Spirit Within and the second one just came out a year ago. It's called When the Songs Came Visiting. Both of them, again, have these English translations before the song so people know what the songs mean. And they are found in Amazon and iTunes. The albums are available. Now you asked me about the process of music, you said? Yes. Tagore's songs are poems first and then they're set to tune, right? Sometimes they were done parallely, but the poetic value is so great in each of the songs that first I read them. I really read them to figure out the pattern of the sentence, the thought process, where I should be breathing, where I should not, where I should combine the phrases together without the breath. Then I start picking up the song, put it to melody. Also Tagore's music is because it's so rich in emotions, because it's so rich in words. The words itself are very dramatic and they create like a vivid picture. You can see when you sing a certain song, which I will do in the Arlington concert, I will sing a lot of songs on environment and nature. A lot of it, when I sing the song, you can actually visualize it. They're very dramatic. You cannot put a lot of drama or emotion when you're singing because it might be over the top. But you cannot avoid the emotions. Of course you have to have dynamism and emotion and feelings. So that feelings has to be very subtle. That's, I think that is the biggest challenge for most Tagore singers, is how much emotion should I impart? I do not want it over the top. I don't want to cloud the words, but I don't want to sing mechanically, right? I would ask anyone who hasn't read Tagore to start with this famous book of poems called Gitanjali, for which he won the Nobel Prize. Gitanjali is called in English, I think it's called Anthology of Poems. Those are available everywhere on Amazon and everywhere. I would ask, request everyone, if you're interested, please, please get yourself a copy of Gitanjali. It's in English. See what this, how insightful his poems are, how incredibly wonderful his literature is. And then you can move on to other things, but please I request you to read the Gitanjali.