Sofi and Tagore

Sofi's latest fascination is a DVD of various song clips - some from old movies and some produced for TV it appears - of Tagore songs.

I discovered Tagore right before I went to Kolkata, gained a much deeper apprecation for him while there, and really fell in love with robindrasongeet upon my retrun. It will be a lifetime to begin to grasp it all , to learn even how to swim and relish his mystery.

My Hindi comes along slowly, but my Bengali is a little more elusive - could be the difficulty in trying to teach myself both at once. But there is something very intense that happens inside me when I start working with or listening to Bengali, and this DVD I stumbled on, some of the phrasing in it- a turn of note nestled in a melodic architecture that is itself a miracle - omg, too much, too much.

And I'm so pleased Sofi 's responding to it as well.

I look at her, this gori goofy little crazy girl, and i think - what have I done to her, feeding her all this music form a place far away from her, physically. I ponder how this will shape her life, and I'm fascinated by what she'll become - and yet I don't want to know, because when I find out it means she will have grown up and carved her life and Im not ready for that.

One night we watched the video till she fell asleep, she's sprawled next to me and I'm tracing lines on her back, her feet, soft lines with my fingernails echoing every tiny melodic winding path of the Tagore songs.

Im teaching her: I know she hears these songs, she gets these somewhere deep in her core, she sings along not knowing a word of Bangla - but she's a tactile child, very sensual in the true meaning of the term: she's very senses-oriented. So to impart to her the timing and the spacious arches of a long heartfelt meend, a beutifully sculpted zamzama, I draw it on her skin, with my nails pitted and scarred from a zealous previous night of heavy sarod practice.

I know - even if she might not - that this is reaching her, helping her to understand and absorb this music, this sound, making some subliminal imprint of Tagore on the skin to carry her through whatever songs in her own life she makes.