CHINNAPATRA || RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Chhinnapatra is a wonderful prose poem created by Rabindranath Tagore. Essentially a collection of letters that he wrote between 1889 to 1895 to his niece Indira Devi, this books describes very poetically the Padma and the natural beauty of the river and its people. There are 244 letters in this collection. Many critics have also described it as an epic of Rabindranath’s sojourn on the banks of the Padma.
In this volume, the internationally famous photographer Dr. Noazesh Ahmed has attempted to visualize some of these Chhinnapatra letters through a selection of his photographs. For a number of years he followed the path taken by the poet on the river and on the land to recapture the ambience and the poetry of a time one hundred years ago. Through his still pictures he has thus created a unique portrait gallery. He has also made a short video film based on this collection of photographs. In recent times, his film has been shown to great at acclaim in Santiniketan and Kolkata.
In this present album, 140 photographs have been assembled with unsurpassed skill to bring alive the unique poetic and visual beauty of the Chhinnapatra letters. To these letters have been added characters from three of Rabindranath’s timeless tales: Raicharan of ‘Khokababur Prottyabartan’, Ratan of ‘Postmaster’ and Giribala of ‘Megh o Roudra’. This blending has made Chinnapatra even more memorable and vivid for all of us