“Diner Sheshe Ghumer Deshe” was written by Rabindranath Tagore in August 1905, when he was 44 years old. It was published in the magazine, Kheya in October 1924. The composition is set to the rhythm of Taal Dadra. Dadra is an Indian classical taal (rhythmic cycle), consisting of six beats in two equal divisions of three. Diner Sheshe Ghumer Deshe was composed by Pankaj Kr. Mullick.
Tagore starts the Rabindra Sangeet by addressing the shadowy fading away of a day. The beauty of such a scene embraces ‘land of slumber’ and ‘enthrals’ his ‘heart’. The illusory golden shore of the distant bank takes away the travails of chores with a song while the day ends. People who depart after a busy day from their work do not look back. This departure like a ‘waning tide’ attracts the poet to the extent that he wants to join them, leaving his own abode. He asks them to come and take him with them as the evening falls. By the last boat, he wants to leave when the day is over.
He wants to go by the evening tide from the farthest bank, by the fading light. At even this moment of self-dissolution, he is vigilant enough to wonder if there is a boat left for him. The poet sees those departing people in a row with the ‘setting sun’ near the ‘shore in the shade’ of the forest. He wonders how he will recognise the person very close to him among all those people. He wonders if he should call that one, seated in an unknown boat. He is pondering on the fact that people have left for home and some have reached. The poet is wondering how the boatman, who is responsible for others’ journeys will reach home. Here is a brief description of a farmer who can also be correlated with the boatman. ‘There is no flower to offer’ and ‘the crops have failed’ yet the farmer sitting alone on the bank ‘laughs on the verge of tears’. The daylight is over and the night is without twilight glow for him. At the end of each part of the song, the poet introduces his desire to leave, even by the last boat.
Tagore’s mastery of lyrics in each line of the Rabindrasangeet is evident. The bard is looking towards a shore of a misty bank. This shore has a metaphorical significance. When one looks to the other side, it is thought that the grass is greener there. This indeed is called delusion. But the poet has seen what life has offered him. He has seen the loved ones of his family die in front of him at a tender age. The poet is not delusional like the common man as he did not give in to suffering. Instead, he transmuted the energy and embarked on a journey of enlightenment through his creations. The poet in the Rabindra Sangeet brilliantly maintains a sense of dual identity. The need to go outside his home with the one he knows and addresses as a boatman; a farmer appears to be the poet himself. This can also be projection. The mental process through which people impute to others what they are thinking about themselves is known as projection.
According to T. S. Eliot in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.” Tagore effortlessly transcends this idea by expressing himself and maintaining his personal anonymity at once.
At a literal level, Tagore has self-sacrificed himself in the song. But the events of his life, which can be traced in the song, continue to inspire him in his poetic journey. That is why he remains still a pure medium of expression. According to Chapter 15, Verse 6 of the Bhagavad Gita, having gone to the abode of the supreme entity, one never returns to the earthly world. Tagore’s preoccupations with the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita find fulfilment here as he repeatedly yearns to be taken away to the other side, which may signify God’s abode.
