Rabindranath Tagore

Shyama: in English Rabindranath Tagore

Shyama, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's classic 1939 dance musical, is known to many of the 230 million Bengali-speaking people around the world. This English translation was prepared for the 2009 feature film version of Shyama, starring Kaberi Chatterjee, TS Vasunni, K Jatindra (Jiten) Singh and Basanta Mukherjee. Perhaps best described as a cross between opera and ballet, Shyama was Tagore's last major work for the stage. It reflects his artistic and philosophical reaction to both the turbulence of pre-Independence India and Hitler's persecution of Jews in Germany. This English translation by Jayanta, Obhi & Kaberi Chatterjee closely matches the movements of the dancers and, hence, the grammatical construction of the original Bengali. No attempt has been made to make the English text rhyme in translation as this would have created inconsistencies between the English translation and the dancers' movements.