During our recent trip to Spain and Portugal, we were on a bus trip, coming back from the Church of Lady Fatima to Lisbon. Seated beside me were, I found out, an Argentinian couple visiting from Argentina. Getting somewhat bored, I wanted to strike a conversation with them. I found out that their proficiency in English was rather limited, particularly the man’s. Not one to give up yet, I brought up Messi. Mention of the iconic Argentinian football star got them perked up. Sensing I was interested in sports, the lady proudly indicated that one of her sons – she had several children – played rugby in the Argentinian national team. She pulled out his picture from her I-Phone and said he was soon to tour New Zealand. ‘”Rugby in Argentina” I wondered. Then I recalled that there was a sizeable population of people of English descent in Argentina. Then, as the conversation started petering out, the name of Victoria Ocampo flashed across my mind. I asked them if they had heard about her. “Of course we have,” they said, “she is very well known in Argentina. Her house is now a museum.” That opened up the floodgates for me. I started blabbering all I knew about Rabindranath Tagore and his Argentinian muse. I told them that he was probably the greatest poet of India and that he was a Nobel Laureate. I told them of how Tagore was captivated by the beauty and talent of the considerably younger woman and had written several wonderful poems inspired by her. I got them interested, so much so, that the lady switched on to Google in her I-Phone. And there appeared photograph after photograph of the bearded old Gurudev and the pretty, young Argentinian poet. The Argentinian couple was very impressed and said they were going to post this information to their daughter right away. Their daughter, they said, was a professor of literature back home. I said, “Then surely she knows all about this”. Needless to say, this episode made my day. And I am sure it will leave an indelible mark in my memory for a long time.
And by the way, Tagore seems to come up at strange times and in strange places. On another occasion, Tagore appeared as the name of a store in Gibraltar. Surprisingly, I walked up to the store owner, clearly an Indian (probably a Sindhi) and asked him what the source of the name was. He said he did not know. His father had named it. He himself was born in Gibraltar.
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