Mamata wants to acquire Tagore’s home in London
Plans to convert it into a museum and memorial
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, wants to acquire the London house where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore lived, and convert it into a museum and memorial to the worldfamous poet and writer.
Tagore lived at No. 3, Heath Villas in Hampstead Heath, north London, for a few months in 1912 while he translated his collection of poems Gitanjali.
During a meeting with the acting Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Dinesh Patnaik, on arriving in London for a weeklong tour of the UK on Saturday, Banerjee expressed her state’s desire to buy the privately-owned lodgings.
The property, valued at an estimated £2.7 million (Dh13 million) a few years ago, had also featured in discussions during the West Bengal chief minister’s last visit to London in 2015.
She has revived her request this time with the hope of some movement on the plans. The home already has a blue plaque commemorating its famous former Indian resident. “Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Indian poet stayed here in 1912,” reads the inscription.
Tagore had set sail for England from India in 1912 and was known to have translated many of his works while in London.
His company at the time included famous British artists and poets, including W.B. Yeats who also wrote the introduction to Gitanjali — the collection of 103 translations which went on to win Tagore his Nobel Prize for literature the next year in 1913.