Shilaidaha Kuthibadi [1][2] (Bengali: শিলাইদহ) is a place in
Kumarkhali Upazila of Kushtia District in Bangladesh. The place is famous for
Kuthi Bari; a country house made by Dwarkanath Tagore.[3] Rabindranath Tagore
lived a part of life here and created some of his memorable poems while living
here.[4] The geographic location of this place is 23°55'11.48"N,
89°13'12.11"E.
In 1890 Tagore started managing their family estates in
Shelaidaha. He stayed there for over a decade at irregular intervals between
1891 and 1901. It is a country house built by the father of Rabindranath,
Maharshi Debendranath Tagore. The house was repossessed by a Bank; the Tagore
Estate was a debtor to this Bank, who auctioned off the property and it became
the possession of the Zamindar of Bhagyakul (Munshiganj), Roy family. The house
was part of Roy Estate till the Zamindari system was abolished under the East
Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950. Syed Murtaza Ali, during his
tenure as Divisional Commissioner of Rajshahi took the initiative to preserve
the dilapidated house in 1958. During this renovation, the color of the house
was inadvertently changed to red like other houses belonged to the former
Zamindars of the district.
Literature
During his stay he wrote many of his famous poems, essays
and short stories there. Among those some of the masterpieces are Sonar Tari,
Katha o Kahini, Chitra, Chaitali, etc. He also translated many of his creations
in English there. He also wrote most of the poems from Naibedya, Kheya and many
of the songs from Gitanjali and Geetimalya. It was here, in Shelaidaha in 1912,
that he started translating his Gitanjali into English, which earned him the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.
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