News at Eleven: The differences between layers

of a continuous mass of water made obvious by the movements of the sawdust filled him [Rabindranath Tagore] with a sense of wonder that never left him. According to him, this was the first time he realised that things that we thoughtlessly take for granted as natural and simple are, in fact, not so, and this set him wondering.

The next wonder came when he went with his father to the hills of Dalhousie in the Himalayas. As the sky became dark in the evenings and the stars came out in their splendour and appeared to hang low, Maharshi Debendranath would point out to him the constellations and the planets and tell him about their distances from the sun, their periods of revolution round the sun and many other properties. Rabindranath found this so fascinating that he began to write down what he heard from his father.

from Frontline: Man of Science
then Frontline: Poet of the Padma

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