Celebrations around this year's 159th birthday anniversary are of course different due to the world wide COVID19 measures and lock-downs. Nevertheless this day has been widely celebrated, allthough not in public.

Without being aware of the coincedence, it happened to be that at the same day of this year's Tagore's birthday, 7th of May, I finished migrating this website out of its Word Press cage.

It served me well for the last 7 years, but as this website heavily uses PHP to provide you with information from my databases, more control was needed.

I will not bother you with details, but after having solved all kinds of technical issues, I will have now more time to actually start publishing on topics more related to the purpose of this website than mere technical issues...

Just as some kind of synchronicity, while I just Googled a bit around on Tagore settings, I noticed it's Tagore's birthday today...
India remembers: http://www.ddinews.gov.in/videos/people/nation-remembers-rabindranath-tagore-his-birth-anniversary.

A 2011 article from the Financial Times is a great introduction to Tagore: Time to listen to Tagore (when the link is not opening this text, Google the title, and follow then the link that Google provides you with)

In Bangladesh, Tagore’s Birthday is an official holiday. Back in 2003 I wondered why this day is not always corresponding with our Western counting, as it was celebrated on 9 May. It appeared that also 7 or 8 May may occur.

The reason is that according to the Bangla calendar Tagore was born on 25 Boishakh 1268. This corresponds with 7 May 1861 on the Western calendar. As these calendars are not fully exchangeable, little defection from the Western counting may occur. And so, in 2013 Tagore’s birthday is celebrated on 8 May.

The twelve months are based on the names of the nokkhotro (lunar mansions), when a particular star or constellation dominates the lunar cycle. The year starts with the month Boishakh, and corresponds with April/May. It is named after the constellation Bishakha ¹⁾, which are the stars α-, β-, and γ-Libra.

(an earlier version of this blogpost was published on 14 May 2003 in Lindosblog)

Notes:
1. Wikipedia: Bengali calendar

After some days of struggling to convert these pages into a PHP driven Word Press site, I finally succeeded. Though a few subpages still have to be migrated and also some settings have to be improved yet.

But nevertheless I now feel a burst of song in my chest as all kind of new opportunities arise for the use of this website. Serving both my own purposes as well as those of you, reader and visitor of these pages.