He (Shey)

Tagore wrote Shey to satisfy his nine-year-old granddaughter's demands for stories. Even as Tagore began to create his fantasy, he planned a story that had no end, and to keep the tales spinning, he employed the help of 'Shey,' a man constituted entirely of words and rather talented at concocting tall tales. So we enter the world of Shey's extraordinary adventures, encountering a bizarre cast of characters, grotesque creatures, and caricatures of contemporary figures and events, as well as mythological heroes and deities - all brought to life through a sparkling play of words and illustrations in Tagore's unique style. About the Author: Born in 1861, Rabindranath Tagore was a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance. He started writing at an early age, and by the turn of the century, had become a household name in Bengal as a poet, a songwriter, a playwright, an essayist, a short story writer, and a novelist. In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and his verse collection, Gitanjali, came to be known internationally. At about the same time, he founded Visva-Bharati, a university located in Santiniketan near Kolkata. Called the 'Great Sentinel' of modern India by Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore steered clear of active politics but is famous for returning his knighthood as a gesture of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Tagore was a pioneering literary figure, renowned for his ceaseless innovations in poetry, prose, drama, music, and painting, which he took up late in life. His works include novels, plays, essays on religious, social, and literary topics, some sixty collections of verse, over a hundred short stories, and more than 2,500 songs, including the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941. His eminence as India's greatest modern poet remains unchallenged to this day.