The 68th death anniversary of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore will be observed today to flash back to a literary life spanning over 60 years.

Tagore dominates the Bangla literary scene with copiousness of works: over 10,000 poems, nearly two dozen plays and play-lets, 12 novels, over 100 short stories, more than 6,000 songs and a mass of prose works on literary, social, religious, political, and other topics. Add to these his English translations, paintings, travels and lecture-tours in Asia, America, and Europe; and his activities as an educationist, as a social and religious reformer, and as a politician.

Different government and non-government cultural organisations have chalked out special programmes to mark the occasion. After having won world-fame with the mystical-devotional poetry of the Gitanjali, he dug over much along that particular seam--a one-sided impression of his works. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. Born to a wealthy land-owning family of Bengal, Rabindranath was initiated into art fairly late in his life and painted close to 2,500 paintings.

In 1930, through a series of exhibitions in Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow and New York, the world discovered the poet as an important modern painter. Politically active in India, he was a supporter of Gandhi, but warned of the dangers of nationalistic thought. Unable to gain ideological support to his views, he retired into relative solitude. Between 1916 and 1934, he travelled widely, attempting to spread the ideal of uniting the East and the West. Only hours before his death on August 6, 1941 (Sraban 22 in Bangla calendar), the poet dictated his last poem.