A profoundly elevating experience of song

At the beginning of last year, I attempted what seems in hindsight a pretty brazen task - to learn a 224 line song written in Bengali (a language I cant exactly claim fluency, or even competence, in) in the space of one single day! The song, titled Dyulok chariye nara narayan, is a profoundly elevating experience of song, the words of which come from a poem my teacher, Sri Chinmoy wrote when thirteen years of age (roughly around the time that photo on the left was taken). The poem was written for his spiritual Master, Sri Aurobindo (right), in time for his birthday on August 15, 1945.

Fifty years later, in 1995, Sri Chinmoy set the entire poem to music in the form of this song. I began learning the song at 7 a.m. armed with a recording sung by my friend Hiyamallar from California, only to retire five hours later with a severe bout of head-spinning, and not a lot to show for my efforts! But at least it was a start; I kept learning it for a while. My name is Shane, and I hail from Dublin, Ireland. Posted June 25, 2007