Tagore
When in London for my Masters in 1967, I shared a flat with a friend. He was doing his Extra Masters. We bought an old car together and went around England in it accompanied by my girl friend Doris, a lovely Swiss girl. I made her learn the following lines by heart and we would recite it to each other much to my friend's annoyance. Here are the lines of the great sage of India:
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high"
Where knowledge is free;
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where worlds come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.... (Gitanjali xxv)
This should be compulsory reading. Gurudev, as Tagore was affectionately called, wrote the national anthems of India and Bangladesh and the above should be the anthem of the world.