My Boyhood Days (Chhelebela, 1940) is Tagore's second memoir of his childhood days, written when he was nearing eighty. He describes, without a trace of self-pity, the spartan life he had to lead under his father's instruction. The sense of wonder and delight in the seemingly commonplace experiences of boyhood helped him become a great poet.

Rabindranath Tagore was such a poet whose passion was to depict human emotions and sentiment as such. He was a poet who knew the pulse of humankind. He made us ever aware of life?s unending saga. Since childhood he used to be immersed in the world of poetry and dreamt of the natural beauty outside the four walls of his house. He never acquired any training in the art of Painting.

‘I was then about seven or eight. I had no useful role to play in this world; and that old palki, too, had been dismissed from all forms of useful employment . . .’ Hidden inside an ancient palanquin on a hot, lonely afternoon, a young boy sets off on an imaginary adventure. He encounters gangs of bandits, arrives at palaces where kings bathe in sandalwood-scented water, and the hunter accompanying him gets rid of the tiger lurking in the forest with a bang! of his gun. The boy, gifted with a vivid imagination and a sensitive mind, grew up to become one of India’s greatest poets and thinkers. In Boyhood Days Rabindranath Tagore recounts his growing up years with gentle wit and humour. He describes life in nineteenth-century Kolkata when the only light in the evening came from castor-oil lamps; when hackney carriages raced through the city’s streets and women travelled in palanquins to the Ganga for their bath. He writes about his early love for music and poetry, the myriad influences that shaped his thinking and about the other members of his large, gifted family. Boyhood Days brings to life an era long past and traces the journey of an icon from childhood to the time he takes his first steps in the world of literature.