The birth anniversary of the Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore is being celebrated today. Rabindra Jayanti is popularly called Poncheeshe Boishakh and being celebrated ceremoniously and jauntiness all across West Bengal and Bangladesh.

A revered poet, mercurial writer, and a cursive painter Tagore was a prolific composer with 2,230 songs to his credit. His songs are known as Rabindra Sangeet. Tagore has composed the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh. Tagore was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern India.

Tagore's own English translations of his collection of Bengali poems Gitanjali fetched him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore's works were widely translated into English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and other European languages.

President Ram Nath Kovind today paid tributes to Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore on his birth anniversary. In a tweet, Mr Kovind said, Asia's first Nobel laureate and composer of India’s National Anthem, Rabindranath Tagore remains one of the foremost cultural icons of the country.