‘One World, One Faith, One Race. One Colour, Just A Different Face’ –Tagore Almeida

In conversation with Team Kitaab

“One World, One Faith One Race, One Colour, Just A Different Face” – this is the motto of a man who juggles between three worlds; the world of IT, the world of cinema and the world of poetry. Born and raised in Goa, Tagore Almeida shuttled between Goa and London to emerge with an ideology of a world united in peace. Tagore’s passion is cinema. He has already scripted two commercial films in India and written, produced and directed a handful of short films, some of which have featured in short film festivals across the world, including the Cannes Short Film Festival. A computer science graduate from the UK who has worked in London, Dubai and Singapore,  he has just completed writing his first novel, is in the pre-production phase of his next short film ‘The Forgiveness’. In this exclusive, he talks of what makes him tick and what drew him to spoken word as a form of poetry – a style which he has exploited eloquently to question the social trauma faced by many with an impactful poem called “Whose Side?”

You have an interesting name — Tagore Almeida. Was this something you adopted or was it given to you by your parents?

My late father was initially a journalist and has also authored two books in Konkani back home in Goa. He admired Rabindranath Tagore immensely and felt that if he named his son after the great man, his son too would show signs of great literature. Ooops, let’s not go there!

So, you have started moving towards your father’s expectations! You have taken to words. Now you have started putting your poetry in a format called spoken word and have started putting it on you tube. Can you tell us a little more about this form? Most people use visuals with words but you only use words and no photos Why?

A friend of mine back home encouraged me to get on board spoken word late last year. He was frustrated like most of my friends that I wasn’t doing much with my verses and had been spending a lot of my time writing films. So I finally decided to give it a go, just to test the medium. So I shortlisted twelve of my verses and said I was going to focus on those over the next eighteen months.