When I mentioned to a close family friend (who is now 95) that I was thinking of taking early retirement, he advised me to plan for the next phase … of thirty years! An early thought was that I need to work on the English translation of Kaberi’s book Tagore dance, whose Bengali version will have a launch event in Kolkata later this month. I hope, though, that will not keep me busy for the next thirty years.

There is of course my video editing backlog, including completing a film version of the multilingual performance of The Story of Gitanjali we staged in Brussels in 2012, as well as the documentary Growth vs Wellbeing we started filming in Bhutan a couple of years ago. Since 2017, we also started filming our long distance drives around Europe in our Tesla (which we were doing instead of flying within Europe) to disprove the myth that it is not possible to travel long distances in an electric car.

At the same time, looking around the world, the effects of the climate crisis are becoming more and more apparent each year. And yet, instead of working together globally, wars and conflicts are breaking out and nationalism is back in fashion. I am reminded of Tagore’s last speech in 1941: Civilisation’s Crisis.

Tagore’s best-known English poem expresses my current thoughts. Its French translation by André Gide was recited by Belgian actress Arlette Schreiber during The Story of Gitanjali.

Just before our performance to celebrate Tagore’s birth anniversary at Shakespeare’s Birthplace in May, I was asked by someone from Dartington whether we could perform at a Tagore festival there next year. Kaberi and I both had fond memories of Dartington, which was modelled on the rural development approach started by Tagore and Leonard Elmhirst at a village near Santiniketan in India. Next year will be the centenary of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst buying the Dartington Estate in Devon to start what became an early example of a circular economy.

A visit to Dartington at the end of September led to our concept paper ‘Dartington at 100: Celebrating Tagore and Elmhirst’s visionary thriving communities‘. I also realised that a similar approach could be applied in other rural communities with a strong arts tradition. Even if it is not applied in Dartington, the approach seems set to help at least one other charity in such a setting. Helping them to implement it, alongside our Tagore-related activities, presents an exciting prospect.

If we also launch a YouTube channel about sustainability, humanity and technology, it could include a travelogue of our ‘slow travel’, visiting friends around Europe in an electric car. Maybe it could also include conversations with experts we know about growth vs humanity, Tagore, and introducing humanism in AI.

That should keep us busy enough for the next phase.