Keeping in mind that traveling has been a perennial theme in Tagore's life, it seems he has inherited the wanderlust that had once consumed his forefathers. (His great grandfather was probably the most traveled Indian of his time, visiting more than 30 countries during his international lecture circuits.)

One country he has returned to repeatedly is China, a country he describes as "having a mythic quality and taking on immense proportions in the imagination".

In 2000, Tagore traveled in China for a month, discovering the country at its most epic and enigmatic.

"The Forbidden City and the Great Wall are two perfect examples of how reality can exceed one's wildest imagination," he exclaims.

"And then there was one time I stayed in a small village outside Guilin and slept in a farmer's house on the mud floor. I can't remember the name of the village but its scenery was postcard perfect," he says. "I can easily see where ancient Chinese artists derived their inspiration for their landscape paintings."

Tagore even goes so far as to suggest the Chinese landscape genre influenced post-modernist painters in the West, including the iconoclastic Pablo Picasso.

"I call it 'vertical space', or better 'the diffusion of space', as opposed to the perspective-bound space in classical Western painting," he says.

"Chinese landscapists used different parts of the canvas - below ground, middle ground and upper ground - to construct their vision of the space. The style presaged Cubism.

"With one simple brushstroke, they created the whole universe. That is very Chinese and is unmatched by modern painters."

Tagore usually travels alone, without ever feeling lonely. He spent New Year's Eve 2000 in Shanghai. Some locals he met in a restaurant near the Bund invited him home for a party. When it ended at 3 am, he wandered the city's streets for the rest of the night.

Another time, he was hopelessly late for a flight in Argentina. His local driver called the control tower saying that there was a Tagore in his car who was in danger of missing his flight. "Believe it or not, they brought the plane back," Tagore says, rather disbelievingly.

Tagore, who was born in 1961, 20 years after the death of the grand man, has found out it's impossible to shun the family fame.

As a kid, he was always looking for normalcy, being brought up in a bohemian household with a constant stream of artists and intellectuals, many of them Chinese.

He rebelled as a young man, by not following the obvious route to become an artist - his family already had 14 generations of artists and painters, including the late Rabindranath, whose paintings were once exhibited in Paris.

These days, the three galleries that bear his name - one in Hong Kong, one in Beverly Hills and one in the Chelsea district of New York - showcase works by artists who have something urgent to say, yet whose voices are somehow drowned in the cacophony of our era.

"We bring into focus what's out of focus," he says.

He has also established Tagore Foundation International, a non-profit organization that educates disadvantaged children and fosters artistic dialogue.

Asked about the secret of his family's intellectual longevity, he says: "We don't convert, we converse."

(China Daily December 29, 2008)