Tagore’s daughter Renuka dies of Tuberculosis.

Renuka falls ill with tuberculosis in the same year as her mother’s death, in 1902. According to her doctors’ advice, Tagore takes his daughter to the Himalayas in May 1903 for a change of climate. The journey is long and difficult. Kripalani writes that “at one stage in the mountains the poet had to carry his ailing daughter in his arms. (…)

[H]e had not only to tend and look after his daughter but keep her entertained and cheerful, for she was moody and high-strung.” On this journey, Tagore writes many children’s poems that will later – together with some earlier children’s poems –, be published as Sisu (The Child, 1903) that becomes later known as The Crescent Moon. Half a year later, in September 1903, Renuka dies. She is only thirteen at the time.