Who's R.N.Ta-Go-Re?

I hail from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Dharwad. A residential school in every district of the country. Established to identify rural talents and nurture them with good education. Among the other routines, morning assembly was one that held utmost importance. The irregularities in the assembly were seriously confronted by the principal. Be it on the stage or off the stage. In the morning assembly we were expected to present ourselves in rotation - supposedly meant to overcome stage fear and imbibe etiquette of formal proceedings. Quiz was one of proceeding among others. The convention was, the person on the stage asked some 6 to 8 questions and whoever among the audience knew the answers, could answer to the question.

It was not an unusual day, but not for our guy Jnaneshwar. Compared to the things he did his name looked more like an oxymoron. He was popularly branded as 'Madda' after few of his idiotic acts. That day the proceedings were supposed to be on Kannada. And when it comes to Kannada, Madda had an unusual accent given his Marathi background. Seems the guy who had quiz that day had some issues at the last minute and requested Madda to present on his behalf. Madda was ready on stage with book which already had questions picked by the other guy. Of course Madda was not good with even basic general knowledge. If he was any good, the incident which lead to this narration would have been not recorded in this space- time continuum.

So, our guy stands there on the stage. Confident, with a commanding, unusual Kannada accent. Everything went smoothly until he asked this question- "Who's the first Asian to be awarded Nobel for literature?" You know the answer. Easy right? But wait. Following the question, many from the crowd answered "Rabindranath Tagore". To that, Madda plainly replied, "Your answer is wrong. The correct answer is R. N. Ta-Go-Re." Pronouncing "Tagore" unusually, he said it so confidently that many who realized what had happened were baffled. Seems the answer was written in English in the book. He pronounced the last syllable '-re' as it's pronounced in 'Red'. After he said "R. N. Ta-Go-Re", the principal was infuriated enough that, he grabbed him by collar and slapped him hard. Yeah! The principal used to do that and sure, he was not the only victim on that stage.

It is one the funniest memory from school that is cherished by everyone. Even now, he is teased with the same incident. It's been almost 7 to 8 years after the incident and now  "The Jnaneshwar Kammar" is serving in Indian Navy.