The Land of Cards: Stories, Poems, and Plays for Children

by Rabindranath Tagore

  The blacksmiths gained so much importance, their wives bedecked themselves with ornaments, and seeing the alertness of the Kotwal, the king bestowed him with a shiropa, a turban of honour.

  7

  The parrot died. Nobody could say when.

  The wretched fault-finder spread the word: ‘The bird is dead.’

  ‘Nephews, what is this I hear?’ demanded the king.

  ‘Maharaj, the bird’s training is complete,’ declared the nephews.

  ‘Does he hop about any more?’ the king enquired.

  ‘Arre Rama! No,’ demurred the nephew.

  ‘Does he fly any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he sing any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he scream if he does not receive grain for his feed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bring the bird to me once,’ the king ordered. ‘Let me see him.’

  The bird was brought. Along with the bird came the Kotwal, paiks and horsemen.

  The king prodded the bird. But the bird neither opened his beak, nor made any sound. Only the dry pages torn from books rustled and sighed in his belly.

  Outside, stirred by the fresh spring breeze blowing in from the south, the sighing of new leaves spread anguish in the sky, above the newly blossoming woods.

  The Horse

  When the process of Creation was almost over and he was about to call it a day, an idea occurred to Brahma the divine Creator.

  He sent for his storekeeper, the bhandari, and said: ‘O Bhandari, procure some of the five elements for my workshop. I’m going to create another new being.’

  With folded hands the bhandari replied: ‘O Grandsire, when you enthusiastically created the elephant, the whale, the python, lion and tiger, you paid no heed to accounts. All the heavy, powerful elements are more or less exhausted. Our stocks of earth, water and fire have touched rock bottom. We have air and ether in plenty, as much as you desire.’

  The Four-headed One twirled his four moustaches for a while, then said: ‘Very well, bring me what we have in the store, and we shall see.’

  This time, while creating this new being, Brahma was extremely sparing in his use of earth, water and fire. He gave the creature neither horns nor nails; and the teeth he provided were good for chewing, not biting. He did use up some of his stock of fire, but while it made the creature of some use in the battlefield, it deprived it of all desire to fight. This creature was the horse. It did not lay eggs, but there are rumours about horse eggs in the market, hence one might call it a twice-born being.

  Other things notwithstanding, the Creator stuffed this creature’s constitution with elements of air and ether. Consequently, its heart was driven almost completely by the spirit of freedom. It wanted to run faster than the wind, resolved to cross beyond the boundless sky. All other creatures run when there is reason, but this one ran for no reason at all, as if it fancied running away from its own self. It didn’t want to snatch anything from anyone, nor to kill anyone, but only to run away. To run and run until utterly intoxicated, benumbed, invisible, reduced to nothing—that was its aim! Experts say that is what happens when the elements of air and ether completely overshadow the presence of earth-water-fire in one’s constitution.

  Brahma was delighted. By way of habitation for other animals, he gave forests to some, caves to others; but because he liked to observe this creature run, he gave it the open field.

  At the edge of the field lived human beings. Whatever they managed to acquire through snatching and robbing became a burden that weighed them down. So, whenever they saw the horse racing through the open field, they thought to themselves: ‘If we could somehow subdue this creature, it would be very convenient for our business.’

  One day, they captured the horse with a lasso. They fixed a saddle on its back, bridle and bit in its mouth. They lashed it on the neck with their whip, and kicked its sides with their boot-spurs. And then they would give it a rubbing down.

  If left in the field, it might escape; hence they raised a wall all around the horse. The tiger had its forest, and continued to own it; the lion had its cave, and no one snatched it away. But the horse that had once owned the open field ended up in a stable. The elements of air and ether gave this creature a great craving for freedom, but failed to protect it from bondage.

  When it became intolerable, the horse began to shower kicks upon the wall that surrounded it. Its legs suffered greater injury than the wall; but still, the coating of lime and plaster was damaged, and the wall began to lose its beauty.

  This infuriated the humans. ‘That’s what you call ingratitude,’ they complained. ‘We feed it grain and water, pay through our nose to employ grooms who watch over it night and day, but still we can’t capture its heart.’

  To capture its heart, the grooms thrashed the horse so soundly that it no longer had the strength to kick. Calling all their neighbours, the humans declared: ‘There is no carrier-beast as devoted as ours.’

  ‘Indeed,’ they said, full of praise. ‘It’s as peaceful and docile as water. As peaceful as your religion.’

  As it is the horse had from the beginning lacked suitable teeth, nails and horns. And now it had even stopped kicking the walls and the air. So, to lighten its heart, it raised its head to the sky and began to neigh. This woke up the humans, and even the neighbours began to think that this sound didn’t exactly resemble an outpouring of devotion. All sorts of contraptions were produced now, to smother the horse’s mouth. But without suffocating it, its mouth could not be completely silenced. Hence, a suppressed sound, like the gasps of a drowning man, kept emerging from time to time.

  One day, the sound reached Brahma’s ears. His meditation disrupted, he glanced once at the open fields of the earth. There was no sign of the horse.

  The Grandsire sent for Yama, the death-god, and said: ‘This must be your doing. You have captured my horse.’

  ‘O Creator,’ protested Yama, ‘I am the target of all your suspicion. Please cast a glance at the human colony.’

  Inside a very tiny space, surrounded by a wall, Brahma saw the horse standing and neighing in a faint voice.

  He was disturbed. ‘If you don’t set this creature of mine free,’ he warned the humans. ‘I’ll give him claws and teeth like a tiger. It will no longer be of any use to you.’

  ‘Chhi, chhi, shame on you!’ cried man. ‘That would give too much encouragement to violence. But whatever you might say, Grandsire, this creature of yours is not even worthy of freedom. For its own good, we have built this stable at great expense. It’s a wonderful stable.’

  ‘You must set it free,’ Brahma insisted obdurately.

  ‘Very well, I’ll set it free,’ man consented. ‘But for seven days. If, after that, you say that my stable is not more suitable for the horse than your open field, I’m willing to swallow my words and do penance.’

  What man did was to let the horse out into the field, but with its forelegs tightly bound. Such was the horse’s gait now that even a frog’s movements seemed more graceful by comparison.

  Brahma lived in heaven, far away. He could see the horse’s gait, but not the rope that bound its knees. Seeing the ungainly movements of this creature of his own making, he grew red with shame.

  ‘I must say I have made a mistake,’ he said.

  ‘Now what are we to do with this creature?’ asked man, with folded hands. ‘If there’s a field in your realm Brahmalok, I’d rather send it off there.’

  ‘Go, go,’ cried Brahma in agitation, ‘go and take it back into your stable.’

  ‘But O our Original Deity,’ protested man, ‘this is a great burden for mankind.’

  ‘But therein lies the humanity of human beings,’ declared Brahma.

  A True Fairy

  The prince had crossed twenty. From lands far and wide, proposals of marriage poured in.

  ‘The daughter of the king of Bahlik is exquisitely beautiful,’ said the go-between. ‘Like a shower of white ros
es.’

  The prince averted his face, and made no reply.

  ‘As for the king of Gandhar’s daughter,’ a messenger reported, ‘every limb of her body brims with loveliness, like a bunch of grapes on a vine.’

  The prince went off into the forest on the pretext of hunting. Days passed, weeks went by, but he did not return in a hurry.

  ‘I went and saw the princess of Kamboj,’ the messenger came and announced. ‘The curve of her lashes is like the horizon at sunrise, her eyes dew-moist, bright and shining.’

  The prince began to read a long narrative poem by Bhartrihari, and would not raise his eyes from the tome.

  ‘Why such behaviour?’ wondered the king. ‘Let’s find out: send for the minister’s son.’

  The minister’s son was summoned.

  ‘You are my son’s friend,’ said the king. ‘Tell me truly, why is he not interested in marriage?’

  ‘Maharaj,’ replied the minister’s son, ‘after hearing tales about Paristan the land of fairies, your son has developed the desire to wed a fairy.’

  2

  Find out the where Paristan is located, ordered the king.

  The greatest pundits were summoned. They scanned every ancient tome. Shaking their heads, they said: ‘There is no hint about Paristan in these volumes, not on a single page.’

  Now it was the merchants’ turn to be summoned to the royal court.

  ‘We have travelled to so many islands across the seas,’ they declared. ‘Ela Dweep, Mareech Dweep, the land of Labangalata. We have been to Malay Dweep to fetch sandalwood, to the fir woods of Kailash in search of deer-musk, but nowhere have we found any directions to Paristan.’

  ‘Send for the minister’s son,’ decreed the king.

  The minister’s son arrived.

  ‘Who told the prince those stories about Paristan?’ the king asked him.

  ‘That crazy fellow Nabin Pagla, who roams the forests, flute in hand. When he went hunting, the prince heard tales of Paristan from him,’ the minister’s son informed them.

  ‘Achchha—very well, send for him then,’ ordered the king.

  Carrying a fistful of wild flowers as an offering, Nabin Pagla came and stood before the king.

  ‘Where did you hear of Paristan?’ the king asked him.

  ‘I visit there regularly,’ he replied.

  ‘Where is it located?’ the king enquired.

  ‘Beneath Chitragiri, the Picture Mountain at the border of your kingdom, on the edge of Kamyak Sarovar, the Lake of Desire.’

  ‘Are fairies to be seen there?’ demanded the king.

  ‘Seen indeed, but not recognized,’ Pagla the madman replied. ‘They remain in disguise. Sometimes they reveal their true self before they vanish, but we have no means of capturing them then.’

  ‘How do you recognize them?’ the king wanted to know.

  ‘When some particular melody catches my ear, or some ray of light catches my eye,’ Pagla replied.

  ‘This fellow is utterly mad,’ the king said in disgust. ‘Send him away!’

  3

  Nabin Pagla’s words struck a chord in the prince’s heart.

  In the spring month of Phalgun, the boughs were laden with sal buds, shirish, raintree blossoms, rippling at the edges of the forest. The prince went alone to Chitragiri.

  ‘Where are you going?’ everyone wanted to know.

  He offered no reply.

  From within a cave a waterfall gushed forth, descending to the Kamyak Sarovar. The villagers called it ‘Udas Jhora,’ the Melancholy Falls. Beneath that waterfall, in a ruined temple, the prince made his abode.

  A month passed by. The tender leaves that had appeared on the branches of every tree acquired a deeper hue, and the forest paths were strewn with fallen flowers. Now, in an early morning dream, the prince heard the melodious strains of a flute. As soon as he awakened, he cried: ‘Today I shall see her!’

  4

  At once he sprang on to his horse and rode along the bank of the stream until he arrived at the edge of Kamyak Sarovar. There he saw a girl, daughter of the mountain folk, resting beside a cluster of lotuses. Her pitcher was full of water, but she did not arise from the ghaat, the water’s edge. The dark-skinned girl had adorned her black hair with a shirish flower tucked behind her ear, like the first star that appears at dusk.

  Dismounting from his horse, the prince asked her: ‘Will you let me have that shirish flower you wear behind your ear?’

  She was like a gazelle that knows no fear. She turned once to glance at the prince’s face. Then, the shadow of something unknown descended upon her dark eyes, making them look even darker—as a dream descends on sleep, or early rain clouds upon the horizon.

  ‘Here!’ she said, removing the flower from her hair and handing it to the prince.

  ‘Tell me truly, what fairy are you?’ demanded the prince.

  For an instant, her face expressed surprise. Immediately afterwards, she burst into peals of laughter, like the sudden showers of early autumn—her laughter seemed unstoppable.

  ‘My dream has come true, it seems,’ thought the prince to himself. ‘The music of this laughter seemed to echo the melody of that flute.’

  Springing on to his horse, the prince held out his arms and called: ‘Come!’

  Without a thought, she took his hand and mounted the horse. Her water-filled pitcher lay abandoned on the ghaat.

  Kuhu-kuhu-kuhu-kuhu called the koel from the shirish bough.

  ‘What is your name?’ the prince whispered in the girl’s ear.

  ‘Kajari,’ she answered. ‘The Kohl-Black One.’

  They went, the two of them, to the ruins of that temple at the edge of Udas Jhora.

  ‘Cast off your disguise now,’ the prince urged.

  ‘But we are forest women,’ she replied. ‘We don’t understand disguises.’

  ‘But I want to see your fairy self,’ the prince insisted.

  Fairy self! Again that laugh, ringing out in peals of mirth.

  ‘The music of this laughter matches the melody of this waterfall,’ the prince thought. ‘She is the fairy who belongs to this waterfall of mine.’

  5

  News reached the king’s ears that the prince had married a fairy. From the palace came horses, elephants, and a chaturdola, a litter borne by four men.

  ‘What’s all this for?’ Kajari enquired.

  ‘You must come to the palace,’ the prince informed her.

  This brought tears to her eyes. She remembered her pitcher, lying abandoned by the waterside. She remembered the grass seeds she had spread out to dry in the courtyard at home. She remembered that her father and brother had gone hunting, that it was time for them to return. And she remembered that her mother had set up her loom beneath the tree, humming as she wove the cloth that would someday be her daughter’s dowry.

  ‘No, I shall not go,’ she declared.

  But the drumbeats of the dhak and dhol had begun to resonate. As the sounds of the banshee, gong and kettledrum rang out, her words could not be heard.

  When Kajari descended from the chaturdola at the palace, the queen beat her forehead in despair. ‘What sort of fairy is this?’ she wailed.

  ‘Chhi, chhi, what a disgrace!’ cried the princess.

  ‘And what sort of garb is this, for a fairy!’ quipped the queen’s female attendant, her dasi.

  ‘Quiet!’ ordered the prince. ‘A fairy in disguise has entered your home.’

  6

  Days went by. In bed, the prince would awaken in the moonlight to observe whether Kajari’s disguise showed the slightest sign of slipping off. He saw the dark-skinned girl lying with her dark tresses outspread, her body resembling a flawless statue carved in black stone.

  Silently, the prince wondered: ‘Where has the fairy concealed herself, as the dawn hides in the dark just before daybreak?’

  The prince felt ashamed to face his family. One day, he even felt a hint of rage.

  As Kajari was about to leave the
bed in the morning, the prince gripped her arm tightly and insisted: ‘Today I shall not let you go. Reveal your true self to me.’

  This time, she did not burst into peals of laughter as she had done when she heard the same words in the forest. In no time, her eyes were suffused with tears.

  ‘Will you elude me forever?’ the prince demanded.

  ‘No, not any more,’ she replied.

  ‘Then make sure that the fairy reveals herself to everybody this full-moon night, on Kartik Purnima,’ ordered the prince.

  7

  The full moon shone in the middle of the sky. A lilting melody rang out from the nahabat, the music pavilion of the royal palace.

  In a bridegroom’s attire, the prince entered the inner quarters bearing a wedding garland. Tonight there would be the shubhodrishti ritual, when he and his fairy-bride would see each other for the first time.

  In the bedchamber, a white coverlet enveloped the bed, with white jasmine flowers heaped upon it. Moonlight streamed in through the window above.

  And Kajari?

  She was nowhere to be seen.

  The strains of the flute signalled the late hour of the night. The moon had declined to the west. One by one, his kith and kin poured into the room.

  Where was the fairy?

  ‘Vanishing, the fairy reveals her true self,’ said the prince. ‘And then she is beyond our reach.’

  Bolai

  They say human life forms the epilogue to the history of all the diverse species in the world. We know we can detect traces of various forms of animal life in the human society around us. In fact, what we call human is the element that merges all the animals in us, forcing both tiger and cow into the same pen and imprisoning snake and mongoose in a single cage. What we describe as a ragini is the element that transforms all the notes into a classical melody, so the notes can no longer create any discord. But still, within a composition, one note becomes prominent, surpassing all the others—sometimes madhyam, sometimes komal gandhar, or sometimes pancham.