Tagore Omnibus, Volume 1

by Rabindranath Tagore

  Jap

  The silent recitation of prayers and mantras.

  Ji

  Suffix added to a name or title as a mark of respect, e.g. Swamiji.

  Kayastha

  Important high caste of North India, originally of scribes.

  Khichuri

  Dish of rice cooked with dal (pulses).

  Kirtan

  Religious songs celebrating the sacred romance of Krishna and Radha.

  Kulin

  The highest subcaste of Brahmins, traditionally said to have been created by the twelfth-century Bengal king, Vallal Sena.

  Lanka

  Ancient name of Sri Lanka.

  Ma

  Mother; used affectionately for a daughter or young woman.

  Magh

  The second of the two winter months in the Bengali calendar, mid-January to mid-February.

  Manu

  Orthodox Hindu law-giver, probably legendary.

  Maya

  Illusion; the mundane realm, considered illusory in relation to the (transcendental) ultimate reality.

  Namaskar

  The Hindu salute, given by bowing (nama) and simultaneously raising joined palms.

  Paan

  Betel-leaf filled with various spices, chewed as a digestive.

  Phalgun

  The first of the two spring months in the Bengali calendar, mid-February to mid-March.

  Pranam

  Obeisance made by kneeling and touching forehead to the floor.

  Puja

  Hindu worship; often used as a shorthand for Durga Puja, the chief festival of Bengali Hindus, when magazines and periodicals publish special numbers.

  Puranas

  Hindu ancient narratives with a didactic purpose about the birth and deeds of gods and goddesses and mythological characters.

  Raga

  Indian musical mode, e.g. Raga Shahana, mentioned in the novella.

  Rasa

  Generally translated here as ‘ecstasy’. It is a key concept in Sanskrit aesthetics as ‘mood’, of which there are nine principal ones: erotic, comic, compassionate, heroic, terrible, disgusting, wrathful, wonderful, calm. A work of art evokes one or more. In ordinary parlance it means the sap/essence/juice of life. In colloquial Bengali it can mean the sex drive.

  Samsara

  The world of the householder, characterized by worldly attachments.

  Sannyasi

  One who has renounced the world; a religious mendicant.

  Sanyasini

  Feminine form of sannyasi.

  Sissoo

  Large deciduous tree, valuable for its timber.

  Sraddha

  Rituals and feast marking the end of the period of mourning among Hindus.

  Tikka

  Cake of charcoal paste used as fuel to light the tobacco in the tobacco-bowl of a hookah.

  Ucchaisraba

  The horse of the god Indra.

  Veena

  Ancient stringed musical instrument, used chiefly in classical music.

  YOGAYOG

  (Nexus)

  1

  TODAY IS THE 7TH OF ASHADA. ABINASH’S BIRTHDAY. HE HAS TURNED THIRTY-two today. Greetings, telegrams and bouquets have kept coming all morning.

  This is where the story begins. But there’s something before the beginning too, like the rolling of cotton wicks in the morning to light lamps in the evening.

  The prehistoric stage of this story finds the Ghoshals on the fringes of the Sunderbans and later at Noornagar in the Hooghly district. It is not very clear if these migrations were caused by the external force of Portuguese advancement or internal social pressures. Often, those who are able to leave their homesteads in desperation also have the resoluteness to set up new homes. So we find the Ghoshals at the dawn of history, in possession of expansive landed properties, many heads of cattle and farmhands, and celebrating all the festivals in the calendar with pomp and grandeur. There was much transaction of money coming in and going out. Even today a ten-acre pond testifies to their past glory—though in a voice choked with mud from behind a veil of hyacinths. Today the pond may still bear their name but its water belongs to the Chatterjees.

  Let us now recount the decline of the Ghoshal family glory.

  In the middle period of their history, one finds them scrapping with the other zamindar family—the Chatterjees. The dispute was not over property but over the worship of gods. The Ghoshals had dared the Chatterjees by making the image of their goddess two cubits higher than the Chatterjees’, who retaliated by erecting arches along the route such that the Ghoshals’ image would not be able to clear. The High-Imagers then set out to break the arches and the Low-Archers to break their rivals’ heads. The result: the goddess had more than her fair share of human blood that year. Murder and mayhem led to criminal suits. By the time the litigations ended, the Ghoshals were on the brink of ruin.

  The fire went out but so did the firewood. All turned to ash. Ashen was the face of the patron goddess of the Chatterjee household. Treaties were concluded but they did not bring peace. The one who was still up and the one who was down, both began to boil inside. The Chatterjees dealt their coup-de-grace by wielding the social scimitar. They spread the rumour that the Ghoshals were in reality, fallen Brahmins, a fact they suppressed on coming to Noornagar. Earthworms cloaked as cobras!

  The defamers had a louder voice because their pockets were deeper. So it was not difficult to find drummers for their false campaign from amongst the priestly scholars with their incomprehensible incantations. The Ghoshals lacked both wealth and strong evidence to clear themselves. So for a second time they had to move to a humble location here in Rajabpur, harassed by a society under the thumb of the temple-crawlers.

  Strikers have a short memory, but those who are hit do not find it easy to forget. Because they are disarmed physically, they continue to wield their clubs mentally. This mental game had been running in the family for ages, ever since their striking arm was benumbed. Stories, tissues of truth and untruth, of how they worsted the Chatterjees, was still their stock-in-trade.

  On a rainy evening, under a thatched roof, the children would listen to these tales open-mouthed. How scores of their musclemen captured the notorious Dashu Sardar of the Chatterjees, brought him to the Ghoshal court and did him in, was a story running in this family for over a century. As the story went, when the police came to enquire, Bhuban Biswas the Ghoshals’ naib, had no hesitation in declaring, ‘Yes , he came here on some business of his own, and yes I did take the opportunity to snub him a bit. I gather he could not bear the humiliation and has made himself scarce since then.’

  The magistrate was not convinced. So Bhuban added, ‘Sir, as sure as my name is Bhuban Biswas, I promise to run him to ground before the year ends.’ He then got hold of another scoundrel of Dashu’s size and sent him straight to Dacca, the district headquarters. He was put to commit some petty thievery.The police booked him as Dasharathi Mandai and duly sentenced him to a month’s imprisonment. The day he was to be let out Bhuban sent word to the magistrate that Dashu Sardar had been located in the Dacca jail. Enquiry confirmed that there was indeed one Dashu in the jail. Whilst leaving, Dashu dropped his shawl in a field across the jail. The shawl was duly identified as belonging to Dashu Sardar. From then on, his whereabouts ceased to be Bhuban’s responsibility.

  Such stories were rather like cheques from the past on an insolvent present. The days of glory were gone; its history like an empty vessel made a lot of noise. Anyway, just as the lamp goes out when the oil is finished, so does the night end in daybreak. The fortune of the Ghoshals dawned with the extraordinary luck of Madhusudan, the father of Abinash.

  2

  MADHUSUDAN’S FATHER ANANDA WAS A STORES CLERK IN RAJABPUR. THE family barely managed to make ends meet.The women wore simple conch-bangles and the men carried brass amulets at the end of a thick sacred thread, well plastered with the gum of bael. The thickness of the sacred thread counterbalanced the thinning pri
de of a dubious Brahminism.

  Madhusudan’s primary education was received in this moffusil school. But his informal training ran parallel along the riverside, in the grain yards and atop bales of jute. His holidays were spent among buyers and sellers and the throng of bullock cart drivers in the market place. He took pleasure in walking round a garden, rambling amidst rows of claypots filled with jaggery, bundles of tobacco leaf, bales of imported shawls, tins of kerosene oil, heaps of mustard seed, sackfuls of lentils and huge balances and weighing devices.

  The father reckoned that this boy would go places. He had only to somehow clear a few exams and land himself a berth in any of the havens of the gentlemanly class—anything from a schoolmaster to a lawyer in the lower courts. The fateline of the other three sons seemed as if they would be limited to nothing more than book-keeping. So they hied forth with quills behind their ears, to be apprenticed with stockists or in a zamindar’s office. Madhusudan, however, moved to a dormitory in Kolkata, straining the slender means of his father Ananda.

  His professors had hopes of the boy bringing credit to their college.

  But it so happened that Ananda passed away rather suddenly. Madhusudan sold all his earthly possessions, his books and even his class notes. He was determined to earn his living. He started with buying and selling second-hand books to the students. His mother cried her heart out. She had great hopes that the exam-passing route would lead her son into the charmed circle of the gentlefolk. And that the family flagstaff of the Ghoshals would then proudly fly the standard of triumphant clerkship.

  Right from his childhood Madhusudan had the knack of choosing the right goods. His choice of friends was likewise; none of them ever let him down. His best friend in school was one Kanai Gupta. His forbears were agents of large commercial houses and his father Rajani Babu was well ensconced in a reputed firm dealing in kerosene oil.

  As luck would have it, the occasion of Rajani Babu’s daughter’s wedding came up. Madhusudan did not spare himself. He put up the marquee, decorated it with flowers, supervised the printing of the wedding invitation in gold letters, hired carpets and chairs, received the guests and cried himself hoarse looking after their entertainment—nothing escaped his attention. Rajani Babu was very pleased with this demonstration of prudence and practical sense in matters mundane. He could sense a man of worth and felt that this boy would do well. He helped Madhusudan set up an agency for supply of kerosene in Rajabpur and paid the deposit himself.

  From then on, Mudhusudan’s race towards prosperity began; and the kerosene depot was left behind as a dot on the horizon. His business rapidly crossed over from the by-lanes to the main street. Large entries to his credit account served as stepping stones in his rise from a retailer to a wholesaler. It was like our great epic starting from an introductory chapter and ending in the chapter on an ascent to paradise. People said ‘it is all a turn of luck’. That was to suggest that the train of the present prosperity was running on the steam of past merit. But Madhusudan knew that Fate would spare nothing to trick him out. It was only because his calculations were always right that the examiners could not fail him in the arithmetic of life. It is only those who get their sums wrong who use the excuse of bias on the part of a strict examiner.

  Madhusudan was a man of great reserve. He never talked about his own affairs. But one could easily see that the once dry riverbed was again swollen with the flood of good fortune for the Ghoshals. In the domestic milieu of Bengal one’s thoughts turn to marriage in such circumstances. The desire to extend the enjoyment of property along the family line into the future beyond death, becomes very strong. Fathers of nubile daughters did everything to encourage Madhusudan in this direction. Madhusudan’s reaction was, ‘One should feed oneself fully before taking on the responsibility of feeding another mouth.’ From this one could guess that whatever the size of his heart, Madhusudan’s stomach was of no mean dimension.

  By this time, Rajabpur jute had earned a name for itself in the market, thanks to Madhusudan’s prudence. He was quick to grab all the land on the riverside. It was going cheap. He put up a number of brick kilns, bought huge timbers of teak from Nepal, limestone from Sylhet and wagonloads of corrugated iron from Kolkata. People were flabbergasted. They said, ‘Look at this. Couldn’t wait to spend the little he had saved! It is nothing but indigestion of wealth. His business will soon come to an end.’

  But this time too Madhusudan’s calculations proved right. Soon there was a boom in the market in Rajabpur. Under its spell came brokers and Marwari traders. Coolies were imported, factories were set up and their chimney stacks belched spirals of smoke darkening the skies.

  It did not need any great research into his books; his glory was plain to the naked eye. Sole owner of the market place, his two-storied walled mansion carried the apellation ‘Madhuchakra’ engraved in stone. The name was suggested by his old Sanskrit teacher whose affection for Madhusudan had suddenly become more pronounced than in the past.

  His widowed mother at last summoned up the courage to say, ‘My son, my days are numbered. Do you think I shall be able to see my daughter-in-law before I go?’

  Madhu’s brief reply, gravely delivered, was, ‘It is a waste of time getting married and so is marriage itself. Where do I have the time to spare?’ Even his mother knew better than to insist. Time was money and everyone knew that Madhusudan never minced his words.

  Days passed. The floodtide of prosperity swept the suburban office up to Kolkata. Despairing of ever seeing the faces of grandchildren, Madhusudan’s mother passed away. Ghoshal & Co was now known both at home and abroad. Their business ran close to established British business houses and they even had English managers in charge of divisions.

  Establishing himself in this manner, Madhusudan himself announced that he was free to marry now. His was the highest credit in the marriage market. Proposals poured in from all sides for brides—beautiful, well-bred, accomplished, rich and highly educated. Madhusudan rolled his eyes at all these proposals and pronounced, ‘I must have a daughter of that Chatterjee family.’

  A family nursing wounded pride is rather like a wounded hyena—ferocious in the extreme.

  3

  NOW THE BRIDE’S STORY . . .

  The Chatterjees of Noornagar had fallen on bad days.The branch of the family which held a third of the share broke away and were picking at the fringes of the other two-thirds. The more the two parties tried to finely divide the benefice for looking after the family deity, Radhakanta Jeeu, the more their share of crops found its way to the courtyards of their lawyers. The functionaries had their shares too. The Noornagar family had lost its power—there was no income but the expenses had risen fourfold. Nine tentacles of a nine percent interest on loans had spread round the zamindari. It was a family of two brothers and five sisters. The penalty for the crime of having an overpopulation of daughters was still to be paid. Four sisters were married into kuleen families whilst the head of the family was still alive. The Chatterjees’ past reputation was vast but their current wealth was slim. So the dowries had to be large enough to match the prestige of their high caste and the extent of their wide reputation. It was this which added another knot of a twelve percent interest to the already existing noose of nine percent interest. The younger brother took a stand. He desired to go to England, be called to the bar and start earning a living. The elder brother Bipradas was left to bear the family burden. At about this time the fates of the Chatterjees and the Ghoshals locked horns once more.

  Let me narrate that story.

  The Chatterjees owed a large sum to Tansukdas, a confectioner in Burrabazar. Interests were paid regularly and no words were ever exchanged. During the puja holidays Bipradas’s classmate, one Amulyadhan, arrived apparently to renew his close ties with the family. He was an articled head clerk in a big house of attorneys. One sidelong glance was enough for this bespectacled young man to gauge the predicament of this Noornagar family. He went back to Kolkata and soon enough Tansukdas d
emanded his loan back. He said he wanted the money to get into the sugar business.

  Bipradas was struck dumb.

  This crisis brought the two family names into unfriendly conjunction. Madhusudan had just been conferred the title of Raja by the Hon’ble Government. Our old schoolfriend appeared again in Noornagar at this juncture and said, ‘The new Raja must be in a generous mood and may even agree to a loan on easy terms.’ And that is exactly how it happened. The diverse borrowings of the Chatterjees totalled eleven lakh rupees, and a loan for this sum was had from Madhusudan Ghoshal at only seven per cent interest.

  Bipradas heaved a sigh of relief.

  Kumudini was his youngest sister; and their fortune was on its last legs. The thought of finding a match for her and a dowry to match, was chilling. She was beautiful, tall and slim like the stalk of a tuberose. Her eyes though not very large were intensely dark, and her nose, perfectly straight, was delicate as if fashioned out of the petals of a flower. Her skin was fair and glowing. To be served by her perfectly rounded hands was to receive with gratefulness the favours of Goddess Kamala herself. Patience and compassion lit her entire face with a dolorous sadness.

  Kumudini felt embarrassed for herself. She believed she brought ill luck. She believed that men ran the family with their own prowess and the women brought prosperity with their luck. But that was not to be her lot. From the time she could follow things, she had only seen the evil eye of misfortune all around. And the burden of her spinsterhood was like a millstone round the neck of the family. The pain of it and the shame! But nothing could be done except to blame one’s own fate. The gods did not find a way out for them except to endow them with the strength to bear hurt. ‘Can’t there be a miracle? A godsend? A treasure trove? Or the sudden settlement of a loan given in a previous life?’ she prayed. Some nights as she lay awake looking over the top of the murmuring casuarina trees, she spoke to herself.