The Boat-wreck

by Rabindranath Tagore

  ‘I assure you, my dear, destiny will not cheat you by giving you nothing more than this, all its debts to you shall be discharged.’

  ‘No, Didi, don’t say that – all the debts have been paid back, I don’t blame the Almighty, I lack for nothing.’

  Chakraborty appeared to tell her, ‘You have to come outside, Ma, Ramesh-babu is here.’

  Chakraborty had been talking to Ramesh all this while, telling him, ‘I have learnt about your relationship with Kamala. My advice to you is that now that your life has become simpler, you should give up all references to Kamala. If any knots still remain to be unravelled, let the lord do it without your involvement.’

  Ramesh responded, ‘Before I do, I must tell Nalinaksha everything – I shall not be released otherwise. Perhaps the need to bring up the subject no longer exists, or perhaps it does – but I must say what I have to before I retire.’

  ‘Very well, wait a bit, I shall be back,’ Chakraborty said.

  Turning towards the window, Ramesh gazed blankly at the people streaming past. A little later, he grew alert at the sound of footsteps. A young woman entered and greeted him by touching his feet with her forehead. Unable to remain seated, he jumped to his feet, saying, ‘Kamala!’

  Kamala stood in silence.

  Chakraborty said, ‘Ramesh-babu, God has converted all of Kamala’s suffering into good fortune, dispersing the fog around her life. You protected her during her crisis, for which you have had to make a terrible sacrifice – Kamala cannot take her leave of you without a word to you. She is here for your blessings.’

  After a momentary silence, Ramesh cleared his choked throat and said, ‘May you be happy, Kamala – forgive me for all the wrong I have done you, knowingly and unknowingly.’

  Kamala could say nothing in response, clinging to the wall.

  A little later Ramesh said, ‘Tell me if you need me to talk to anyone or to remove any obstacle lying in your way.’

  Joining her palms, Kamala said, ‘My only plea to you is not to talk to anyone about me.’

  Ramesh said, ‘For a long time I didn’t mention you to anyone, holding my peace even when in trouble. Recently, when I felt it could do no harm, I told one single family about you. That probably only helped your cause instead of hurting it. Khuro-moshai may have heard – Annada-babu, with whose daughter…’

  Chakraborty said, ‘Hemnalini, we know. Have they heard the full story?’

  Ramesh said, ‘Yes. If you feel there is anything more they should be told, I can inform them. But I do not wish to – I have lost a lot of time and a lot more, now I want to be released. I shall be relieved when I can discharge all my debts and leave.’

  Taking Ramesh’s hand Chakraborty said affectionately, ‘No, Ramesh-babu, there’s nothing more you have to do. You have had to bear a lot, now I pray that you can live freely, relieved of your burden, that you be fulfilled and happy.’

  Turning to Kamala, Ramesh said, ‘I’m leaving, then.’

  Without another word, Kamala touched Ramesh’s feet once again with her forehead.

  Ramesh walked out in a reverie, musing, ‘I’m glad I met Kamala, or else this would not have ended as it should have. Although I do not know what made Kamala leave the bungalow at Ghazipur that night, it is clear that I am not needed any more. Now I am needed only in my own life, I go into the world now to live it fully – there is no need to look back.’

  62

  When Kamala returned home, she found Annada-babu and Hemnalini with Kshemankari. On seeing her, Kshemankari said, ‘Here you are, Haridasi, take your friend to your room, my dear. I’m giving Annada-babu a cup of tea.’

  Entering Kamala’s room, Hemnalini put her arms around her, saying, ‘Kamala!’

  Without much surprise Kamala said, ‘How did you know my name is Kamala?’

  Hemnalini said, ‘I have heard the entire story of your life. As soon as I did, I had no doubt in my mind that you are Kamala. Why, I cannot say.’

  Kamala said, ‘It is on my own wish that no one knows my name. It only attracts condemnation.’

  ‘But it is on the strength of your name that you must stake your claim,’ said Hemnalini.

  Shaking her head, Kamala said, ‘I don’t understand all this. I have no claim, no rights, I do not wish to force myself on anyone.’

  ‘But how can you deprive your husband of the knowledge of your identity?’ said Hemnalini. ‘Are you not going to surrender your future to him? How can you hide anything from him?’

  Kamala suddenly turned ashen – unable to find a response to this, she stared helplessly at Hemnalini. Then she sat down on a mat on the floor, saying, ‘God knows I have done no wrong, why then is He embarrassing me so? Why must He punish me for a sin I have not committed? How can I possibly tell him everything?’

  Taking Kamala’s hand, Hemnalini said, ‘Not punishment, my dear, but freedom. The longer you keep your identity from your husband, the longer you will entangle yourself in a web of lies – break it apart by force and God will ensure that it will be good for you.’

  Kamala said, ‘I lose all my resolve on the fear that I might lose everything. But I understand what you’re saying – let my fate hold what it may, I cannot hide from him any more, he must know everything.’

  She clenched her fists in determination.

  Hemnalini said compassionately, ‘Do you want someone else to inform him instead?’

  Shaking her head with force, Kamala said, ‘No, he must not hear this from anyone else – only I must tell him about myself, I can do it.’

  ‘That is best,’ said Hemnalini. ‘I do not know whether you and I shall meet again. We are leaving Kashi, that is what I came here to tell you.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ asked Kamala.

  ‘Back to Calcutta,’ said Hemnalini. ‘You have things to do in the morning, I shan’t delay you any more. I shall go now, my dear. Don’t forget your sister.’

  Taking her hand, Kamala said, ‘Won’t you write to me?’

  ‘Very well, I shall,’ said Hemnalini.

  Kamala said, ‘You must advise me on how to conduct myself – I know your letters will give me strength.’

  Hemnalini said with a smile, ‘There are better people than I to advise you, don’t worry.’

  Kamala felt a sharp pain for Hemnalini today. There was something in Hemnalini’s serene face that made Kamala’s eyes brim over with tears. But there was a certain distance about Hemnalini – Kamala couldn’t tell her all she wanted to, she hesitated to ask questions too. Every aspect of Kamala’s life had been revealed to Hemnalini, but she went away wrapped in her own deep silence, leaving something intangible behind – a sad detachment as immeasurable as the disappearing twilight.

  During her household tasks Kamala was haunted by what Hemnalini had said and the look in her wistful eyes. She knew nothing about Hemnalini besides the fact that her marriage with Nalinaksha had been cancelled. Hemnalini had brought Kamala a bunch of flowers from her garden. After her evening bath, Kamala sat down to thread a garland with the flowers. Kshemankari appeared once, sitting by her side and saying with a sigh, ‘I cannot tell you how I felt when Hem said goodbye and left. No matter what anyone says, she’s such a good girl. I keep thinking how happy I would have been if she could have been my daughter-in-law. It could have been so, but it is impossible to dictate to my son – he alone knows what led him to object.’

  Kshemankari did not want to acknowledge that she herself had opposed the marriage eventually.

  Hearing footsteps outside, Kshemankari called out, ‘Come in here, Nalin.’

  Kamala quickly hid the flowers and the garland in her sari and covered her head. When Nalinaksha entered, Kshemankari said, ‘Hem and her father left today. Did you meet them?’

  Nalin said, ‘Yes, I saw them off at the station.’

  ‘Say what you will, you don’t find girls like Hem every day,’ asserted Kshemankari, as though Nalinaksha had always protested against this. He merely smiled.

 
; ‘What are you smiling for?’ said Kshemankari, ‘I made a match with her for you, even started the ceremonies, and you ruined everything with your stubbornness. Aren’t you the least bit repentant?’

  Nalinaksha threw a glance at Kamala and discovered her looking at him eagerly. As soon as their eyes met she lowered hers bashfully.

  ‘Do you think your son is such a suitable boy that your wish is all it will take, Ma?’ said Nalinaksha. ‘No one can like a dull and grave man like me easily.’

  At this Kamala’s eyes rose on their own, only to discover Nalinaksha’s eyes, bright with laughter, turned towards her. She wanted to run away from the room.

  ‘Go away, my blood boils to hear you talk,’ said Kshemankari

  When she was finally alone, Kamala strung together a large garland with all the flowers that Hemnalini had brought. Putting it in a bowl, she sprinkled water on it and put it one corner of Nalinaksha’s meditation room, telling herself that it was because Hemnalini was leaving today that she had brought these flowers. Kamala’s eyes were moist with tears.

  Returning to her own room, Kamala pondered for a long time over Nalinaksha’s glances at her. What did he think of her now? Her heart seemed to have been laid bare before him. It was easier for her earlier, when she did not have to appear in Nalinaksha’s presence. Now he seemed to catch her out every day. This was the punishment for keeping herself away from his eyes earlier. Kamala imagined Nalinaksha telling himself, ‘Where has Ma got this Haridasi from, I’ve never seen anyone so brazen!’ It would be intolerable if Nalinaksha entertained this thought even for a moment.

  In bed that night Kamala vowed with all her resolve, ‘Somehow or the other I must reveal who I am tomorrow, no matter what happens afterwards.’

  The next morning Kamala awoke at dawn and went for her bath. She usually brought back the holy water of the Ganga in a small pot every day, cleansing Nalinaksha’s meditation room with it before starting on her daily chores. Today, too, she went in to perform her first task of the day – to discover that Nalinaksha was in the room already. This had never happened before. Kamala left, carrying the burden of an unfinished task. But she stopped suddenly at a distance from the room, a thought running through her head. Then she returned to the meditation room, sitting quietly at the door. She did not know what she was rapt in; the entire world became indistinct, she had no sense of how much time had passed. Suddenly she found Nalinaksha outside the room, standing in front of her. Kamala jumped up, then knelt and touched his feet with her brow – her hair, wet from her bath, sweeping his feet. Getting back to her feet, Kamala stood like a statue; she did not know that the end of her sari had fallen off her head – she did not seem to notice that Nalinaksha was looking fixedly at her. Oblivious to the world, bathed in the exquisite radiance of an inner light of consciousness, she said in an unwavering voice, ‘I am Kamala.’

  The words seemed to shatter her own trance, her concentration broke. She began to tremble from head to toe. She bowed her head, bereft of the strength to move. Even staying on her feet seemed impossible. She had expended her entire strength, all her resolve, in pouring herself out at Nalinaksha’s feet with that one statement, ‘I am Kamala’. She had kept nothing as protection from her embarrassment, everything now depended on Nalinaksha’s kindness.

  He took her hand in his, saying, ‘I know you are my Kamala. Come into my room.’ In the room, he put the garland around her neck, saying, ‘Come, let us pray to Him.’

  Side by side, they knelt on the marble floor, the morning light falling on their heads through the window.

  Kamala touched Nalinaksha’s feet once more after the prayer, she was no longer beleaguered by unbearable embarrassment. Not the elation of ecstasy, but the tranquil peace of a larger freedom made her existence one with the pure and generous light of the morning. A deep sense of devotion brimmed over in her heart. Large teardrops rolled down her face, refusing to be staunched. The clouds of her orphaned life shed themselves as joyous rain. Without another word, Nalinaksha only moved her wet locks away from her forehead with his right hand and left the room.

  Kamala could not end her act of worship just yet. Going to Nalinaksha’s bedroom, she wrapped his wooden footwear in the garland round her neck, touched her forehead with it, and put it back in its rightful place.

  After this, her household duties felt like serving the gods. Every single task rose to the sky like a wave of happiness. Kshemankari said, ‘What are you doing, Ma? Are you going to sweep and mop and scrub the entire house in a single day?’

  In the afternoon, Kamala was sitting on the floor of her room instead of doing her embroidery when Nalinaksha entered with a bunch of lilies. He said, ‘Keep these flowers fresh in a bowl of water, Kamala, this evening we shall pay our respects to Ma together.’

  Bowing her head, Kamala said, ‘But you don’t know everything yet.’

  Nalinaksha said, ‘You don’t have to tell me, I know.’

  Covering her face with her right hand, Kamala said, ‘Will Ma—’

  She could not finish.

  Taking her hand and lowering it from her face, Nalinaksha said, ‘Ma has forgiven many sins in her life, she is perfectly capable of forgiving something that is not a sin.’

  P.S.

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  No Generalized Answer is Possible: Tagore’s Introduction to His Novel

  Rabindranath Tagore

  A New Kind of Realistic Novel: An Analysis of Noukadoobi, 1938

  Srikumar Bandyopadhyay

  Love and Marriage in Noukadoobi

  Nivedita Sen

  Milan, Ghunghat, Noukadoobi:

  The Novel and Its Film Adaptations

  Shoma A. Chatterji

  No Generalized Answer is Possible:

  Tagore’s Introduction to His Novel

  Rabindranath Tagore

  The responsibility that is reasonable for a reader to bear cannot be imposed on the writer. It is not seemly to analyse one’s own writing. It can in fact be called unjust, since it is impossible to perform this task objectively – the line of dispassionate evaluation cannot be maintained. The publisher wishes to learn why I wanted to write Noukadoobi. Not even the gods have the answer, let alone men. The outward reason can be revealed – it was the publisher’s urging. The spring, however, lies deep within; Gomukh is not the source of the Ganga, after all. It would be an exaggeration to term the publisher’s demand the inspiration for this work. And yet, what else do I call it? To be seized by a story and to be seized by the publisher are two entirely different matters. Needless to say, there was no urgency to tell the story deep within me. But when the fully armed soldier of storytelling refused to vacate his station at the door, I was forced to think of a subject. Expectations have changed with the times. The interest in stories nowadays has turned to psychoanalytical aspects with the plot becoming secondary. And so, in this story the lives of the hero and the heroine are charged with the force of a grievous mistake in order to investigate the mysteries of the mind in abnormal conditions – cruel, but exciting. The ultimate psychological question is: Does the sacrament of certainty in her husband’s constancy that an ordinary woman harbours run so deep that she can denounce and break a first love developed unconsciously? But no generalized answer is possible. It is not impossible for an ancient social tradition to be entrenched within a particular woman inexorably enough for her to break all previous ties and join a husband whom she has never actually known. Had the ties and the tradition been equally powerful and waged mutual war in the woman’s mind, the story would have been more dramatic, the wound of the tragedy leaving a permanent mark. The unfortunate Ramesh remains the principal vehicle of the tragedy, not so much because of his resistance to becoming a victim as because of the hopeless complexity of the web of events. I shall not respond if the judge were to hold the author guilty for this. All I will aver is that as long as the poetic sentiment has not been squandered in those portions of the narrati
ve where it has touched the description and the suffering, the poet’s fame may in part be protected by those same segments. But I cannot state this unequivocally, for tastes are changing rapidly.

  Published in 1906

  Translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha

  A New Kind of Realistic Novel:

  An Analysis of Noukadoobi, 1938

  Srikumar Bandyopadhyay

  Among the works in which Rabindranath Tagore’s signature tune is audible is Noukadoobi (1906), a novel very much like a romance which has been configured around an astonishing sequence of events. The disaster wrought by destiny, which binds Ramesh and Kamala to each other in a bond all but impossible to sever, cannot be considered an everyday incident. Similarly, the indication of divine providence in the reunion of Nalinaksha and Kamala is also a little too obvious. The curtain of error which conceals the truth from the relationship between Ramesh and Kamala has been lifted with somewhat unnecessary delay. It would have been a simple matter for the women in Ramesh’s family to have identified the misconception, as just a few curious questions would have been sufficient to lift the veil of complexity. Therefore, the unforeseen components of the novel are disproportionately high and, in that respect, the work betrays the symptoms of a romance.

  However, looking beyond the mere flow of events, the author has adopted an entirely new realistic technique in his writing. The detailed and flawless description of every day of the journey on the boat, the analysis of the blows and counter-blows within the lovelorn but sensitive Kamala’s heart, and the depiction of the clash between love and duty in Ramesh bring the relationship between Kamala and Ramesh to life in a beautiful way. The entire novel flows with a slow, natural rhythm – its light and lively flow is nowhere impeded by the appearance of deep whirlpools of complexities. No profound note is sounded anywhere, nor is there any attempt at abstruse analysis. Ramesh, Kamala, Akshay, Jogen and Chakraborty are all straightforward and transparent people – there is no scope for intense turmoil or agitation in their personalities. Nor does any particular scene provide a violent conflict or the unravelling of a deep mystery.