The Boat-wreck

by Rabindranath Tagore

  Whenever a battle of emotions generates signs of an imminent crisis, much like a cloud about to burst under its own weight, the writer introduces a tempest of levity and humour to dispel the tearful gravity of the situation in order to lighten the burden. Just when the relationship between Ramesh and Kamala in the secluded privacy of their journey on the river leans towards an outcome where all restraint will disappear, the author imports Umesh and Chakraborty from nowhere to resolve the crisis and remove all obstacles in the way of a simpler flow of events in the story. Even the scenes of Ramesh’s intimacy with Hemnalini and their parting are not tuned to a high pitch – we are neither transported by happiness at their union nor overwhelmed with sorrow at their being torn apart.

  In terms of an analysis of the characters, Hemnalini holds the highest place in the narrative. She is the first example of the type of heroine we become familiar with in all of Tagore’s novels. She is the antecedent to Sucharita in Gora, to Labanya in Shesher Kobita, to Kumudini in Jogajog – quiet, restrained, silent, sublimated in a dedicated love, tender and yet capable of confronting all opposition with unshakeable determination. On the one hand, heroines like her emanate a gentle fragrance wherever they are, and on the other, they hint at the possession of a serene inner strength. Of course, Hemnalini’s character lacks Sucharita’s versatility, Labanya’s fine discernment and deep introspection, and Kumidini’s poetic sense of beauty. She remains an unrefined version of Sucharita – the reader will agree with what she says towards the end of the book, ‘My heart has become mute’. As a lover, she has not blossomed in the indescribable glory of love. Even as Nalinaksha’s disciple and future wife, she does not emerge though the mist as a distinct figure. It is only through the sweet and subtly empathetic relationship between a father and a daughter that she takes a place in our hearts.

  The character of Kamala is strikingly real in the first part of the novel. Rebuffed by Ramesh’s hesitant, suspicious behaviour, the effusive emotions of her love are transformed into affection and respect, which find a different channel to flow in. The gradual change in her attitude towards Ramesh is skilfully delineated. Her bonds of friendship with Shailaja lead her to realize with greater clarity the unreal and unfulfilled nature of her love, with a deep resentment towards Ramesh replacing her original sentiment. The narration of the greatest catastrophe in her life – when her most humiliating secret is revealed in Ramesh’s letter to Hemnalini – lacks the expected analytical depth and emotional weight. A discovery that could have paralysed her entire being and rendered her unconscious, not unlike the sensation of being struck by lightning, appears to have been felt as nothing more than a pinprick. After this revelation, Kamala seems to lose her capacity for independent action, allowing herself to be drawn into the affectionate web of conspiracy woven by the Chakraborty family to install her in her husband’s home, turning her into a mechanical doll in the process. Her excessive eagerness for Nalinaksha robs her of her individuality.

  Among the other characters, Nalinaksha is not well developed at all – he appears never to have descended to the plains of everyday life from the high podium of the speaker and the proselytizer. Not even the aspect of love and devotion for his mother generates flesh and blood on his frame. Kshemankari’s intense pride in her son and her aversion to Hemnalini bring a touch of distinctiveness to her character as a ritualistic Hindu widow. Ramesh falls in the same category as Binoy in Gora, his problems overpowering his capabilities. Unlike Sinbad the sailor in the Arabian Nights, he is neither able to shed his burden nor bear it with determination and patience. All his actions with regard to Hemnalini and Kamala wobble in hesitant uncertainty. He does not adopt a simple or direct path towards solving his problems, reposing a fearful and dubious trust instead in divine providence. He removes the irksome present from his sight by depositing Kamala in a boarding school and swallows Hemnalini’s anxious love, Akshay’s unrelenting taunts, and tea with Annada-babu with equal blindness. No valid reason can be found for his reluctance to share his secret with Hemnalini before their marriage – this too is nothing but an expression of the weakness in his character. This tendency to be swept away like a piece of wood by the current lends a uniqueness to his natural courtesy and characteristic self-restraint.

  In conclusion, it can be stated without hesitation that although Noukadoobi is not worthy of being counted as a novel of the top order, all of Tagore’s specialties as a writer find expression here. Its stature in literature as an example of a new kind of realistic novel is considerably high.

  Excerpted from Bangasahittey Upanashyer Dhara (The Tradition of the Novel in Bengali Literature), Srikumar Bandyopadhyay,

  Modern Book Agency, Kolkata, 1938

  Translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha

  Love and Marriage in Noukadoobi

  Nivedita Sen

  ‘What terrible jest is fate engaged in? … this is like a novel, and that too, a badly-written one.’1

  The words are not those of the omniscient narrator but are put in the mouth of the protagonist Ramesh, introspecting about his own predicament, although ‘badly written’ could just as well be an epithet used by the reader/reviewer/critic who gets exasperated midway through this narrative of implausibly interlocking coincidences.

  Ramesh goes on to say ‘Such contradictory matchmaking is possible only for an uncaring writer like destiny – it conjures up events that the timid novelist dare not write in his imagined stories.’2 In fact, it is the very opposite of this. Tagore’s plot is based on natural calamities, mistaken identities, chance meetings and resurfacing of people who are taken to be dead. He has the temerity to place ten odd characters within a wide canvas that ranges from Banaras to Calcutta via Ghazipur in a way that they unexpectedly and inexplicably keep bumping into one another, perpetually configuring and reconfiguring romantic and matrimonial/pseudo-matrimonial alliances among themselves within that small incestuous community. So, he is certainly not the ‘timid novelist’ – he fabricates a fiction that could never translate into something that is actual or factual. Destiny, the so-called ‘uncaring writer’, could not make such collisions, collusions, fissures, fractures, expositions and reunions happen, simply because within the extended spatial co-ordinates vis-à-vis the number of people involved, the landscape is too vast for so many happenstances to occur.

  Biman Behari Majumdar says that the occasions for young men and women to meet was so rare that Tagore had to frequently take recourse to accidents to bring them in contact.3 B.C. Chakraborty talks about the many ‘absurdities and inconsistencies’4 in the text, Srikumar Banerjee proclaims it ‘a romance which has been configured around an astonishing sequence of events’5, Nihar Ranjan Ray condemns the ‘flabby structure and poor substance.’6 Sujit Mukherjee pronounces that it is ‘under handicap from the very beginning because the situation that makes the story possible is brought about by a highly calculated accident.’7 The episode of the boat-wreck, with the associated chance encounter that leads to a misunderstanding, in fact, could have been depicted as just the pivot around which all the action takes place, except that it is not a single accident but one in a series of sundry incredible coincidences.

  The greatest of chance happenings in the novel is that Ramesh meets Kamala (Nalinaksha’s wife) and Nalinaksha meets Hemnalini (Ramesh’s former beloved) as mistaken/potential spouses. Among the number of people and the large space they occupy in the novel, the incongruities are exceedingly high. In a Shakespearean comedy, on the other hand, multiple intertwining plots and sub-plots are spread across a wide range of characters. Yet so many chance separations, reunions, misunderstandings and dispelling of falsehoods are conjured up without trying the readers’ patience because significant themes and issues are unraveled even as the occurrences of chance happenings continue to test the reader’s credulity.

  One must concede that everything in Noukadoobi is not decided by inconceivable twists of fate. Apart from serendipity and chance, what are the acts of omission and commission
by the protagonists that contribute to their suffering and deepen their crises? The character who fleshes out the narrative, with or without the intervention of providence, in acts/non-acts of his own volition, is Ramesh. Most of the dire consequences of his falling into a difficult bind are of his own making. His first passive act is of compliance to his father’s wish to marry his father’s dead friend’s daughter. And his first proactive and rebellious decision, that of not to looking carefully at his bride’s face during the auspicious first glance between bride and groom during his wedding ceremony, triggers off his mistaking Kamala for his just-married wife. Ramesh’s principled stand, after learning who she is, about not deserting a hapless woman who has been compelled into his protection overrides his loyalty to his beloved, Hemnalini. His act of humaneness, altruism and honour, expressed through his continued pretence of being Kamala’s husband without sharing her bed, comes through in the text as far more morally laudable than not even telling Hemnalini about this obligatory but complex situation he has got into with another woman. But does procrastination in this matter make Ramesh the sufferer/victim of a tragic, Hamlet-like predicament? It is extremely unconvincing that a man whose integrity prompts him to continue to provide for Kamala because she is virtually an abandoned orphan, taking care not to violate her chastity, does not muster up the honesty or decency to admit the truth to either her or Hemnalini. His growing attachment to Kamala as she displays herself to be not only innocent and good-natured but conveniently for him, also a competent homemaker, is accompanied by his spineless behaviour towards Hemnalini throughout. His indecisiveness, along with his setting up house with Kamala as he is about to be married to Hemnalini is not questioned in the narrative except by Jogendra and Akshay, who do not come across as very pleasant or civil themselves. Their suspicion and exposure of Ramesh, therefore, does not perturb Hemnalini’s or her gentle, soft-spoken and reasonable father Annada-babu’s unflinchingly positive appraisal and gracious acceptance of Ramesh as a prospective husband/son-in-law over a protracted period. Hemnalini and Annada-babu being two pillars of the progressive Brahmo community, how is the reader to evaluate Ramesh? The focalized narrative certainly elicits the reader’s sympathy for Ramesh’s actions as well as his vacillations up to the point when he is left high and dry at the end.

  The confessions, clarifications of doubts and explanations about mistaken identities towards the end of the novel take days – and pages – to get sorted out. Eventually, all the characters are made to congregate in Banaras, where Kamala pursues and luckily finds Nalinaksha and strategizes to stake a claim on her right to connubial felicity with him. The two of them, by virtue of having parroted some sacred vows of togetherness one fine evening though separated thereafter, presumably live happily ever after in wedded bliss, consecrating an abstract marital love over an actual relationship nurtured over a period of time. Ramesh, with his morally upright stance apropos Kamala though perpetually deferring his confession, despite having unburdened himself of an unsolicited and sham matrimonial liability, is deprived of any further romantic alliance or marital fulfilment. Hemnalini, for no fault of hers, is condemned to remain single (to use the vocabulary of social acceptability for women in the period) and a victim of Ramesh’s cowardice in a regressive world that seems to valorize marriage as the finishing line for a young woman.

  An orthodox and ritualistic Hindu establishment with an institutionalized, negotiated marriage lasting for as long as it takes to complete the rituals, therefore, asserts itself over claims of the a growing intimacy and bonding between two consenting adults, something that was encouraged by the inclusive, rational and enlightened Brahmo community of the time. The novel, G.V. Raj feels, ‘pinpoints through the disappointed love of Hemnalini and Ramesh the sad consequences of the system of arranged marriages.’8 I believe the novel suggests just the contrary. If we are to go by the ending, it celebrates the sanctity of the institution of an arranged marriage while it throws love out of the window by not letting it reach fruition and social approbation. Kamala, the Sati-Savitri archetype, indulges herself in pursuing her ideal of an abstract connubial love, and pledges eternal devotion and service to her unknown husband and mother in law that translates into being a nurse, attendant, cook and companion for her. Edward Thompson believes the novel demonstrates that ‘Hindu family relationships are based not on human feeling but the conventional aspect of worship.’9 Ruthlessly nipping in the bud her growing love for Ramesh who she had believed to be her husband, she is rewarded in her reunion with Nalinaksha. Nalinaksha, the virtuous man with a Brahmo father but a mother who has retained her Hindu identity, too, gets back his undefiled Hindu bride of a single night to whose memory he has been faithful. A somewhat ambivalent but not conflicting position between a progressive, eloquent Brahmo stalwart and a devoted mother’s boy who promises to bring back a pretty, Hindu child-bride, does not imbue Nalinaksha’s character with any complexity or richness, because with his fixed credentials, he does not acquire any interesting flesh and blood features up to the end. Being her ‘real’ husband, he wins the love, piety and devotion of Kamala for the rest of his life, possibly because in the social and cultural context of the time, a married woman has no other refuge except at the feet of her husband. In a novel that holds the promise of the unconventionality of thinking minds in focusing on the addas over cups of tea in a pioneering, educated Brahmo family, this is the one relationship that has no rationale or basis at all. In fact, it has no love, just adulation. In all the others – Ramesh–Hemnalini, Hemnalini–Nalinaksha, Ramesh–Kamala, there is something brewing all the while, some mutual concern/affection/respect that could lead to/exemplify a marriage. But those are lopped off mercilessly. The novel certainly reinforces that the Hindu incantations during a ceremonious wedding that has united two random people together by fluke circumstances is much more powerful than the conviction of a deepening reciprocal relationship between two other people. A marriage sanctified by Hindu rites is glorified unequivocally at the cost of a love, any love, that has not yet been acknowledged by religion, family and society.

  Kamala is the beneficiary of this marriage. She is dutiful to Ramesh and his household when she believes herself to be his wife, and dedicates herself to Nalinaksha with redoubled vigour when she hears that he is her husband. With so much wifely devotion twice over, what are her net gains in the novel? Her mistaken identity and an orphan status inspire Ramesh’s generosity and gallantry towards her. As she begins to fall in love with Ramesh, who she takes to be her lawful husband although he has avoided any physical intimacy with her, she is outraged and embarrassed to hear that she had been thrust into such proximity with a strange man. It causes her no emotional trauma to just move on, ruthlessly discarding the make-believe husband who has protected her against all odds. Her moral indignation is provoked by his oversight in not telling her about his relationship with Hemnalini and her actual marital status. When she learns of her true identity, she garners all her resources to trace the man with whom she is bound in a consecrated Hindu act of matrimony. In Tagore’s own words:

  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…10

  No such dilemma wracks Kamala; it is a win-win situation for her in both instances. Ramesh is tied to her by a commitment arising from a few unfortunate circumstances, whereas Nalinaksha is bound to her by the sacred vow of marriage. Kamala appropriates both men with her servility, loyalty and sweet demeanour apart from her legal right over one. She gets the guardianship of Ramesh when required after a voyage through water that throws everything in her life into chaos, and his further solicitude for and involvement with her after another improvised voyage through water from Calcutta to Ghazipur. From her real husband Nalinaksha, she gets love, respect,
shelter and her conjugal rights when all is disclosed and sorted out, curiously enough, after a third voyage through water from Ghazipur to Banaras.

  On the other hand, what does the educated, intelligent, sensitive, sensible young Brahmo woman Hemnalini get? Her love for Ramesh goes unrequited because of the convoluted goings on in his life, which she does not know and does not want to probe. Despite being older than the age at which Hindu girls were married, she is not opinionated enough to censure Ramesh’s desertion of her, professing her fidelity to him on the basis that he must have a reason for wanting to defer their marriage. Unlike Kamala, she has shared a consensual relationship with Ramesh, predicated on which she reposes her trust in him. When she reconciles to the fact that he is not going to show up to seal the marriage with her, she pines for a while, but is willing to accept Nalinaksha as a second option for a husband because he is a learned orator and a professionally successful scion of the Brahmo community. But neither husband works out for Hemnalini – in both cases, an abstract sense of duty prevails on the men to neglect and even spurn her. She is not destined to marry and it is a loss twice over for her. Hemnalini has no choice but to acquiesce to the whims of these men who are patently unjust to her. The only time that she finds a voice to express what she will not accept is when on the rebound from Ramesh, she refuses to entertain Akshay as a suitor. When we see the last of Hemnalini in the novel in Nalinaksha’s house, she goes away, ‘wrapped in her own deep silence, leaving something intangible behind – a sad detachment as immeasurable as the disappearing twilight.’11 Does this bemoan the immense play of circumstances beyond her control because of which Hemnalini is unable to attain the man she loves, or even one she likes, as a husband? The attainment of a husband, even in the Brahmo family of the early twentieth century, seems to be the be all and end all of a resourceful, talented girl like Hemnalini who, once thwarted, could perhaps find an enabling alternative to marriage in a vocation that she could pursue.