Nazrul’s treatment of Radha in his songs reveals a sensitive understanding of a woman’s inner cry. Many of the songs were unabashed expressions of earthly love, conveying love and longing, dejection and despair. At a time when Tagorean restraint as well as morality advocated by the Brahmo Samaj conditioned the literary style, Nazrul’s poetry verses on free love such as ‘Madhobi Pralap’, ‘Anamika’ and ‘Gopone Priya’ brought on a literary storm. Kallol and Kali Kalom, the journals where these were published in 1926, stood behind Nazrul and other writers, who chose to write on sexually explicit themes in a wave of new literature. As a rejoinder, Shonibarer Chithi, edited by Tagore’s protagonist, Sajanikanta Das, launched a counteroffensive; Tagore, as always, sought to mediate. Affectionate towards Nazrul, to whom he had dedicated his play Boshonto, Tagore in his essay ‘Sahitye Nobyota’6 advised that though he was not a moralist he feared that aesthetics would disappear in needlessly provocative writing.
In the following selection of five songs can be seen Nazrul’s sensitive handling of woman’s emotions through the idiom of the Radha–Krishna romance, lyrically composed in a woman’s voice.
In the song ‘Aami Jaar Nupurer Chhondo Benukaar Shur’ there is a total blending of the two personas of Radha and Krishna conveyed in the voice of Radha with exquisite metaphor.7
Set in Taal Kaharba, this song has a fast, rhythmic beat that echoes the dancers’ anklets. The musical accent is on the word ke, meaning ‘who’, sung in a quick succession of ascending notes. The juxtaposition of the man and the woman, Krishna and Radha, through delicate imagery marks this rare composition. Radha is so much a part of Krishna’s divine dance that she becomes his rhythm, melody, poetic inspiration, and takes the form of a peacock to be his dancing companion in the rains. Krishna, on the other hand, binds her in the embrace of the jewellery adorning her body.
Who is he, that Beautiful One?
I find myself resounding in the rhythm of his anklet
In the melody of his flute
In the pain of parting on the Jamuna front
I find myself as blossoms in his songs
In the distant unseen
Who is he, that Beautiful One?
The secret inspiration behind my Poesy
Alas! Where is he?
I appear in the rains, as the blissful peacock to be his dancing companion
As he appears as the bracelets and ornaments on my body
Who is he, that Beautiful One?
The song ‘Bodhu Ami Chhinu Bujhi Brindabaner Radhikar Aakhi Jauley’, set in Taal Dadra, speaks of a woman’s anguish in unfulfilled love. Radha’s deep sense of hurt at Krishna’s departure from Vrindavana and realization that they are not destined for union is captured in the lyrics of Nazrul, with matching pathos in the musical composition. Sung in the voice of a despondent woman who internalizes the dejection of Radha and sees herself in Radha’s unshed tears, or in the scattering petals of jasmine flowers that could never be strung as a garland for the lover, Nazrul creates a powerful image of dejection in love.
Bodhu Ami Chhinu Bujhi Brindabaner Radhikar Aakhi Jauley8
Dearest, I lay perhaps amidst the teardrops of Radha in Brindaban
Or perhaps, as the jasmine blossom of a monsoon evening
I had descended on earth.
And so, when the desire of union rises
You hide like the moon behind the cloud of farewell
While I scatter in the eastern breeze as jasmine petals, just as they bloom
Dearest, alas, in this play of destiny, union is not for me
Only for a chance encounter can I crave
Destined for eternal separation, union is not for me
Never will I visit on a spring evening fragrant with madhavi
Only in the rains will I come, only to scatter
In a relentless shower drifting away in a current
Never to be strung in a garland around your neck.
The popular song ‘More Ghumo Ghorey Eley Manohar’,9 set in Taal Dadra, is an unabashed confession of a woman in love, who dreams of her tryst with her lover. Nazrul invokes the imagery of Krishna, the divine lover, in this composition. Yearnings of the body are stated boldly in a manner hard to find in the love songs of Tagore, which were generally addressed to both God and the beloved. The voice in this song is that of a forsaken Radha dwelling on her dreams.
More Ghumo Ghorey Eley Manohar
In my deep slumber you appeared as a charmer
To you I offer my salutations
Against the monsoon clouds my Krishna dances,
Jhamjham, ramjham, jhamjham
You sat near my head and kissed my eyes
My body through vestments revealed itself
Like a kadamb in bloom, unparalleled, alluring
My garden was replete with so many flowers
I collected them in a basket of offerings for my god
Alas, you took them not, shame O shame
Instead you unravelled my tresses and took the floral string binding them
In my sleep I know not what I said that made you go away
Waking up I cry for my god, my dearest beloved.
The song ‘Tumi Haath Khani Jaubey Rakho More Hather Paurey’10 is a powerful expression of a woman’s reflection on the ecstatic moments of nearness with her beloved, contrasting with her despair at his absence. She seems to epitomize the elation and dejection of Radha in Vrindavana. Set in Taal Kaharba, the song is set to a racy rhythm in a unique musical composition where pathos and ecstasy are equally captured.
Tumi Haath Khani Jaubey Rakho More Hather Paurey
When you place your hand on mine
Melody pours like the Ganges from my throat
In your kohl-lined eyes behind heavy lashes
Sways the shadow of farewell
The sky-blue of your apparel touches the blue of the skies
On days when I find you not,
Find not your nearness, find not your touch
It seems the whole wide world holds no one and nothing.
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LOVELORN RADHA, FORLORN GOD: TAGORE’S BHANUSINGHER PADAVALI
LALIT KUMAR
Vasant Aaval Re (Spring Is Here) (Translation mine)
Spring is here!
Humming black bees
woods covered with
flower-laden mango trees.
Listen to me, friend,
my joyous heart goes restless . . .
Decked with the beauty of spring
mocks the universe
‘O lovelorn Radha, where is your beloved, Madhav?’
Maran (Death) (Translation mine)
You are my sole companion, Death
What fear do I have now?
All my anxieties are put to rest.
Show me the way now.
‘Fie, fie, you fickle-hearted Radha’, says Bhanu,
‘Madhav is your lord, not Death
Now see for yourself.’1
THE CURIOUS TALE OF BHANUSINGH
The story behind the publication of Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861–1941) Bhanusingher Padavali (Bhanusingh’s Verses), a collection of love songs, is as intriguing as the poems themselves. In 1877, a Calcutta-based periodical called Bharati began to publish a series of poems (twenty-two in all) on Radha and Krishna by a newly discovered Vaishnava poet Bhanusingh. The identity of the mysterious poet continued to remain a secret for many years. The truth was eventually revealed, and Bhanusingh turned out to be a pseudonym for the precocious poet Rabindranath Tagore. The name Bhanu, a synonym for the sun, was conferred on Tagore by his sister-in-law Kadambari Devi, who remained Tagore’s muse till her suicide at the age of twenty-three.2 The enigma behind the name Bhanusingh therefore may have evoked the curiosity of readers and critics in the public sphere, but it was an open secret within the Tagore family.
To reinforce the authenticity and historicity of the unidentified poet, Tagore, in 1884, wrote a fictional biography of Bhanusingh in the journal Navajiv
ana.3 The biographer commented on the similarity in the poetic craft of Bhanusingh and the 14th-century Maithili poet Vidyapati: ‘Many have said that his poetry is written in a fashion after Vidyapati, but that only elicits laughter. No one has tried to discover if he does or does not have anything in common with Vidyapati.’4 Since the short biography is characterized by playfulness and irony, Tagore, in all likelihood, intended his readers to believe exactly the opposite of what he literally conveyed. It seems that, on the one hand, he wanted to hint at the similarity between Vidyapati’s poetry and his own craft and, on the other, he desired the question of authorship to be widely examined and speculated upon by contemporary intellectuals.
However, years later, in a chapter titled ‘Bhanusingh’ in his autobiography, Jiban Smriti, a fifty-one-year-old Tagore reminisces about this episode. One day the young Tagore, inspired by the British poet Chatterton,5 approached a friend and pretended to have discovered a tattered manuscript by some ancient poet named Bhanusingh from the Brahmo Samaj Library. The friend praised the verses profusely and exclaimed that the poems were better than anything composed by even Vidyapati6 or Chandidas. An exuberant Tagore could not conceal the truth any more and said that the poems were, in fact, his own creation. The friend immediately ceased to share Tagore’s enthusiasm and said, ‘Not bad at all.’7 Before pulling this prank, Tagore had attempted to read a collection of old Vaishnava poems, titled Prachin Kavya Sangraha, compiled by Akshay Chandra Sarkar and Saradacharan Mitra. The difficulties he encountered in comprehending the language of these poems, a blend of Maithili and Bengali, drove him further to initiate his foray into writing poetry in a similar fashion.8 As a result he composed on a cloudy afternoon ‘Gahan Kusum Kunja Majhe’ (In the Dense Flowering Woods). The composition made him immensely happy and became the foundation for the further poems of Bhanusingher Padavali, written in Brajabuli (different from Braj Bhasha). The employment of Brajabuli, ‘a mixture of Maithili and Assamese/Bengali/Oriya by the Vaishnava poets of the eastern India to celebrate the leela (divine sport) of the lord Krishna,’ writes Sisir Kumar Das, is extremely significant to understand the ‘development of Indian Literature in a multilingual situation’.9 Tagore’s Padavali is a fine imitation of the medieval Bengali Vaishnava poets, in general, and of Vidyapati of Mithila, in particular.
WHY BRAJABULI AND NOT BENGALI? PSEUDO-VIDYAPATIS OF BENGAL AND A ‘BASTARD LANGUAGE’
In 1881, George Abraham Grierson had produced the first grammar and chrestomathy of the Maithili language, in which he compiled nearly all the Maithili literature, including the songs of Vidyapati on Radha and Krishna. These songs through the Vaishnava poet Chaitanya and others, writes Grierson, became as popular in the Bengali households as the Bible is in England. But this popularity gave birth to a curious problem to which a curious solution was immediately found. For a common Bengali reader, Vidyapati was difficult to comprehend. So his hymns were twisted and distorted into a kind of ‘bastard language’, which was ‘neither Bengali nor Maithili’.10 Moreover, a host of imitators of Vidyapati sprung up, who composed songs in this newly invented language. Their compositions lacked the finesse and felicity of expression of the original poet. These songs, nevertheless, increasingly became indistinguishable from old Bengali, and naturally became more popular in Bengal than the original poems of Vidyapati. Consequently, the songs of the Maithili poet were gradually wiped out from the memory of Bengalis.
These spurious songs produced in the name of Vidyapati were widely compiled and circulated. One such compilation was Prachin Kavya Sangraha, which had inspired the young Tagore to compose Bhanusingher Padavali. Tagore confessed later in his autobiography that Bengali interspersed with Maithili in this collection of ancient poetry was beyond his comprehension.11 One of the co-editors of this work Saradacharan Mitra produced Vidyapatir Padavali in the same year, which Grierson refuses to acknowledge as the work of the real Vidyapati. Whether or not Tagore was aware of the controversy surrounding the real Vidyapati versus impostors, or to what extent the songs of the former had inspired Tagore’s Radha, could be questions of further debate and research. Grierson’s analysis of a contentious subject nonetheless helps us understand the influence of Vidyapati on Bengal and its poets in the 19th century.
ORIGINS OF RADHA IN EARLY INDIAN LITERATURE
The Bhagavata Purana is one of the first, if not the first among the Indian texts, to celebrate Krishna as a humanized God, a child, a cowherd boy, an accomplished flute-player and, above all, a playful lover. The tenth book of this Purana is especially dedicated to Krishna’s birth, his early heroic exploits and his Raas Leela, or the famous dance with the gopis, the cowherd maidens of Vrindavana. Though the book became the foundational text of the Vaishnava movement in north India in its equal emphasis on the divine and the mundane, on the religious and the erotic, the name of Radha is not mentioned here, among the gopis of Vrindavana.12 Tracing the emergence of Radha to Gita Govinda, Sisir Kumar Das writes that the greatest achievement of Jayadeva is ‘his creation of Radha, who became the central figure in Indian love poetry, in fact, the symbol of eternal lover’.13 In all possibility, the character of Radha, in its embryotic form, existed in the folk songs of the cowherds, but Jayadeva in his Sanskrit epic merged the Radha of religious literature and Radha of folk literature into one.14 In Jayadeva, ‘Radha is neither a wife nor a worshipping rustic playmate. She is an intense, solitary, proud female who complements and reflects the mood of Krishna’s passion.’15 The poem captures the lovers’ longing for each other, their separation and union. The later Vaishnava poets, in particular, Vidyapati from Mithila, Chandidas from Bengal and Tagore’s pseudonym Bhanusingh, have added new dimensions to the character of Radha and created the legend of a lovelorn woman for her.
COMMENTARY ON BHANUSINGHER PADAVALI: LOVE-IN-SEPARATION
Sambhoga or samyoga (love-in-union), vipralamba or viyoga (love-in-separation) and pranidhana (total surrender to God) are the themes of Bhanusingh’s Padavali. Viraha, the pain of separation, is the dominant trope in Vaishnava poetry as well as in Tagore’s. In these poems, a young Tagore inhabits the persona of Radha’s experienced confidante, called Bhanu, who attempts to give solace to the inconsolable Radha. The poems have been composed in the form of dialogue between Radha and Bhanu, whereas Krishna mostly registers his presence through prolonged absence except in his brief tryst with Radha.
A LOVER’S COMPLAINT: ‘I WILL POISON MYSELF’
The first poem of the Padavali is set in the spring against the backdrop of the humming of the madhukar (black bees) and blossoming of flowers. Radha’s heart becomes restless in Krishna’s absence; she is being mocked by the entire universe, ‘O lovelorn Radha, where is your beloved, Madhav?’ (Translation mine).
The poetic persona prophetically warns Radha of the pain of separation that awaits her; Bhanu expostulates, ‘Go wait for him in the last shreds / of your innocence, crazy girl / until grief comes for you.’ (Poem 1, p. 17, The Lover of God).16 As the story of separation unfolds further, her agony escalates, ‘I am budding and blooming at once / and dying, too.’ The prolonged absence of her lover and endless pain make her express a death wish, ‘He will leave me. If he leaves me, I will poison myself’ (Poem 3, p. 23). The self-annihilating impulse gives way to anger and remonstration against the absent lover, who, being driven by political exigencies, has gone to Mathura. Anger leads to sexual jealousy (Poem 4, p. 27):
You are cruel, Lord of the lonely dark,
so far away in Mathura.
In whose bed do you sleep?
Who slakes your thirst upon waking?
REUNION: ‘YOUR FACE UNDOES MY PAIN’
Separation and intense longing are eventually followed by reunion and Radha’s lacerated heart is put to ease immediately at the sight of her lover, ‘Your face undoes my pain’ (Poem 6, p. 33). The pain of viraha is replaced by the erotic, and shringara rasa becomes the dominant motif in representing Radha’s much-awaited reunion with Krishna, her lover and her God, combined
into one. The poetic persona Bhanu seeks the permission of readers for suspending modesty so as to capture the consummation of their love (Poem 11, p. 47):
May I dispense with modesty, friends?
Look at their beautiful bodies . . .
even though he’s undoing
the knot she protects with her hand.
If spring is a metaphor for separation in Tagore, the rainy season symbolizes reunion that happens on a cloudy night amidst incessant rain and thunder. Longing and amorous embraces are replaced by care and affection, and it is Radha who seems to be in total control while authoring the script of love (Poem 14, p. 57):
Come, you are drenched, Madhava,
drenched again . . .
Take off your clothes. Let me dry you. I will untie my hair.
Come lie with me among the stalks of lotus,
skin cold and thrilled.
Celebrating the significance of the erotic, Rupa Goswami, a 16th-century Vaishnava poet and contemporary of Chaitanya, divides ‘bhakti rasa’ (sentiments of devotees) mainly into five kinds: preyas (friendship), vatsalya (parental love), prita (faithfulness), santa (serene) and madhura (erotic).17 Although each of them provides a means to approach Krishna, the erotic stands at the top of the hierarchy of love and subsumes all others. It is driven by an unparalleled passion, and being complete in itself, is the most satisfying to Krishna.18
FROM SHRINGARA RASA TO KARUNA RASA: ‘WHEN PITILESS MADHAVA LEAVES FOR MATHURA’
Reunion and separation seem to affect Radha’s persona as well, for Tagore’s Radha is characterized by an ambivalent feeling, a hallmark of lovers. She constantly oscillates between anger and affection, complaint and forgiveness, and petulance and passion. Her tone varies from being accusatory to supplicatory, and karuna rasa replaces shringara, when Madhava eventually decides to leave for Mathura.
Finding Radha Page 15