Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  From Siliguri to Darjeeling, Sarala’s continuous wonderstruck exclamations: ‘O my, how wonderful’, ‘how amazing’, ‘how beautiful’—she kept nudging me and saying, ‘Rabi-mama, look, look!’* What to do, I must look at whatever she shows me—sometimes trees, sometimes clouds, sometimes an invincible blunt-nosed mountain girl, or sometimes so many things at the same time that the train leaves it all behind in an instant and Sarala is unhappy that Rabi-mama didn’t get to see it, although Rabi-mama is quite unrepentant. The train kept on going. Beli kept on sleeping. Forests, hilltops, mountains, streams, clouds and a vast number of flat noses and slant eyes began to be seen. Progressively it became wintry, and then there were clouds, and then Na-didi developed a cold, and then Bar-didi began to sneeze, and then shawls, blankets, quilts, thick socks, frozen feet, cold hands, blue faces, sore throats and, right after, Darjeeling.† Again those boxes, those bags, that bedding, the same bundles. Luggage piled on luggage, bearer upon bearer. Checking all the things kept in the brake, identifying them, loading them on to the heads of the bearers, showing the receipt to the saheb, arguing with the saheb, not finding things, and then making various arrangements to find those lost things—all this took me about two hours, by which time Na-didi and company had got into their conveyance, gone home, wrapped themselves up in shawls and were reclining on sofas, resting, thinking to themselves that Rabi was not really fully a man yet.

  2

  Darjeeling

  1887

  You will get all the news about my back from Suri’s letter.* Never again shall I think of the back as merely a place to tuck in the ends of one’s dhuti—man’s humanity is sheltered in his back. If today’s letter is dull, that is, if it has no movement—if my pen does not move fluidly from subject to subject, feeling to feeling, news to news—then you will know that it is the fault of my broken back—one cannot blame anything else. In addition, occasionally there is a disastrous sneeze released—and it seems as if the upper half of the body shall hurtle away from the broken back. But that’s it. I shall not write of my back any more. I swear that I shall not write of my back again! Worthless waist, and it too has a tale! Firstly it neglected every law of aesthetics and gradually increased its girth in serial increments; over and above that, it has a thousand different demands. Whoever I speak to about this back laughs; it attracts nobody’s pity; as if breaking one’s back is in any respect any less than breaking one’s heart! But I will not speak of it—I do not ask for pity—

  My back is mine alone,

  I have not sold it to anybody else!

  It may be broken, but whatever it is

  My back remains mine alone!

  But however proud I try to be in my verse—the truth is I really wish my back was somebody else’s back! I have heard of the phrase that tells you that it is always best to oil one’s own mill, and I’ve always agreed, but if you are speaking of the back then I’ll freely say that rather than massage hot mustard oil into my own back, I would much rather prefer to knead oil into somebody else’s back. On this subject, my sentiments are entirely unselfish, in fact almost Christian! But let it be; when I have promised not to speak of my back let us not speak of it. Because, apart from the back, man has many other parts to his body; he has a mind, a heart, a soul—but whatever you say, he also has a back—very much so—

  I have immersed my mind in enjoyment

  Yet why does my back ache so!

  All around me people move around,

  My back, why does it ache so!

  When one is heartbroken, one comes to the hills to be comforted, but if one’s back is broken, then level ground is the best place. I was thinking of those bolsters in Park Street, and at the same time, a few other memories came to mind—but that’s it—I shall not speak of anything to do with my back any more—I shall forget everything about the time I last suffered from backache; but the ache in my back right now—how do I forget that?—

  Keep aside your bіṇā, do not sing your song,

  How will my pain be gone?

  Na-didi said there’s a way out—‘Rus Tox 6th dilution every two hours.’ I too think so. Sarala is waiting to read my letter and contradict me. But the poor thing will be extremely disappointed—there’s no way she can look into what is happening inside my back, her womanly prying instinct cannot enter there, for there is no admittance there for anything except mustard-oil ointment. But still, it doesn’t seem as if Sarala will give up. She will not tolerate my receiving any sympathy from all of you in this foreign land. This time, though, you will have to concede that as far as my back is concerned, I remain the most trustworthy informant, even Sarala is not a better authority on this subject. But, Bob, don’t worry about this back of mine at all—I shall silently suffer this back of mine all on my own. But ‘silently’ is the wrong word, because the manner in which I’ve been shouting out loud from time to time when compelled to move about cannot exactly be called silent. And this letter I’ve written to you today can hardly be called silent either. I had thought at first that you would come to know all about my back from Suren’s letter—that I would not speak of or raise the subject of my back with you, that I would not awaken those old memories of oil massages—but look where we’ve ended up! Instead—

  All of that, all of that, that lamentation

  Those flowing tears, the backache.

  But I shall not speak about my back any more—mainly because I’m running out of space. If there were space enough, I could continue to speak of it from now up until Doomsday. But would I have been able to stand up on Doomsday with this back? The trumpet would sound, everybody would stand, and I would be moaning with my hand on my back. But that’s not something to make light of; you might just get a little annoyed. In any case, both my letter and talk of my back end here.

  3

  Calcutta

  June 1889

  When the train started, Beli sat gravely, looking all around her, thinking, where did my sisters go, where am I going—in this world, where do we come from and where do we go, what is the purpose of life—and as she thought, gradually I saw her yawning repeatedly and, a little later, she put her head down on the ayah’s lap, stretched her legs, and began to doze. My mind too was weighed down by many worries about the joys and sorrows of our existence, but I couldn’t sleep. So I began to sing the Bhairabі ālāp to myself. You know, perhaps, when you hear the embellishments in Bhairabі, a strange feeling towards the world rises in you—it is as if the hand of habit is endlessly turning the handle of an organ and the pain of that friction is making a deep, sorrowful, piteous rāginі well up from the entire universe’s innermost being—all the morning light of the sun pales, the trees stand silently as if listening to something, and the world over the sky seems overcast with misty tears—that is, if you look at the distant sky, it seems as if an unblinking blue eye, swimming with tears, is looking at you. Near Khirkee station I could see those sugar-cane fields of ours, the rows of trees, the tennis courts, the glass window–covered house; seeing these my mind suddenly filled with emptiness and despair. How surprising! When I used to live there, it wasn’t as if I was particularly fond of this house—even when I left it to go to Solapur with all of you I can’t say that I was very distressed—yet when I glimpsed it for an instant from the speeding train window—that solitary house, standing with its playing fields and empty rooms—then it was as if my entire heart leapt upon that house at lightning pace, and it began to seem to me that if we could somehow all sit down in that house again in a group, temporarily life would somehow be fulfilled and the emptiness of this world somehow banished…. As soon as I saw the house, it struck my heart with a thump—from the left side to the right a thudding sound—while the train went whistling past, whoosh—the sugar-cane fields dissolved—that’s all, it’s all over—only, because of the sudden attack, two or three strings in my heart descended by a few scales. But the train’s engine doesn’t think very much on all these issues, it keeps going single-mindedly on the steel tr
acks, it doesn’t have the time to think about who is going where and in what way—it only glugs down water, lets out steam in spurts, shouts out loud and rolls on. It might have been possible to use this as a metaphor for the course of life, but that would be so stale and unnecessary that one can only hint at it and stop. Near Khandala there was cloud and rain. Clouds had congealed at the top of all those hills and obscured them—exactly as if somebody had drawn hills and then rubbed an eraser over them—a few outlines were visible and in some the pencil lines had been smudged…. Finally the train bell rang—its red, wakeful eye could be seen from a distance; the earth began to tremble; the station officers began to come out of their many rooms wearing their sandals, buttoned official dress and liveried round caps over their tufts—their enormous handheld lanterns scattering light in all directions; the startled ranks of khansamas alertly guarded each one’s luggage; Beli continued to sleep; my heart began to beat very fast…. I said to the ayah, ‘Hurry, pick Beli up and bring her with you.’ As soon as Beli arrived a pair of memsahebs overtook me at great speed and made for the empty carriage. I thought to myself ‘Whatever happens, I will get into that coach.’ The memsahebs went and stood in front of the empty coach and I too stood there; the guard arrived, I asked him, ‘Is this a ladies’ compartment?’ Immediately the mem said to him, ‘Of course, if necessary it can always be reserved for ladies.’ The guard made no reply and inquired after my destination; I said, Calcutta. He said, ‘You may get in sir!’ The mem too began to try and get into the coach; her husband told her not to. Suddenly the guard asked me where my ‘lady’ was. I said I had no lady with me, but was accompanied by a maid servant, upon which the woman went a little distance away and began to laugh loudly, saying to the saheb, His maid servant! In other words, the woman this black man was calling his maid servant might be his wife as well! … At any rate, I said to myself, you can laugh, but I have the empty compartment. But one funny thing was that I saw that the saheb did not want to cause me any inconvenience. If he had not been there, the woman would have got into the carriage out of spite and occupied it—yet there was space in the other cars. I firmly believe that if these beauteous English women with their turned-up noses had never come to India then the English would have behaved much better with us; it is they who are at the bottom of Anglo-Indian attitudes. They are supposed to be terribly delicate, their heads ache very easily and they are easily shocked, that’s why they cannot feel any empathy for the black races. Alas! After having undertaken such a lot of soap scrubbing, intake of khana, and emptying of so many bottles of Cherry Blossom, the tips of their white noses continue to remain crinkled. One feels like cursing, ‘May you be born in your next birth as women in the South and may your husbands pierce the tips of those noses of yours.’ … Beli pointlessly began to whimper a little. The day wore on, and although there was no sun, it began to feel hot…. Time refused to pass. Every minute seemed to have to be physically pushed forward…. Began to read Anna Karenina, but it was so dreadful that I couldn’t—what is the point of reading these sorts of sickly books, I don’t understand. I want writing that is quite simple, beautiful, sweet and generous—a strange mess of a situation full of convoluted turns doesn’t suit me for very long. Thankfully, it began to rain heavily after a while. It felt good to shut everything on all sides and sit down by the glass window to watch the clouds and the rain. At one place the sight of a monsoon river was quite amazing. It had become swollen and enlarged, frothing, twisting, muddied, racing, banging its head against the stones upon which it flung itself, hitting and falling over them, leaping over and whirling around them, behaving most terribly. I’ve never seen such madness anywhere else. By the time we got to Sohagpur in the evening and had our dinner, the rain had stopped; when the train started I noticed the sun setting brilliantly among the clouds. I was thinking often of all of you, that for you time was passing unnoticed while you ate, played, studied and conversed—time was flowing over you and you hadn’t even noticed its presence—and I was swimming through time, the entire expanse of time was hitting my face, my heart, my whole body….

  [In] due course the train reached Howrah. At first the house sweeper, after that Jogini, then Satya, all emerged into my field of vision one by one. And then with the bedding on the second-class roof, the ayah’s battered tin trunk, and the bathing tub (which had a feeding bottle, loṭā, hāňṛі, tin pot, bundle, etc.) loaded, we managed to reach home. A commotion and a hubbub, a crowd of people, dāroỵān’s salaam, servants’ praṇām, managers’ namaskar, the absolute difference of opinion among people generally on who has become fat and who thin, Swayamprabha and co.* tumbling about with Bela, everybody gathered around the tea table, a bath, food, etc.—all of this you can well imagine. Suddenly Dada arrived and began a tremendous lecture on common sense—a huge commotion ensued.† Khoka looked very novel to me when I saw him.‡ A big round head, an absolute simpleton [nitānta hādā], quite dark, shaven head, chubby cheeks, the constantly wavering look on his face and eyes one of absolute brainlessness, plump hands curled into fat fists—if you make a movement or a sound of any sort to draw his attention, he smiles, if you give him a squeeze or a shake, he expresses his gratification with a loud ho-ho laugh. These are his general characteristics, but in all these departments I don’t see much difference between him and the rest of the children of the human race….

  4

  Shilaidaha 29

  November 1889

  [Our] boat is moored to the front of a sandbank on the other side of Shilaidaha. It’s a vast sandbank—utterly desolate—its limits cannot be seen—just sometimes, in some places, the river’s lines are visible—while again, sometimes you could mistake the sand for the river—no villages, no people, no trees, no grass—for variety occasionally cracked wet earth, and in some places dry white sand—if you turn your face towards the east you can see endless blue above and endless white below, empty sky and empty earth; a wretched, dry, hard emptiness underneath and a spirit-like, generous emptiness above. Such desolation isn’t to be seen anywhere else. If you suddenly turn your face towards the west, you see the lap of a still, small river, tall banks on the other side, trees and bushes, huts, all looking like an amazing dream in the light of the setting sun. Exactly as if on the one side you have creation and on the other annihilation. The reason for mentioning the light of the evening sun is that we normally go out for a stroll in the evening, and therefore it is that picture that remains etched on the mind. When one is living in Calcutta one forgets how astonishingly beautiful this world is. It is only when you live here that you comprehend that this sun that sets every day among these peaceful trees by the side of this little river, and the hundred thousand stars that silently rise every night above this endless, ashen, lonely, silent sandbank—what a surprisingly noble event this is. The sun, as it rises slowly in the east at dawn, opens a page in some tremendous book, and the evening gradually turns another enormous page in the sky from the west—what an amazing script that too is—and this barely flowing river and this sandbank spread across the horizon and the other shore like a picture—this neglected bit at the edge of the world—what sort of large, silent, deserted school is this! Anyway. These words may sound very much like ‘poetry’ in capital letters, but here they are not out of place at all. Anyhow, as a family we experience the pure joy of separation for some time in the evenings in this huge sandy expanse—the boys go with their attendant in one direction, Bolu goes in another direction, I go my own way and the two women go their way…. In the meantime, the sun sets entirely, the golden hue fades from the sky, the surroundings become unclear in the dark; gradually, from the faint shadow by my side I realize that the bent, thin moon’s light is slowly beginning to blossom—the white moonlight upon the white sand seems to increase the illusion for one’s eyes—which is sand and which water, which is earth and which sky, one needs to guess at which is which. As a result, it all merges into one another and begins to feel like an unreal mirage-world…. Yesterday, after lo
itering on this magic coast for a long time, I went back to the boat and saw that except for the boys, nobody else from our group had returned. For a moment I thought, let me send for them, but both selfishness and pity together disarmed me. In other words, keeping both my own happiness and theirs in mind, I drew up an easy chair and began to read a book upon an extremely obscure subject—Animal Magnetism—in the equally obscure light of just one lamp. But still nobody returned…. Keeping the book face down on the bed I ventured out. Looking out from upstairs I could see no sign of any dark heads anywhere—everything around faded into a pale emptiness. I shouted out Bolu’s name once at the top of my voice—its sound ran eerily past me in ten different directions—but there was no response; then my heart suddenly seemed to stop on every side, as happens when you suddenly close a big open umbrella. Gofur took a light and went out, Prasun went, the oarsmen of the boat went, everybody went in different directions—I went one way, shouting, ‘Bolu’, ‘Bolu’—Prasun on another side calling ‘Choto-ma’—occasionally, one could hear the sound of the boatmen’s faint ‘Babu’, ‘Babu’.* In that desert, on that silent night, several shouts could be heard rising. Not a sound anywhere. Once or twice from a far distance Gofur called out, ‘I see them,’ but almost immediately corrected himself, ‘No, no’—just try and imagine the state I was in! If you must imagine it you have to picture all of it—the silent night, the weak moonlight, the lonely, quiet, empty sands; far away, the moving light from Gofur’s lantern—sometimes, from a certain side, a distressed call in the form of a question could be heard, and from every other side, its indifferent echo—occasionally, a flicker of hope, and in the next moment, deep despair. All sorts of the most impossible anxieties started to arise in my mind. Perhaps they have fallen into quicksand; perhaps Bolu has suddenly had a fainting fit or something; all sorts of frightful hallucinations of carnivorous animals began to come to mind. I began to think: ‘Those unfit to protect themselves are those who unthinkingly bring danger to others.’ I became firm against women’s liberation—I could quite see that Bolu, poor thing, was a complete innocent; he had been compromised because he was at the mercy of the two free women. After about an hour, a cry arose that the entire lot had climbed up on the dunes and were marooned on the other side, unable to return. Then I ran towards the boat—it took a long time to reach it. The boat went to the other side; the boat’s goddess returned to the boat—Bolu began to say, ‘I’m never going out with you lot again.’ Everybody was penitent, tired, distressed, so all my well-chosen and impressive remonstrances remained in my heart—waking up in the morning the next day, I still found myself incapable of getting angry. So we all dismissed this enormously serious affair by laughing about it, as if it was all greatly amusing. Anyway, writing about it in detail to you over the course of the last three days has certainly made my mind feel much lighter.