Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  58

  On the way to Goalundo

  21 June 1892

  We have been floating on the river the entire day today. What I find surprising is that I have travelled this way so many times, traversing the waters on this boat—and I have enjoyed the particular pleasure of floating through the middle of the river—but the moment you spend a day or two on land, you don’t quite remember it properly any more. This experience—this sitting quietly on one’s own and looking—with villages, ghats, fields of grain, sandbanks, all appearing and disappearing on either side, the clouds floating in the sky and the different colours that bloom in the evenings—the boat moves on, the fishermen catch fish, the incessant liquid sound of the water full of such a strange affection—in the evenings the vast reaches of water become absolutely still like a tired sleeping child and all the stars in the open sky keep watch from above—deep into the night on sleepless nights I sit up and see the two shores asleep, covered in darkness—occasionally a jackal cries out in the village forests and the Padma’s silent, strong current makes the banks fall into the water with a sloshing sound—as you keep looking at these ever-changing images, immediately a stream of imagination begins to flow in the mind and images of new desires manifest themselves on both its shores like distant scenery. Perhaps the scene in front of you is quite ordinary—a sort of yellow sandbank bereft of grass or trees stretching out before you and, tied to it, an empty boat, and the river, pale blue with the colour of the shadowy sky, flowing on—I cannot describe what the heart feels at this sight—perhaps that childhood experience of reading Arabian tales in which Sinbad ventures out to trade in many new countries, and I, confined by servants in the storeroom, roaming with Sinbad in the afternoons—it’s as if the longing that had taken birth in me then is still alive now—as if that’s what becomes restless once more at the sight of the boat tied to this sandbank. I can say with some certainty that if I had not read the Arabian Nights or Robinson Crusoe as a child, or heard fairy tales, then such a feeling would not have risen in my mind at the sight of that riverbank and the distant scene at the margins of the field—the whole world would have appeared differently to me. The imaginary and the real are entangled in such a strange web within the small minds of men! What gets embedded in which—everything gets entwined and knotted together—so many stories, pictures, events, the ordinary, the big—all of it gets entangled unconsciously every day—if you could open up the twists and knots in the net of a man’s vast life and separate the small from the big—what a heterogeneous heap you would have!

  59

  Shilaidaha

  Wednesday, 22 June 1892

  Today, very early in the morning, I was lying in bed listening to the sound of women at the ghat ululating—this made me feel a bit depressed, but I really couldn’t think why. Perhaps when you suddenly hear a sound so full of joy it reminds you that the world is a vast field of continuous activity, most of which has no connection of any sort with you—most people in the world are nobody to you, yet they are so busy with work and business, joys and sorrows, festivals and fairs—how vast the world is! How enormous human society! The sounds of life flow towards you from such a distance—you get a little bit of news from an entirely unknown family. When man realizes that however important I may be to myself, I alone cannot constitute the entire world—that most of the world is unknown to me, un-experienced, unrelated, empty of my presence—then in this vast, loose world he feels extremely small and unwanted and marginal—that is when the mind fills with this sort of spreading melancholy. Besides which, the sound of the ululation brought my own past and future, my entire life, in front of my eyes like a very long road, and it was as if this ululation was reaching the ear from its most distant and shadowy edges. This is how my day began. In a moment when the head rent collector, the office clerks and the people arrive, even the echo of this ululation will have fled from the precinct; the young and vigorous present will push aside the faint past and the future by their elbows and come and salaam in front of me—and I will have to concentrate on the collection of taxes….

  Yesterday I applied the last coat to my play and finished it. There are a few changes here and there—you cannot let the play out of harness too much—the work is a bit like driving a chaise and four—you have to take a number of horses along, tied to one carriage and on one road, and travel in one direction. So you cannot let one horse among the rest on too loose a rein, you have to make all of them run at the same speed….

  I don’t disagree with you on the subject of keeping up a friendship with a foreign friend through letters—attempting to save the flame of friendship from dying into ashes by the solitary means of occasional letters is very trying and almost impossible. In this world, minor relationships come and go every day—we have no important lifelong ties with them—the centre of their world, where all their important joys and sorrows manifest themselves, is completely unknown to me. What’s the huge necessity of overcoming so many sorts of obstacles for a tug of war with each other in these cases!

  60

  Shahjadpur

  Monday, 27 June 1892

  Last evening it became so terrifying that I was afraid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such ferocious-looking clouds—dark blue clouds had stacked themselves up in layers at the edge of the horizon in swollen ranks, like the anger-swollen moustaches of an enormous, murderous demon. Right next to that dark blue, at the extreme end of the horizon, a throbbing red hue had appeared from amidst the scattered clouds there—as if a giant unearthly bison, suddenly enraged, was spread across the sky, standing with its head lowered and bent, eyes glaring, blue hairs on its shoulders swelling up, ready to start attacking the earth with its horns, and, in the face of this impending danger, every field of grain and every leaf on the trees of the earth were trembling with fear, the upper surfaces of the water shivering, the crows wheeling about restlessly in the sky, crowing loudly.

  61

  Shahjadpur

  28 June 1892

  Today’s letter from you had a small reference to Abhi’s singing*—the moment I read it my mind became suddenly so desolate—many of life’s small, uncared-for pleasures, which get no purchase from us in the confusion of city life, present their petitions to our hearts when we come away to foreign lands, sensing the moment is right. I love music and singing so much, yet, even in the city, where there are so many singers and musicians, so many days pass by one after another without my paying any attention to music and song even for a day. Although I don’t always realize it myself, I can’t tell you how starved I feel mentally! The moment I read your letter I felt such a desire to hear Abhi’s sweet singing that I realized immediately that like many other sorrows, I had suppressed these tears of longing too within my inner self. We starve our lives to such an extent by running after the larger illusions at the expense of the small pleasures of life! When I was travelling to England, one of the imaginary scenes of pleasure in my mind was one of all of you in which somebody was playing the piano while the light and air came in through the open doors and windows, outside which were the distant sky and the trees, and me, listening, lying on a couch near an open window with my eyes on the scenery outside. I can’t say that this is a particularly hard-to-obtain desire, but in three hundred and sixty five days, on how many days does fate ordain such happiness? The frustration of denying yourself such easily available pleasures in life accumulates in the account books, and later such a day may arrive when I will think that if I get back my entire life, I will not try and achieve the impossible, I’ll just feast upon these small, gratuitous, everyday pleasures and savour them each day. Anyway, what I basically want to say is that when I return to Calcutta this time I want to listen to Abhi’s singing sometimes and when any of you want to play your instruments, you must count me among your audience. This time when I return to Calcutta there are so many things I’m going to do—I shall work, sing, laugh, converse, love, sleep in the deep of the night and greet the ever-new sunrise every day in the
morning and start my work—I shall bring my scattered life together to order and set it afloat upon a shaded, peaceful, musical little stream. It will be somewhat more difficult to do than it is to write of, but there’s happiness because it will be hard.

  62

  Shahjadpur

  29 June 1892

  I had written to you that yesterday at 7pm I would set up an engagement with the poet Kalidasa. Just when I had lit the light and pulled my armchair up to the table and was quite ready, instead of the poet Kalidasa, the postmaster of this place turned up. A living postmaster has far greater claim than a dead poet—I couldn’t say to him, ‘Why don’t you leave now, I have some urgent work with Kalidasa’—even if I had said so, he would not have understood what I meant. Consequently, Kalidasa had to vacate his chair for the postmaster and slowly take his leave. I have a particular connection with this man. At the time when the post office was located on the ground floor of this bungalow itself, and I used to see him every day, that’s when, one afternoon, sitting on this first floor, I had written that story about the postmaster, and when that story appeared in the Hitabādī, our postmaster-babu had referred to it with much half-embarrassed laughter. Anyway, I quite like the man. He chatters on with his stories, and I sit quietly and listen. He has quite a good sense of humour, so he can liven things up in a jiffy. After a whole day spent quietly by yourself, sometimes when you strike up against someone as alive as this, then life stirs and starts up again…. He was talking about our munsef-babu. Listening to the story and watching his mimicry I was laughing continuously till I was quite tired. The story is this—one day, all of a sudden, the munsef-babu saw Shiva in the trunk of a tree. On the first day it was Shiva, the next day Kali, after that Radha-Krishna, and so on—the entire pantheon of gods and goddesses had suddenly come down from their celestial abode to live under the banyan tree at Shahjadpur. He was catching hold of everybody and saying, ‘Look! Look! Don’t you see it! There are the eyes! There’s the tongue!’ All his clients or debtors were able to see it as required, while those who were not dependent on him in any way could see nothing at all. Our postmaster belonged to the latter group. On days when the goddess is worshipped with kshīr [sweet condensed cream] and jackfruit he can see it all—but the moment the kshir is finished he asks the munsef, ‘Which one are you calling the eyes, mister?’ The munsef says, ‘Can’t you see? There they are, up there!’ The postmaster says with great gravity, ‘Is that so! That’s the part I thought was the head!’ Some days the munsef says to him, ‘Tell me, mister, did you look at it closely? Today, during the ringing of bells at ārati [worship], something came and sat on the tree and two or three drops of water fell from above!’ The postmaster replies, with a very innocent face, ‘Oh yes, the tree was moving all right.’ The ground around that tree has been paved—the munsef worships there day and night, the conch shell is blown, a sannyāsī sits there and smokes marijuana and closes his eyes and says, ‘There she is—I can see Kali Mai.’ Occasionally someone will go and faint there as well, and relay divine messages in that state. Various kinds of fraud have begun there. The postmaster was saying, ‘When the magistrate comes to your jamidāri, you go and see him, and so many gods have found their way to rest under the banyan tree—you really should go and pay a visit.’ I too think I should go and see the fun for myself. Anyway, if this entertainment continues for very long then Shahjadpur might turn into a pilgrimage site. We stand to profit from that. After the postmaster left, I sat down with the Raghubaṃś once more the same night. I was reading about Indumati’s svaẏambar. The rows of thrones in the court were occupied by well-dressed, good-looking rajas when Indumati came and stood in their midst to the sound of conch shells and the bugle horn, dressed in bridal clothes, holding Sunanda’s hand. It’s such a beautiful scene to imagine! After that Sunanda introduces them to her one by one, and Indumati touches each one’s feet formally and moves on. This touching of feet is so beautiful! To touch the feet of those you are rejecting to show your respect and humility is so appropriate! It’s much better than the proud Englishwoman’s arrogance. Indumati is a mere slip of a girl, all the suitors are kings and much older than her—if she had not wiped away the obvious rudeness of the fact that she was leaving all of them behind with a graceful and humble pranam, the scene would not have been beautiful. But I had to go to bed before she could put the garland around Aja’s neck, as it was getting very late—that’s why yesterday Indumati’s wedding could not be concluded at the same time as Priyo’s.

  63

  Shahjadpur

  30 June 1892

  It is difficult for a man to understand what it means for a woman to enter a new life—especially for precocious-to-the-bones old men like us. Perhaps there’s a great intoxication about it—and its intensity is increased quite a bit by its being mixed with anxiety…. That freedom may be quite joyful and a little sorrowful too. It’s impossible for me to try and imagine—how does one spend days and nights with an unknown man in an unknown place! To think of it is just unbearably wearying. That’s because I am a man. Women have been doing this ever since they’ve been created. It has become entirely natural for them. Perhaps they quite enjoy taking a new husband in hand and, taking his joys and sorrows, wishes and taboos into consideration, indulging in some serious doll play—particularly when that is your only duty in life. Here we are in our old age, when one among our many renunciations includes sitting and philosophizing about life in a room—how do we properly understand how a young girl feels when she crosses the threshold, with her entire blossoming heart and mind, from one life to another one, and what sort of radiance fills her entire being with a kind of light! A young person’s life, with its new hopes, is like a very faraway scene to someone like me—it’s a place we have left behind a long time ago. But we too have a vast new life—occasionally we hear in front of us a very generous tune of hope, as if played upon an organ spread across the sky. Our new life happens when we leave happiness behind and enter the large kingdom of satisfaction—when we reject futile search and accept our duties unflinchingly. That too is an attainment of great freedom, to set out upon the road with one’s entire load and sustenance upon one’s shoulders. At this moment the tune that is being played in the nahabat khānā is not exactly the raga Sāhānā.* The musical elaborations of the Kānāṛā can be heard—the further the night deepens the sweeter it will sound. It’s good to look back at the world at this stage—all of you are ready in this new age to set sail upon the stream of life and flow in many directions in many ways—there’s a very sweet melody in all of that—it’s as if I can hear, with a calm, peaceful and loving heart, that amazing joyous sound of your new life, and a beautiful glow of affection and pleasure seems to emanate from my life’s horizon and fall upon your new lives like words of peace. May my blessings be reflected from my heart upon your heads.

  64

  Shahjadpur

  3 July 1892

  Last night I had quite a new sort of dream. It seemed as though the Lieutenant Governor had come to some place where they had arranged a function as a welcoming ceremony for him. Among the various amusements organized, there was a tent in which a famous old vocalist was singing. I wasn’t inside the tent, but I could hear everything from outside. The singer had embarked upon quite a long song in Imankalyāṇ. While singing this, he suddenly forgot his lines at a certain place. He tried twice to remember it—then the third time he gave up and decided to forgo the words and continue with only the melody, when suddenly his singing was transformed into weeping—everybody had thought he was singing, but suddenly they saw that he was crying. On hearing him weep, Baṛ-dada immediately began to commiserate with him, saying, ‘āhā, āhā’, as if he could clearly understand how much such an incident might hurt a real artist—standing outside, I too began to feel dreadfully sorry for him when I heard the note of genuine sorrow—I felt like shielding him from the circumstances that might arise in case there were some in the audience who thought the singer’s sudden outpou
ring of grief peculiar, and expressed their irritation and ridicule without understanding its real meaning. After that there was a great deal of chaos and confusion and the Lieutenant Governor of the realm of Bengal flew off I can’t remember where. Anyway, I quite enjoyed the first part of the dream.

  65

  Shahjadpur

  4 July 1892

  Today I had to go to the Shahjadpur School students’ function … I arrived at the function hall at about 4 p.m. I had to go and sit in the chair meant for the chief guest. Although my audience consisted almost entirely of smooth-cheeked adolescent village students, the thought of having to stand up and make a speech made my chest hurt all of the time—although I tried to shore up my mental strength, I just couldn’t make it go away. The first student began to speak in very strange English about the benefits of good health; he said: ‘Used key is not dirty. Great men always take care of their health. Take for instance Pundit Vidyasagar & Keshab Chandra Sen. They took great care of their health. If you do not take care of your health you get ill and you cannot study or do anything.’ We heard many more such knowledgeable sentences in English and Bengali. Finally there came a point when I too had to stand up—I completed my part as briefly as possible. In a serious tone, I said—‘Students! The subject you have discussed is one in which I am entirely deficient and that, along with an incapacity for verbal discussion, prevents me from saying very much today—besides which, the subject is such that it is very difficult to say anything new about it. But I’m sure you’ve clearly understood the benefits of keeping yourself in good health, and the pain of suffering from ill health, so that even if I do not say anything new to you on the subject, you will surely try and keep yourself in good health—etc., etc.’ As I spoke, there were a couple of other things too that cropped up, and the lecture was not too brief after all.