Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895
Page 25
124
Shilaidaha
28 June 1894
I still get very worked up if there’s any problem with my letters. Perhaps there’s a pleasure even in that … there’s a certain happiness in imagining that my scoldings are reaching you at regular intervals. If that flow is suddenly interrupted, one feels very restless. For me, all unhappiness perhaps stems from this cause. If the easy flow of life is obstructed at any place the hurt foams up and divides within itself and turns into tears. Just as the river, as it keeps flowing, cuts a path that is accessible and deep, so too the hundreds and thousands of routine habits of our lives create their own broad path as they repeat themselves, and suffer if they are suddenly faced with an obstacle on that road. My home, my friends, my dear ones—they are all part of the easy and familiar path of my life’s familiar flow. My wishes, my dreams, my work, all flow over them in a hundred thousand streams. Every path in life may not have been made out of habit, there are natural paths as well. The waterfall, for instance, flows towards the valley, but the valley has not been created by it. So too each individual’s life’s waterfall has a particular valley—and his entire strength and entire motion propels it in that direction—if it cannot do so, if it is obstructed anywhere, then all its motion, strength and life are frustrated. I’m expanding on the issue because you’ve raised the question of happiness and unhappiness in your last letter. In life, it is the development of all one’s strengths and the force of all one’s parts that’s called happiness and success. Whether it’s love, devotion to god, or social work—different people use different means to give meaning to their lives; people use whatever is nearest at hand, is easily accomplished, or that which gives them the greatest pleasure in life—there’s no point delivering a lecture on this subject. There may be many ways to be happy in the world, but not all of them are available to everybody. What’s the point of chanting edicts on ethics in the ears of a fate that has not managed to grant one’s barricaded life a modicum of freedom? I cannot bring flowing water to the marshes of Kaligram just because the Gangotri exists on the peaks of the Himalayas. One cannot but accept the fact that there are many unhappy people in the world. To say happiness lies in doing one’s duty is a deception propagated by life’s law books, like what we learnt as children—
Lekhāpaṛā kare yei
gāṛi ghoṛā chaṛe sei
(He who learns his reading and writing
Is the one who will ride a horse and carriage)
Now I know that even after having learnt reading and writing, there are many who have to beg or borrow for the money to ride a tram-car; so too many wretched souls have to continue to do their duty without being happy, in fact while being positively unhappy. And then later on habit begins to wear down the path—the path of unhappiness too is made somewhat bearable by habit as it cuts an easy road through life—the lines of habit fall upon even the most adverse of paths—and, subsequently, one’s life may be sucked dry halfway in the desert instead of finding its way successfully to the sea. This is quite a common occurrence—that’s a fact. You cannot prove this to be untrue however much you try and however many verses you may extract from the Vedas, Puranas, Koran or Bible—sorrow will remain sorrow. Hundreds and hundreds of flowers in this world begin as buds but fall to the ground instead of bearing fruit because of the worms that attack them and shrivel them up—just because one doesn’t get an answer if one asks why, one cannot deny the fact. There are so many hundreds and hundreds of unsuccessful lives in the world that are ruined because of terrible sorrow—I don’t know where they find any consolation. Men have created many consolations for themselves from ancient times—there’s no limit to the number and variety of conjectures and fancies they’ve piled up. I was sitting on the boat one day and thinking—man is a creature oppressed by the weight of things, all the things essential to him have a certain weight; even if you publish a book in which you have expressed all your inner feelings, you have to exhaust yourself paying a charge to send it by parcel post—clothes, housing, food, etc., are all like heavy loads to be borne. That is why one of man’s chief concerns is to find a way to bear all these loads but at the same time to make them easier to bear. The wheels of a carriage are an important means; one can put a heavy load upon wheels and bear it along quite easily. On water, the boat turns out to be a great help; one can load the heaviest of things upon the tide and travel to other countries. Our laws, ethical principles and social norms perform a similar function. Want, separation or death will always weigh down on man and make him unhappy; that is why men try to structure their society and religion in such a way as to make the load as light as possible so it can float. If we allow the weight to settle down on ourselves it becomes unbearable; but if we allow religion or social duty to bear the load then one can get some rest. The chief value of any large idea is—that like a large river, it has the ability to bear loads and convey loads; the moment we cast ourselves in them we become lighter, we don’t have to bear our sorrow and our suffering upon our own shoulders any more. There’s no end to this subject on which we’ve begun, but it’s getting late in the night and the letter too keeps getting longer. And it seems to me that man prefers to keep unresolved issues suppressed, for if you try to explain them too much the audience is liable to feel irritated.
125
Shilaidaha
Saturday, 30 June 1894
I had thought it might be best to deal with all the problems in a single day. With time, a programme for solitude gets gradually firmed up, and then one doesn’t feel like breaking into its complete wholeness from time to time—because once you break into it even for a single day it becomes very difficult to gather all its threads together again. On the other hand, it is in the first few days when the mind cannot make a place for itself in its new nest and cannot settle down that one can tolerate the company of friends. But now I have filled up my free time with my imagination—if human beings suddenly arrive in that space there will be a problem. The imagination is as fearful as a doe; at first it takes some time to tame it and make it one’s own, and then if men intrude on the grounds in which it roams then of course you’ll never catch another glimpse of it for quite a while. That’s why, when I’m in this uninhabited kingdom in which my mind occupies far more space than my body, I want people here who are dearer to me than my imagination, or people to whom I have not the slightest obligation to pay any attention. The difficulty begins when it is something between the two. This tiny bit of solitude is like my mind’s work-shop for me, with all its invisible machinery and finished and unfinished work spread all around—when a friend arrives, he doesn’t notice all of it, and there’s no saying where he’ll step next; he sits blithely there, unconsciously and happily discussing the news of the world, breaking off one by one all the fine threads wound so carefully upon the loom of my leisure—when I accompany him to the station and return alone to my workroom I can see how much I have lost. How will other people know in what ways exactly I’m engaged in composing my life! When we live with another person we each compose the other—we keep enough space for each other, in fact so much so that there’s very little left for one’s self. But when I’m completely alone—my complete ‘me’ doesn’t leave a margin for anybody else but spreads itself out in its own compositions, fearlessly laying out a number of fine, beautiful things all around—those then constitute a major problem…. There are many types of conversations, many kinds of work and many discussions that are unimportant for others and quite natural in public—but very wounding for my life of solitude. That’s because when we are alone the secret, deep and scattered parts of ourselves all come together and awaken—it’s a bit like we are ourselves, so it’s strange and wild—in that situation, the self has become unfit for human company and its entire nature attains a certain unity, so that whatever breaks that unity hurts it terribly….
One of the best things about the external world is that it does not come forward on its own to oppose you; since it doesn’t have
a mind of its own, it’s quite willing to concede all the space available to my mind—like a companion that gives me company it occupies endless space yet doesn’t take up an inch of mine—it doesn’t yap like an idiot or argue like an intellectual; it sleeps in the lap of the sky like my Meera, it’s sweet when it’s quiet and it’s sweet even when it flings its hands and feet about and roars—especially when there are such excellent arrangements for its bathing, eating and dressing, for which I bear no responsibility—then that large, healthy, beautiful child without language or mind is quite ideal for my solitude. Men of words, intellect and experience are pleasant only in society. One shouldn’t give expression to such asocial thoughts, but if you are receptive to the feeling with which I say it then perhaps it will not seem so reprehensible.
126
Shilaidaha
5 July 1894
There is nothing at all that is more impermanent than the new. Fortunately, man’s heart is so fluid that it manages to adjust its measure to almost any vessel it finds itself in—only some small containers are unable to hold it and some big ones hold it somewhat loosely. And, occasionally, one or two hearts turn up that are congealed solidly in the old—if they are to be transferred to a new container, they have to be broken.
127
Shilaidaha
Thursday, 5 July 1894
Yesterday in the afternoon I had just sat down to some solid writing when, after I had barely five lines or so written, the maulabī suddenly turned up. Seeing that I was writing, he assured me that he would leave after just a couple of words [‘doṭho kathā’]—after which he proceeded to spend two hours [do?ho ghantā] on those two words. Just as he was about to leave somebody cried out from the shore—‘Maharaj, I’ve been seeking an audience for about a week now, but the doorkeepers [doubārikgaṇ] have been forbidding my entry.’ Just the language made it evident that this was not just anybody. I forbade the ‘doorkeepers’ to forbid. Then a bearded, balding Brahmin with a high forehead and a pleasant aspect, wearing saffron robes and a tilak, came and stood in front of me and took out an enormous piece of paper. I thought it might be an application. But then he began to read it out himself very loudly. From the very first line it became clear that this was a poem. In it the Brahmin was praising the qualities of god [Sri Hari] in his heaven. I sat there gravely and listened. As long as god was in his heaven the poem was proceeding in the tripadī metre, but then I suddenly realized that god had descended into the ‘world-famous capital Calcutta’ in order to preserve the surname Tagore as Dwarakanath—the poem too descended accordingly from the tripadi to the paẏār metre. When the paẏār eulogy was done with Debendranath and approached Rabindranath, I privately began to become fretful. My poetry and my generosity were shown to be spreading through the world like the sun’s rays and dispelling the darkness of ignorance and poverty in the process—however wonderful the comparison might have been, this was news to me. In any case, spreading the news of how charitable I am means nothing. I said to him, ‘You go to the kāchāri, I have other work to do.’ The man said, ‘Why don’t you do your own work, let me stand here and watch your moon-face for a while’—and then he took up a posture of wonderment and stood quite still in front of me, staring unblinkingly at my face all the while like a dumb animal; my alarmed inner self seemed to writhe within my entire body. I told him repeatedly to go. Then he said, ‘Give me whatever you want to give—write it down on this piece of paper and I will take it to the accounts officer and read the poem out to him as well.’ I thought to myself, this is my profession too, I too read out poems for a living. But I too have to return from many a door empty-handed—the Brahmin too had to do so. Sri Hari’s four hands hold the conch shell, the disc, the mace and the lotus. This avatar of Sri Hari used only the hand that holds the mace and showed the Brahmin the door. Within moments of his leaving the boat, a famous orator here in Birahimpur called Dwari Majumdar arrived. I imprisoned both my hands upon my chest and leaned back on the chair, sitting as stiffly as a solid stone statue. He began immediately—‘Maharaj, many people disbelieve the hysteria (history) of Yudhishthir in the olden times; they ask, is it possible to achieve so much, but after so many ages, seeing you with their own eyes, their doubts about Yudhishthir’s accomplishments have been laid to rest’—and so on and so forth. When I said to him, ‘Why don’t you go and get some rest in the kāchāri now,’ he said, ‘Why talk of rest today! Today I have obtained an audience with you after so many days, today I have finally been able to see your lordship after waiting for seven, eight, nine months—had I ever hoped that I would be able to see you!’ As he spoke his voice began to tremble and he caught his breath, wiping his dry eyes with his shawl repeatedly; increasingly, he began to become more and more emotional at the thought of his former lordship Jyoti-dada’s endless affection and trust for him…. He then began to tell me in minute detail, without leaving out a thing, exactly what work he had done, which events had occurred, what his employers had said, and how he had answered them. The sun went down, evening came; the birds returned to their nests, cows to their cowsheds, farmers to their huts—but Dwari Majumdar refused to budge from the boat. At this time, when another audience seeker arrived from Kushtia, he finally left, consoling me that he would be back tomorrow morning to tell me the rest. He hasn’t arrived yet, but somebody quite equal to him in speechifying has come and is sitting on the bench next to me waiting for my leisure so as to begin his speech.
128
On the way to Shahjadpur
Friday, 6 July 1894
I’m en route now. Yesterday in the afternoon, just as we were about to untie the boat, a clerk came up with folded hands and pleaded, ‘Your lordship, it would be better if you set out tomorrow morning rather than today.’ When I asked why, he said it is the conjunction of three lunar days today, and therefore very inauspicious for travel. I said I would prove that the day was an auspicious one for travel—I would reach Shahjadpur quite safely. So saying, I snapped my fingers in the face of all the planets, stars, and days of ritual and set off. On the way the Padma was flowing terribly fast in places—the swollen water whirled around and crashed on the shore; the boat didn’t want to move forward at all, all its joints began to shiver and tremble; those towing the boat found it impossible to keep their feet steady despite stooping low and pulling with all their strength; I thought to myself, now I suppose it’s the turn of all the planets, stars, and days of ritual to snap their fingers under my nose. After a while, once we had crossed the Gorui and reached the real Padma, it was possible to raise the sails—then we proudly and forcefully cut our way across the chest of the opposing current and proceeded to make our way dancing over the waves. At five or six in the evening we managed to enter the Ichamoti River….
In the evening, we tied our boat to a ferry ghat near Pabna town. On the shore there were some people singing to the accompaniment of the tabla, a mixture of sounds entered the ear, men and women walked down the road with a busy air, the lamplit houses were visible through the trees, there was a crowd of people of all classes at the ferry ghat. The sky had a very dark cloud of a single colour, the evening too was darkening, lights came on in the row of usurers’ boats tied to the other shore and brass bells began to sound from the temple for evening prayers—sitting by the boat’s window with the light extinguished, my mind was filled with the force of a most wonderful feeling. A living, pulsating beat from this human habitation seemed to pierce through the cover of darkness and strike my breast. Under this cloudy sky on this intense evening, how many people, how many desires, occupations, jobs, homes—and so many mysteries of life contained within those homes—so many people so near each other, brushing up against one another, resulting in so many thousands of sorts of collisions and reactions! This vast population, with all their good and bad, all their joy and sorrow, had become like one to enter my heart from either shore of the tree-lined, small, rainy river like a tender, beautiful rāginī. I think I had tried to express something of this feeling in m
y poem ‘Śaiśabsandhyā’ [Childhood Evenings]. What it means, in brief, is perhaps this, that man is small and transient, yet the stream of life—full of the good and the bad, of joys and sorrows—will flow on with its ancient, deep murmur as it always has and always will—one can hear that eternal hubbub at the margins of a town in the darkness of evening. Then the impermanent and individual daily life of man dissolves in that entire undifferentiated melody and enters the heart’s silence like the single tone of a great ocean—a very vast, spread-out, melancholic, mysterious sound without beginning or end, without questions or answers. I don’t think I can quite explain or describe the state of my mind last evening. There are times when the larger currents of the world enter our hearts through some tear or rent somewhere, and then they resound in a way that is impossible to translate into words. That is why I’ve noticed that I have not managed to write poetry about many of the deepest and most intense feelings of my heart, which may have occasionally found expression in my writing only as the merest hint.
129
On the way to Shahjadpur
7 July 1894
I spent the day reading a Polish novel called The Jew. Fate had ordained that the novel be an unreadable one—I managed to somehow desperately finish it only because I had started it. It’s difficult to understand the dutiful compulsion to complete something only because one has started it. It’s not exactly a sense of duty—Loken is partly correct when he says that all our mental faculties have a certain pride. Our minds don’t ever want to easily admit that we are inconsequential or impermanent or defeated by the smallest of obstacles—that’s why they often keep themselves awake with the utmost effort. Our resolve too has a certain pride—it has started something, so it wants to take it through to the end, even if it means going against itself. That stubborn and wasteful pride has made me sit the entire long rainy day in a closed room and finish a huge, unreadable book full of disjointed argumentation—it gave me no satisfaction other than the satisfaction of having finished it. I had wanted to write, but you can’t write in this damp and closed situation. I was thinking that I’ve written to you every day every time I have travelled down this narrow, winding Ichamoti River—and I’m writing to you this time as well. My letters from the provinces are all written from the same places, the same scenery and the same situations every time—if you look at them all together I’ve no doubt they’ll be full of numberless repetitions. Perhaps I’ve used the exact same language again and again. When you’re in Calcutta it is easy to say something novel at every moment—but in the rural outback there are only two subjects, nature and my own self—both subjects give me immense joy—and there’s no dearth of variety in these two subjects too—but man’s ‘point of view’ and the language and powers with which he expresses himself are limited—so there’s nothing to do but repeat one’s self thousands of times. Having heard the same things over and over again you must have my state of mind and daily life in the provinces more or less by heart—perhaps you could forge one of my letters from the provinces quite easily. This time if it had not rained and been sunny instead and I had been able to sit by the window and look at the scenery outside all day, perhaps I would have written the sorts of things to you about this winding river that I have already written at least four times; and I would’ve thought that I was writing it all down for the first time. Not only that—I would think that the indescribable feelings and thoughts that arise in me when I see the banks of the Ichamoti River are as huge and important news to you as they are to me—and that expressing them appropriately and completely after gathering them up by their roots from the inaccessible parts of my mind and sending them to you in their entirety—is a desperately urgent task. Nowadays it has been proven that those who are writers by race are a sort of madmen. That seems to be substantially true to me. To feel sad if you’re unable to express your thoughts is certainly a kind of madness.