RABINDRANATH TAGORE

rabindranath tagore

2009-02-10T00:09:00.000-08:00

rabindranath tagore was a man who did all welfare for indian people. He was not in politics but still was a very good Friend of mahatma gandhi. He was warded a noble prize in 1913 for his book "GITANJALI". Being a writer he had written many of his books in Bengali. But afer the success of Gitanjali he started writing as well as translating in different languages like english, hindi etc.He was a big music lover.he had a large role in art.He had brought out nice spiritual concepts.

2008-09-16T03:55:00.000-07:00

a pretty poem by RABINDRANATH TAGORE IN BENGALI

TAGORE'S EDUCATIONAL IDEAS

2008-06-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

Rabindranath Tagore's role in the innovation of educational ideas has been eclipsed by his fame as a poet. He was a pioneer in the field of education. For the last forty years of his life he was content to be a schoolmaster in humble rural surroundings, even when he had achieved fame such as no Indian had known before. He was one of the first, in India, to think out for himself and put in practice principles of education which have now become commonplace of educational theory, if not yet of practice.

Today we all know that what the child imbibes at home and in school is far more important than what he studies at college, that the teaching is more easily and naturally communicated through the child's mother-tongue than through an alien medium, that learning through activity is more real than through the written word, that wholesome education consists in training of all the senses along with the mind instead of cramming the brain with memorized knowledge, that culture is something much more than academic knowledge. But few of Rabindranath's countrymen took notice of him when he made his first experiments in education in 1901 with less than half a dozen pupils. A poet's whim, thought most of them. Even today few of his countrymen understand the significance of these principles in their national life. The schoolmaster is still the most neglected member of our community, despite the fact that Rabindranath attached more merit to what he taught to children in his school than to the Hibbert lectures he delivered before the distinguished audience at Oxfoard.

Mahatma Gandhi adopted the scheme of teaching through crafts many years after Rabindranath had worked it out at Santiniketan. In fact the Mahatma imported his first teachers for his basic School from Santiniketan.
If Rabindranath had done nothing else, what he did at Santiniketan and Sriniketan would be sufficient to rank him as one of the India's greatest nation-builders.

With the years, Rabindranath had won the world and the world in turn had won him. He sought his home everywhere in the world and would bring the world to his home. And so the little school for children at Santiniketan became a world university, Visva-Bharati, a centre for Indian Culture, a seminary for Eastern Studies and a meeting-place of the East and West. The poet selected for its motto an ancient Sanskrit verse, Yatra visvam bhavatieka nidam, which means, "Where the whole world meets in a single nest."

"Visva-Bharati", he declared, " represents India where she has her wealth of mind which is for all. Visva-Bharati acknowledges India's obligation to offer to others the hospitality of her best culture and India's right to accept from others their best."

In 1940 a year before he died, he put a letter in Gandhi's hand,
"Visva-Bharati is like a vessel which is carrying the cargo of my life's best treasure , and I hope it may claim special care from my countrymen for its preservation."

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

2008-06-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

Greatest writer in modern Indian literature, Bengali poet, novelist, educator, and an early advocate of Independence for India. Tagaore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Two years later he was awarded the knighthood, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators. Tagore's influence over Gandhi and the founders of modern India was enormous, but his reputation in the West as a mystic has perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic of colonialism.

TAGORE'S PHOTO GALLERY

2008-06-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

PAINTINGS BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE

2008-06-09T00:25:00.001-07:00

The Poet's Letter to Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy

2008-06-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

Your Excellency,The enormity of the measures taken by the Government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has, with a rude shock, revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India. The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote. Considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population, disarmed and resourceless, by a power which has the most terribly efficient organisation for destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification. The accounts of the insults and sufferings by our brothers in Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of India, and the universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers- possibly congratulating themselves for imparting what they imagine as salutary lessons. This callousness has been praised by most of the Anglo-Indian papers, which have in some cases gone to the brutal length of making fun of our sufferings, without receiving the least check from the same authority, relentlessly careful in something every cry of pain of judgment from the organs representing the sufferers. Knowing that our appeals have been in vain and that the passion of vengeance is building the noble vision of statesmanship in out Government, which could so easily afford to be magnanimous, as befitting its physical strength and normal tradition, the very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance , are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings. And these are the reasons which have compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due reference and regret, to relieve me of my title of knighthood, which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration. Yours faithfully,RABINDRANATH TAGORECalcutta,6, Dwarakanath Tagore Lane,May 30, 1919

TAGORES WORKS

2008-05-30T02:15:00.000-07:00

1878

Kabi-Kahini (The Tale of the Poet
: a story in verse)

1880

Bana-phul (The Flower of the Woods
: a story in verse)

1881

Balmiki Pratibha (The genious of
Balmiki : a musical drama)

Bhagna-hridaya (The Broken Heart : a drama in verse)

Rudrachanda (a drama in verse)

Europe-prabasir patra (Letters of a sojourner in
Europe)

1882

Sandhya Sangeet (Evening Songs :
a collection of lyrics)

Kal Mrigaya (The Fatal Hunt : a musical drama)

1883

Bouthakuranir Haat (The young Queen's
market : a novel)

Prabhat Sangeet (Morning songs: a collection of
lyrics)

Vividha Prasanga (Miscellaneous Topics: a collection
of essays)

1884

Prakritir Pratisodh (Nature's Revenge
: a drama in verse)

Bhanu Singha Thakurer Padabali (collection of poems
written after Vaishnava poets under the pen name of 'Bhanu Singha')

Chhabi O Gaan (Sketches and Songs : collection of
poems)

Nalini (a prose drama)

Saisab Sangeet (Poems of Childhood : a collection
of poems)

1885

Rammohan Roy (a pamphlet on Rammohan Roy)

Alochona (Discussions : a collection of essays)

Rabichhaya (The shadow of the Sun : a collection
of songs)

1886

Kari o Kamal (Sharps and Flats :
a collection of poems)

1887

Rajarshi (The Saint King : a novel)

Chithipatra (letters)

1888

Mayar Khela (a musical drama)

Samalochona (Reviews : a collection of essays)

1889

Raja 0 Rani (King and Queen : a
drama in verse)

1890

Visarjan (Sacrifice : a drama)

Manasi (The heart's desire: a collection of poems)

Mantri Abhisek (a lecture on Lord Cross's India Bill)

1891

Europe Jatrir Diary (Diary of a traveller to Europe)

1892

Chitrangada (a drama in verse)

Goray galad (Wrong at the Start : a comedy)

Joy parajay (story)

1893

Europe Jatrir Diary Part II

Ganer Bahi O Valmiki Pratibha (a collection of songs
incorporating Valmiki Pratibha)

1894

Sonar Tari (The Golden Boat : a
collection of pems)

Chhoto galpo (collection of 15 short stories)

Chitrangada O Viday-Abhisap (Chitrangada
previously published and Curse at Farewell)

Vichitra Galpa (Parts I & II)

Katha-Chatustaya (four short stories)

1895

Chhele-bhulano Chhara (nursery
rhymes)

Galpa-Dasak (ten short stories)

1896

Chitra (a collection of poems)

Malini (a drama)

Chaitali (a collection of poems)

Nadi (River : a long poem)

Sanskrita Siksha Parts I & II (text book)

1897

Baikunther Khaata (Manuscripts of
Baikuntha : a comedy)

Pancha Bhut (Five Elements : a collection of essays)

1899

Kanika (a collection of short poems
and epigrams)

1900

Galpoguchha (a collection of short
stories)

Kshanika (The Fleeting One : a collection of poems)

Kalpana (Imagination : a collection of poems)

Katha (Stories : a collection of ballads)

BrahmaUpanishad (a religious essay)

Kahini (Tales : a collection of drama in verse and
long poems)

1901

Galpa (Stories : part II of Galpaguchha)

Bangla Kriyapader Taalika (List of Bengali verbs
: text book)

Aupanishad Brahma (a religious essay)

Naivedya (Offerings : a collection of poems)

Brahma-mantra (a religious essay)

1903

Chokher Bali (Eyesore : a novel)

Sishu (Child : children poems)

Karmaphal (Nemesis : a story)

1904

Nastaneer (The Home Spoilt : a novel)

Chirakumar Sabha (The Bachelor's Club : a novel,
this was later issued separately as Prajapatir Nirbandha)

Ingraji Sopan, Part I (a text-book)

1905

Baul (a collection of songs)

Atmasakti (a collection of political essays and lectures)

1906

Naukadubi (The Wreck : a novel)

Bharatbarsha (India : a collection of political essays
and lectures)

Rajbhakti (a political essay)

Deshnayak (a political essay)

Ingraji Sopan, Part II (a text-book)

Kheya (Ferry : a collection of poems)

1907

Adhunik Sahitya (Modern Literature
: a collection of essays)

Lokasahitya (Literature of the People : a collection
of essays)

Prachin Sahitya (Ancient Literature : a collection
of essays)

Sahitya (Literature : a collection of essays)

Vichitra Prabandha (a collection of essays)

Charitrapuja (Tributes to Great Lives : a collection
of essays)

Hasya-Kautuk (humourous sketches)

Byanga-Kautuk (satirical sketches)

1908

Mukut (The Crown : a prose drama)

Path-O-Patheya (an essay)

Raja Praja (King and his Subjects : a collection
of political essays)

Samuha (a collection of political essays)

Swadesh (My Country : a collection of political and
sociological essays)

Swamaj (Society : a collection of essays)

Saradotsav (Autumn Festival : a drama)

1909

Brahma Sangeet (a collection of
religious songs)

Vidyasagar-charit (two essays on Vidyasagar printed
before in Charitrapuja)

Dharma (Religion : a collection of essays)

Chayanika (an anthology of poems)

Prayaschitta (Penace : a drama)

Sabdatattwa (a collection of papers on Bengali philology)

1910

Raja (King of the dark chamber :
a drama)

Gora (a novel)

Gitanjali (Song Offerings)

1911

Aatti Galpa (eight Stories)

1912

Achalayatan (a drama )

Dakghar (Post Office : a drama)

Galpa Chaariti (Four Stories)

Jiban-Smriti (Reminiscences)

Chhinnapatra (Torn Letters)

Patha Sanchay (a text-book)

Dharmasiksha (an essay)

Dharmer Adhikar (an essay)

1914

Utsarga (Dedication : a collection
of poems)

Gitimalya (A Garland of songs)

Gitali (a collection of poems and songs)

1915

Bichitra Path (selection for the
use of students)

Kavyagrantha (ten volumes of poems and dramas)

1916

Ghare Baire (Home and the World
: a novel)

Balaka (The Swan : a collection of poems)

Chaturanga (a novel)

Phalguni (Cycle of Spring : a drama)

Sanchaya (a collection of essays)

1917

Anubad-charcha (a text-book)

Kartar Ichhaye Karmo (As the Master Wills : a lecture)

1918

Palataka (The Run-away : stories
in verse)

Guru (stage version of Achalayatan)

1919

Japan-jatri (Travels in Japan)

1920

Poila Nombor (a short story)

Arupratan (stage version of Raja)

1921

Barsa-mangal (Rain Festival)

Sikshar Milan ( Meeting of Cultures : a lecture)

Rinsodh (stage version of Saradotsav)

Satyer Ahovaan (Call of Truth : a lecture)

1922

Sishu Bholanath (child poems)

Lipika (Letter : prose-poems)

Muktadhara (Free Current : a drama)

1923

Basanta (Spring : a musical drama)

1925

Purabi (a collection of poems)

Griha prabesh (a drama)

Sankalan (a collection of prose)

Sesh barshan (The last shower : a musical drama)

1926

Rakta karabi (Red Oleanders : a
drama)

Natir puja (The dancing girl's worship : a drama)

Prabahini (a collection of songs)

Chirakumar sabha (stage version of Prajapatir
Nirbandha)

Sodh bodh (All square : a comedy)

Lekhon (Autographs : verses with English translations)

1927

Ritu ranga (The Play of the Seasons
: a musical drama)

1928

Sesh raksha (stage version of Goray
galad)

Palliprakriti (address of the anniversary of Sriniketan)

1929

Sesher Kabita (Last poem : a novel)

Mahua (a collection of poems)

Tapati (a drama)

Jogajog (a novel)

Paritran (stage version of Prayaschitta)

Jatri (Traveller : letters from abroad)

1930

Sahaj path - parts I & II (text
book)

Ingreji sahaj siksha - parts I & II (text book)

Patha parichay, parts II-IV (text book)

1931

Shapmochan (a muscial drama)

Russiar chithi (Letters from Russia)

Nabin (a musical piece)

Banabani (poems)

1932

Parisesh (collection of poems)

Punascha (collection of poems)

Kaler jatra (two dramatic pieces)

1933

Chandalika (The Untouchable Woman
: a drama)

Tasher Desh (Kingdom of Cards : a musical drama)

Bansari (The Flute : a drama)

1934

Malancha (a novel)

Char Adhyay (Four Chapters : a novel)

Sraban gatha (collection of songs)

1935

Bithika (Avenue : collection of
poems)

Sesh saptak (collection of poems)

1936

Shyamali (poems)

Patraput (poems)

Chhanda (essays on Bengali prosody)

1937

Biswaparichay (article on modern
physical astronomy)

Khapchhara (rhymes)

Kalantar (essays)

Shay (children's stories)

Chharar chhobi (rhymes)

1938

Senjuti (poems)

Bangla Bhasha Parichay (a treatise on the Bengali
language)

Prantik (poems)

1939

Shyama (a dance drama)

Prahasini (The Smiling One : poems)

Akash pradip (poems)

1940

Nabajatak (The newly born : poems)

Sanai (The Pipe : poems)

Rog sajyay (In the sick-bed : poems)

Tin songi (Three companions : short stories)

Chhelebela (My boyhood days : reminiscences)

1941

Sabhyatar sankat (Crisis in civilization
: an essay)

Janmadine (Birthday : poems)

Arogya (Recovery : poems)

Galpo salpa (stories and verses for children)

tagores family tree

2008-05-24T22:39:00.001-07:00

Three 'stolen' items from Tagore museum found

2008-05-13T02:30:00.000-07:00

Three items, which were listed as stolen from Ravindra Bhawan museum, have been found inside the museum building, Visva-Bharati Vice-chancellor Sujit Basu said on Sunday.

In late March this year, the Nobel medallion of Rabindranath Tagore and many other items were stolen from the museum. The CBI is investigating the theft.

The authorities listed 50 items as stolen but later two of them, the citation given to Tagore by the Nobel committee and an ivory product were found from the Uttaryan complex housing the museum.

The burglary was detected at 10.15 am on March 25 when the exhibition hall of the museum opened after a holiday the day before.

The stolen articles included the Nobel Prize medal made of gold, memorablia, paintings, Tagore's wife Mrinalini Devi's Baluchari sari, two gold bangles, father Maharshi Debendranath's gold ring and the poet's own gold pocket watch, besides other personal effects.

Fusing poetry with spirituality

2008-05-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

Tagore's engagement with the cosmic beloved
From divine joy we descend, into divine joy we ultimately dissolve and in between, the beautiful journey that we call life is enveloped in the ecstasy of divine love for the personified Absolute. Realisation of this mystic vision beyond any bookish philosophy made Rabindranath Tagore experience the vastness of the Omnipresent manifested in the colourful and rhythmic feast of sight and symphony.

To Tagore, the Infinite appeared as his cosmic beloved who made it possible for him to receive His endless gifts. Hence Tagore muses, “Thus it is that thy joy in me is so full. Thus it is that thou hast come down to me. O thou lord of all heavens where would be thy love if I were not? Thou hast taken me as thy partner of all this wealth. In my heart is the endless play of thy delight”.

“Deliverance? Where is the deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon himself the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever”. His delight is to wait and watch at the wayside. inhaling the fragrance of His eternal promise and sweet presence. He felt the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight and hence did not want deliverance through renunciation.

This world-affirming pantheism , however, is not oblivious of the awareness of infinitude: “Where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in” and where reigns the stainless white radiance — no day or night, no form or colour, and not even a single word.

Realisation of the dualism of the non-dual Being made him sing, “Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well... in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours”. This unification of the nondual with the mystic dual is the hallmark of Tagore’s poetic experience, “I dive down into the ocean of forms hoping to gain the perfect pearl of formlessness” . The Being of the Upanishads is translated into a myriad manifestations.

The pilgrimage from finite forms to the infinite formless is a painful process but the poet enjoys the same as it perfects him through purification and brings him closer to the cosmic beloved in attunement and facilitates surrender. That is why he says, “... Strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart.... Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles. And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love”.

The sordid reality of life takes its own toll and as such his occasional deviation from the divine path gives birth to pangs: “That I want thee, only thee — let my heart repeat without end” . He knows, heart of hearts that all worldly desires are false and empty to the core. Hence to maintain the eternal attunement with the Infinite he has to rise above the gravitational pull of finitude.

Tagore’s divine romance found a profound elevation in the firm assertion, “In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play and here I have caught sight of him that is formless”. Tagore’s relationship with the Cosmic Divine was intimate and informal. Which is why he used the lower case when making references to the Infinite or God. His romantic mysticism inspired the fusion of poetry and spirituality.

Today is Tagore’s birth anniversary.

tagores prize stolen

2008-05-09T22:04:00.001-07:00

Thieves apparently broke in at Rabindra Bhavan, which houses a museum where the Nobel Prize was on display. Besides that, there were numerous original documents which were also stolen.

The robbers broke open the glass case and escaped with the items. A lock of a glass case where the documents and the prize were secured were found broken.

They made away with several artefacts belonging to Tagore, including some gold medallions and rare paintings, police said.

"The stolen artefacts might also contain the Nobel Prize citation or the plaque," an official of Kolkata Police said.

Staff at Visvabharati University in Shantiniketan discovered the theft this morning.

University vice chancellor Sujit Basu is closeted with senior police officials over the robbery.

Forensic experts are already on the job. One of the main entrances to the university, Uttarayan Gate, has been shut.

"The police have cordoned off the entire area. They are not allowing in even the Viswa Bharati staff," the spokesman said, confirming that the plaque stolen was the original one.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said that a CID team had been rushed to Viswa Bharati to conduct the investigation.

jaynti

2008-05-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

works of tagore

2008-05-07T21:45:00.002-07:00

KABIKAHINI, 1878 - A Poet's Tale
SADHYA SANGEET, 1882 - Evening Songs
PRABHAT SANGEET, 1883 - Morning Songs
BAU-THAKURANIR HAT, 1883
RAJASHI, 1887
RAJA O RANI, 1889 - The King and the Queen / Devouring Love
VISARGAN, 1890 - Sacrifice
MANASI, 1890
IUROPE-JATRIR DIARI, 1891, 1893
VALMIKI PRATIBHA, 1893
SONAR TARI, 1894 - The Golden Boat
KHANIKA, 1900 - Moments
KATHA, 1900
KALPANA, 1900
NAIVEDYA, 1901
NASHTANIR, 1901 - The Broken Nest
SHARAN, 1902
BINODINI, 1902
CHOCHER BALI, 1903 - Eyesore
NAUKADUBI, 1905 - Haaksirikko
KHEYA, 1906
NAUKADUBI, 1906 - The Wreck
GORA, 1907-09 - suom.
SARADOTSAVA, 1908 - Autumn Festival
GALPAGUCCHA, 1912 - A Bunch of Stories
CHINNAPATRA, 1912
VIDAY-ABHISAP, 1912 - The Curse at Farewell
GITANJALI, 1912 - Song Offerings (new translation in 2000 by Joen Winter, publ. Anvil Press) - Uhrilauluja
JIBAN SMRTI, 1912 - My Reminiscenes - Elämäni muistoja
DAKGHAR, 1912 - Post Office
The Crescent Moon, 1913
Glimpses of Bengal Life, 1913
The Hungry Stones and Other Stories, 1913
CHITRA, 1914 - transl.
GHITIMALAYA, 1914
The King of the Dark Chamber, 1914
The Post Office, 1914
Sadhana, 1914
GHARE-BAIRE, 1916 - The Home and the World - Koti ja maailma
BALAK, 1916 - A Flight of Swans
CHATURANGA, 1916 - transl.
Fruit Gathering, 1916
The Hungry Stones, 1916
Stray Birds, 1916
PERSONALITY, 1917 - Persoonallisuus
The Cycle of Spring, 1917
Sacrifice, and Other Plays, 1917
My Reminiscene, 1917
Nationalism, 1917
Mashi and Other Stories, 1918
Stories from Tagore, 1918
PALATAKA, 1918
JAPAN-JATRI, 1919 - A Visit to Japan
Greater India, 1921
The Fugitive, 1921
Creative Unity, 1921
LIPIKA, 1922
MUKTADHARA, 1922 - trans.
Poems, 1923
Gora, 1924
Letters from Abroad, 1924
Red Oleander, 1924
GRIHAPRABESH, 1925
Broken Ties and Other Stories, 1925
Rabindranath Tagore: Twenty-Two Poems, 1925
RAKTA-KARABI, 1925 - Red Oleanders
SADHANA, 1926 - suom.
NATIR PUJA, 1926 - transl.
Letters to a Friend, 1928
SESHER KAVITA, 1929 - Farewell, My Friend
MAHUA, 1929 - The Herald of Spring
JATRI, 1929
YAGAYOG, 1929
The Religion of Man, 1930
The Child, 1931
RASHIAR CHITHI, 1931 - Letters from Russia
PATRAPUT, 1932
PUNASCHA, 1932
Mahatmahi and the Depressed Humanity, 1932
The Golden Boat, 1932
Sheaves, Poems and Songs, 1932
DUI BON, 1933 - Two Sisters
CHANDALIKA, 1933 - transl.
MALANCHA, 1934 - The Garden
CHAR ADHYAYA, 1934 - Four Chapters
BITHIKA, 1935
SHESH SAPTAK, 1935
PATRAPUT, 1936
SYAMALI, 1936 - trans.
Collected Poems and Plays, 1936
KHAPCHARA, 1937
SEMJUTI, 1938
PRANTIK, 1938
PRAHASINI, 1939
PATHER SANCAY, 1939
AKASPRADIP, 1939
SYAMA, 1939
NABAJATAK, 1940
SHANAI, 1940
CHELEBELA, 1940 - My Boyhood Days
ROGSHAJYAY, 1940
AROGYA, 1941
JANMADINE, 1941
GALPASALPA, 1941
Last Poems, 1941
The Parrots Training, 1944
Rolland and Tagore, 1945
Three Plays, 1950
Crisis in Civilization, 1950
Sheaves, 1951
More Stories from Tagore, 1951
A Tagore's Testament, 1955
Our Universe, 1958
The Runaway and Other Stories, 1959
Wings of Death, 1960
GITABITAN, 1960
A Tagore Reader, 1961 (ed. by Amiya Chakravarty)
Towards Universal Man, 1961
On Art and Aesthetics, 1961
BICITRA, 1961
GALPAGUCCHA, 1960-62 (4 vols.)
Boundless Sky, 1964
The Housewarming, 1964
RABINDRA-RACANABALI, 1964-1966 (27 vols.)
Patraput, 1969
Imperfect Encounter, 1972
Later Poems, 1974
The Housewarming, 1977
Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Poems, 1985
Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories, 1991 (trans. by William Radice)

Salutation

2008-05-07T21:45:00.001-07:00

In one salutation to thee, my God,

let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet.

Like a rain-cloud of July

hung low with its burden of unshed showers

let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee.

Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single current

and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to thee.

Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day

back to their mountain nests

let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home

in one salutation to thee.

jaynti

2008-05-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

Sit Smiling

2008-05-07T06:10:00.003-07:00

I boasted among men that I had known you.

They see your pictures in all works of mine.

They come and ask me, `Who is he?'

I know not how to answer them. I say, `Indeed, I cannot tell.'

They blame me and they go away in scorn.

And you sit there smiling.

I put my tales of you into lasting songs.

The secret gushes out from my heart.

They come and ask me, `Tell me all your meanings.'

I know not how to answer them.

I say, `Ah, who knows what they mean!'

They smile and go away in utter scorn.

And you sit there smiling.

Ocean of Forms

2008-05-07T06:10:00.001-07:00

I dive down into the depth of the ocean of forms,

hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.

No more sailing from harbor to harbor with this my weather-beaten boat.

The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.

And now I am eager to die into the deathless.

Into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss

where swells up the music of toneless strings

I shall take this harp of my life.

I shall tune it to the notes of forever,

and when it has sobbed out its last utterance,

lay down my silent harp at the feet of the silent.

Still Heart

2008-05-07T06:09:00.002-07:00

When I give up the helm

I know that the time has come for thee to take it.

What there is to do will be instantly done.

Vain is this struggle.

Then take away your hands

and silently put up with your defeat, my heart,

and think it your good fortune to sit perfectly still

where you are placed.

These my lamps are blown out at every little puff of wind,

and trying to light them I forget all else again and again.

But I shall be wise this time and wait in the dark,

spreading my mat on the floor;

and whenever it is thy pleasure, my lord,

come silently and take thy seat here.

Parting Words

2008-05-07T06:09:00.001-07:00

When I go from hence

let this be my parting word,

that what I have seen is unsurpassable.

I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus

that expands on the ocean of light,

and thus am I blessed

---let this be my parting word.

In this playhouse of infinite forms

I have had my play

and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.

My whole body and my limbs

have thrilled with his touch who is beyond touch;

and if the end comes here, let it come

---let this be my parting word.

Threshold

2008-05-06T07:37:00.001-07:00

I was not aware of the moment

when I first crossed the threshold of this life.

What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery

like a bud in the forest at midnight!

When in the morning I looked upon the light

I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world,

that the inscrutable without name and form

had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother.

Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me.

And because I love this life,

I know I shall love death as well.

The child cries out

when from the right breast the mother takes it away,

in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.

Farewell

2008-05-06T07:36:00.003-07:00

I have got my leave. Bid me farewell, my brothers!

I bow to you all and take my departure.

Here I give back the keys of my door

---and I give up all claims to my house.

I only ask for last kind words from you.

We were neighbors for long,

but I received more than I could give.

Now the day has dawned

and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out.

A summons has come and I am ready for my journey.

Last Curtain

2008-05-06T07:36:00.001-07:00

I know that the day will come

when my sight of this earth shall be lost,

and life will take its leave in silence,

drawing the last curtain over my eyes.

Yet stars will watch at night,

and morning rise as before,

and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains.

When I think of this end of my moments,

the barrier of the moments breaks

and I see by the light of death

thy world with its careless treasures.

Rare is its lowliest seat,

rare is its meanest of lives.

Things that I longed for in vain

and things that I got

---let them pass.

Let me but truly possess

the things that I ever spurned

and overlooked.

Death

2008-05-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

O thou the last fulfilment of life,

Death, my death, come and whisper to me!

Day after day I have kept watch for thee;

for thee have I borne the joys and pangs of life.

All that I am, that I have, that I hope and all my love

have ever flowed towards thee in depth of secrecy.

One final glance from thine eyes

and my life will be ever thine own.

The flowers have been woven

and the garland is ready for the bridegroom.

After the wedding the bride shall leave her home

and meet her lord alone in the solitude of night.

2008-05-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

Untimely Leave

2008-05-04T07:55:00.001-07:00

No more noisy, loud words from me---such is my master's will.
Henceforth I deal in whispers.
The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.

Men hasten to the King's market. All the buyers and sellers are there.
But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick of work.

Let then the flowers come out in my garden, though it is not their time;
and let the midday bees strike up their lazy hum.

Full many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil,
but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him;
and I know not why is this sudden call to what useless inconsequence!

Brink of Eternity

2008-05-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

In desperate hope I go and search for her
in all the corners of my room;
I find her not.

My house is small
and what once has gone from it can never be regained.

But infinite is thy mansion, my lord,
and seeking her I have to come to thy door.

I stand under the golden canopy of thine evening sky
and I lift my eager eyes to thy face.

I have come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish
---no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears.

Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean,
plunge it into the deepest fullness.
Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch
in the allness of the universe.

Chain of Pearls

2008-05-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

Mother, I shall weave a chain of pearls for thy neck
with my tears of sorrow.

The stars have wrought their anklets of light to deck thy feet,
but mine will hang upon thy breast.

Wealth and fame come from thee
and it is for thee to give or to withhold them.
But this my sorrow is absolutely mine own,
and when I bring it to thee as my offering
thou rewardest me with thy grace.

Endless Time

2008-05-01T10:18:00.001-07:00

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.

There is none to count thy minutes.

Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.

Thou knowest how to wait.

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.

We have no time to lose,

and having no time we must scramble for a chance.

We are too poor to be late.

And thus it is that time goes by

while I give it to every querulous man who claims it,

and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut;

but I find that yet there is time.

Lost Time

2008-05-01T10:17:00.004-07:00

On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time.

But it is never lost, my lord.

Thou hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands.

Hidden in the heart of things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts,

buds into blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness.

I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed

and imagined all work had ceased.

In the morning I woke up

and found my garden full with wonders of flowers.

Roaming Cloud

2008-05-01T10:17:00.003-07:00

I am like a remnant of a cloud of autumn

uselessly roaming in the sky, O my sun ever-glorious!

Thy touch has not yet melted my vapor,

making me one with thy light,

and thus I count months and years separated from thee.

If this be thy wish and if this be thy play,

then take this fleeting emptiness of mine,

paint it with colors, gild it with gold,

float it on the wanton wind and spread it in varied wonders.

And again when it shall be thy wish to end this play at night,

I shall melt and vanish away in the dark,

or it may be in a smile of the white morning,

in a coolness of purity transparent.

Let Me Not Forget

2008-05-01T10:17:00.001-07:00

If it is not my portion to meet thee in this life

then let me ever feel that I have missed thy sight

---let me not forget for a moment,

let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams

and in my wakeful hours.

As my days pass in the crowded market of this world

and my hands grow full with the daily profits,

let me ever feel that I have gained nothing

---let me not forget for a moment,

let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams

and in my wakeful hours.

When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting,

when I spread my bed low in the dust,

let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me

---let me not forget a moment,

let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams

and in my wakeful hours.

When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound

and the laughter there is loud,

let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house

---let me not forget for a moment,

let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams

and in my wakeful hours.

Lost Star

2008-04-30T22:08:00.001-07:00

When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first

splendor, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang

`Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!'

But one cried of a sudden

---`It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain of light

and one of the stars has been lost.'

The golden string of their harp snapped,

their song stopped, and they cried in dismay

---`Yes, that lost star was the best,

she was the glory of all heavens!'

From that day the search is unceasing for her,

and the cry goes on from one to the other

that in her the world has lost its one joy!

Only in the deepest silence of night the stars smile

and whisper among themselves

---`Vain is this seeking! unbroken perfection is over all!'

Face to Face

2008-04-30T22:07:00.002-07:00

Day after day, O lord of my life,

shall I stand before thee face to face.

With folded hands, O lord of all worlds,

shall I stand before thee face to face.

Under thy great sky in solitude and silence,

with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face.

In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil

and with struggle, among hurrying crowds

shall I stand before thee face to face.

And when my work shall be done in this world,

O King of kings, alone and speechless

shall I stand before thee face to face.

Senses

2008-04-30T22:07:00.001-07:00

Deliverance is not for me in renunciation.

I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.

Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various

colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim.

My world will light its hundred different lamps with thy flame

and place them before the altar of thy temple.

No, I will never shut the doors of my senses.

The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.

Yes, all my illusions will burn into illumination of joy,

and all my desires ripen into fruits of love.

Innermost One

2008-04-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

He it is, the innermost one,

who awakens my being with his deep hidden touches.

He it is who puts his enchantment upon these eyes

and joyfully plays on the chords of my heart

in varied cadence of pleasure and pain.

He it is who weaves the web of this maya

in evanescent hues of gold and silver, blue and green,

and lets peep out through the folds his feet,

at whose touch I forget myself.

Days come and ages pass,

and it is ever he who moves my heart in many a name,

in many a guise, in many a rapture of joy and of sorrow.

Maya

2008-04-28T01:35:00.004-07:00

That I should make much of myself and turn it on all sides,

thus casting colored shadows on thy radiance

---such is thy Maya.

Thou settest a barrier in thine own being

and then callest thy severed self in myriad notes.

This thy self-separation has taken body in me.

The poignant song is echoed through all the sky in many-coloued tears

and smiles, alarms and hopes; waves rise up and sink again,

dreams break and form.

In me is thy own defeat of self.

This screen that thou hast raised is painted with innumerable figures

with the brush of the night and the day.

Behind it thy seat is woven in wondrous mysteries of curves,

casting away all barren lines of straightness.

The great pageant of thee and me has overspread the sky.

With the tune of thee and me all the air is vibrant,

and all ages pass with the hiding and seeking of thee and me.

Stream of Life

2008-04-28T01:35:00.003-07:00

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day

runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth

in numberless blades of grass

and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth

and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.

And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

She

2008-04-28T01:35:00.001-07:00

She who ever had remained in the depth of my being,

in the twilight of gleams and of glimpses;

she who never opened her veils in the morning light,

will be my last gift to thee, my God, folded in my final song.

Words have wooed yet failed to win her;

persuasion has stretched to her its eager arms in vain.

I have roamed from country to country keeping her in the core of my heart,

and around her have risen and fallen the growth and decay of my life.

Over my thoughts and actions, my slumbers and dreams,

she reigned yet dwelled alone and apart.

Many a man knocked at my door and asked for her

and turned away in despair.

There was none in the world who ever saw her face to face,

and she remained in her loneliness waiting for thy recognition.

Old and New

2008-04-28T01:34:00.000-07:00

Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not.

Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own.

Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.

I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter;

I forget that there abides the old in the new,

and that there also thou abidest.

Through birth and death, in this world or in others,

wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same,

the one companion of my endless life

who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar.

When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut.

Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose

the bliss of the touch of the one

in the play of many.

Colored Toys

2008-04-27T08:24:00.002-07:00

When I bring to you colored toys, my child,

I understand why there is such a play of colors on clouds, on water,

and why flowers are painted in tints

---when I give colored toys to you, my child.

When I sing to make you dance

I truly now why there is music in leaves,

and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of the listening earth

---when I sing to make you dance.

When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands

I know why there is honey in the cup of the flowers

and why fruits are secretly filled with sweet juice

---when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands.

When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling,

I surely understand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light,

and what delight that is that is which the summer breeze brings to my body

---when I kiss you to make you smile.

Seashore

2008-04-27T08:24:00.001-07:00

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

The infinite sky is motionless overhead

and the restless water is boisterous.

On the seashore of endless worlds

the children meet with shouts and dances.

They build their houses with sand

and they play with empty shells.

With withered leaves they weave their boats

and smilingly float them on the vast deep.

Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets.

Pearl fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships,

while children gather pebbles and scatter them again.

They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter

and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach.

Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children,

even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle.

The sea plays with children,

and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

Tempest roams in the pathless sky,

ships get wrecked in the trackless water,

death is abroad and children play.

On the seashore of endless worlds is the

great meeting of children.

Passing Breeze

2008-04-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know, this is nothing but thy love,

O beloved of my heart---this golden light that dances upon the leaves,

these idle clouds sailing across the sky,

this passing breeze leaving its coolness upon my forehead.

The morning light has flooded my eyes---this is thy message to my heart.

Thy face is bent from above, thy eyes look down on my eyes,

and my heart has touched thy feet.

Light

2008-04-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

Light, my light, the world-filling light,

the eye-kissing light,

heart-sweetening light!

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life;

the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love;

the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light.

Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.

The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling,

and it scatters gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling,

and gladness without measure.

The heaven's river has drowned its banks

and the flood of joy is abroad.

The Journey

2008-04-23T09:10:00.001-07:00

The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs;
and the flowers were all merry by the roadside;
and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds
while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

We sang no glad songs nor played;
we went not to the village for barter;
we spoke not a word nor smiled;
we lingered not on the way.
We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade.
Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon.
The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree,
and I laid myself down by the water
and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

My companions laughed at me in scorn;
they held their heads high and hurried on;
they never looked back nor rested;
they vanished in the distant blue haze.
They crossed many meadows and hills,
and passed through strange, far-away countries.
All honor to you, heroic host of the interminable path!
Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise,
but found no response in me.
I gave myself up for lost
in the depth of a glad humiliation
---in the shadow of a dim delight.

The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom
slowly spread over my heart.
I forgot for what I had traveled,
and I surrendered my mind without struggle
to the maze of shadows and songs.

At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes,
I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile.
How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome,
and the struggle to reach thee was hard!

Distant Time

2008-04-23T09:09:00.004-07:00

I know not from what distant time
thou art ever coming nearer to meet me.
Thy sun and stars can never keep thee hidden from me for aye.

In many a morning and eve thy footsteps have been heard
and thy messenger has come within my heart and called me in secret.

I know not only why today my life is all astir,
and a feeling of tremulous joy is passing through my heart.

It is as if the time were come to wind up my work,
and I feel in the air a faint smell of thy sweet presence.

Silent Steps

2008-04-23T09:09:00.003-07:00

Have you not heard his silent steps?
He comes, comes, ever comes.

Every moment and every age,
every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes.

Many a song have I sung in many a mood of mind,
but all their notes have always proclaimed,
`He comes, comes, ever comes.'

In the fragrant days of sunny April through the forest path he comes,
comes, ever comes.

In the rainy gloom of July nights on the thundering chariot of clouds
he comes, comes, ever comes.

In sorrow after sorrow it is his steps that press upon my heart,
and it is the golden touch of his feet that makes my joy to shine.

Silent Steps

2008-04-23T09:09:00.001-07:00

Where Shadow Chases Light

2008-04-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

This is my delight,
thus to wait and watch at the wayside
where shadow chases light
and the rain comes in the wake of the summer.

Messengers, with tidings from unknown skies,
greet me and speed along the road.
My heart is glad within,
and the breath of the passing breeze is sweet.

From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door,
and I know that of a sudden
the happy moment will arrive when I shall see.

In the meanwhile I smile and I sing all alone.
In the meanwhile the air is filling with the perfume of promise

Signet of Eternity

2008-04-20T18:04:00.003-07:00

The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee;

and entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd,

unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon

many a fleeting moment of my life.

And today when by chance I light upon them and see thy signature,

I find they have lain scattered in the dust mixed with the memory of

joys and sorrows of my trivial days forgotten.

Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust,

and the steps that I heard in my playroom

are the same that are echoing from star to star.

Sail Away

2008-04-20T18:04:00.001-07:00

Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat,

only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this our

pilgrimage to no country and to no end.

In that shoreless ocean,

at thy silently listening smile my songs would swell in melodies,

free as waves, free from all bondage of words.

Is the time not come yet?

Are there works still to do?

Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore

and in the fading light the seabirds come flying to their nests.

Who knows when the chains will be off,

and the boat, like the last glimmer of sunset,

vanish into the night?

Beggarly Heart

2008-04-20T18:03:00.002-07:00

When the heart is hard and parched up,

come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life,

come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from

beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,

break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one,

thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.

Only Thee

2008-04-20T18:03:00.001-07:00

That I want thee, only thee---let my heart repeat without end.

All desires that distract me, day and night,

are false and empty to the core.

As the night keeps hidden in its gloom the petition for light,

even thus in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry

---`I want thee, only thee'.

As the storm still seeks its end in peace

when it strikes against peace with all its might,

even thus my rebellion strikes against thy love

and still its cry is

---`I want thee, only thee'.

Closed Path

2008-04-19T07:27:00.004-07:00

I thought that my voyage had come to its end

at the last limit of my power,---that the path before me was closed,

that provisions were exhausted

and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.

And when old words die out on the tongue,

new melodies break forth from the heart;

and where the old tracks are lost,

new country is revealed with its wonders.

Give Me Strength

2008-04-19T07:27:00.003-07:00

This is my prayer to thee, my lord---strike,

strike at the root of penury in my heart.

Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.

Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.

Give me the strength never to disown the poor

or bend my knees before insolent might.

Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.

And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.

Little of Me

2008-04-19T07:27:00.001-07:00

Let only that little be left of me

whereby I may name thee my all.

Let only that little be left of my will

whereby I may feel thee on every side,

and come to thee in everything,

and offer to thee my love every moment.

Let only that little be left of me

whereby I may never hide thee.

Let only that little of my fetters be left

whereby I am bound with thy will,

and thy purpose is carried out in my life---and that is the fetter of thy love.

Free Love

2008-04-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world.

But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs,

and thou keepest me free.

Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone.

But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.

If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart,

thy love for me still waits for my love.

Prisoner

2008-04-18T01:58:00.002-07:00

`Prisoner, tell me, who was it that bound you?'

`It was my master,' said the prisoner.

`I thought I could outdo everybody in the world in wealth and power,

and I amassed in my own treasure-house the money due to my king.

When sleep overcame me I lay upon the bed that was for my lord,

and on waking up I found I was a prisoner in my own treasure-house.'

`Prisoner, tell me, who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?'

`It was I,' said the prisoner, `who forged this chain very carefully.

I thought my invincible power would hold the world captive

leaving me in a freedom undisturbed.

Thus night and day I worked at the chain

with huge fires and cruel hard strokes.

When at last the work was done

and the links were complete and unbreakable,

Who is This?

2008-04-18T01:58:00.001-07:00

I came out alone on my way to my tryst.

But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?

I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.

He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger;

he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.

He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame;

but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.

Dungeon

2008-04-18T01:57:00.002-07:00

He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon.

I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into

the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow.

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand

lest a least hole should be left in this name;

and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.

Lamp of Love

2008-04-18T01:57:00.001-07:00

Light, oh where is the light?

Kindle it with the burning fire of desire!

There is the lamp but never a flicker of a flame---is such thy fate, my heart?

Ah, death were better by far for thee!

Misery knocks at thy door,

and her message is that thy lord is wakeful,

and he calls thee to the love-tryst through the darkness of night.

The sky is overcast with clouds and the rain is ceaseless.

I know not what this is that stirs in me---I know not its meaning.

A moment's flash of lightning drags down a deeper gloom on my sight,

and my heart gropes for the path to where the music of the night calls me.

Light, oh where is the light!

Kindle it with the burning fire of desire!

It thunders and the wind rushes screaming through the void.

The night is black as a black stone.

Let not the hours pass by in the dark.

Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.

Sleep

2008-04-14T08:48:00.003-07:00

In the night of weariness

let me give myself up to sleep without struggle,

resting my trust upon thee.

Let me not force my flagging spirit into a poor preparation for thy worship.

It is thou who drawest the veil of night upon the tired eyes of the day

to renew its sight in a fresher gladness of awakening.

When Day Is Done

2008-04-14T08:48:00.001-07:00

If the day is done,

if birds sing no more,

if the wind has flagged tired,

then draw the veil of darkness thick upon me,

even as thou hast wrapt the earth with the coverlet of sleep

and tenderly closed the petals of the drooping lotus at dusk.

From the traveler,

whose sack of provisions is empty before the voyage is ended,

whose garment is torn and dust-laden,

whose strength is exhausted,

remove shame and poverty,

and renew his life like a flower under the cover of thy kindly night.

Friend

2008-04-14T08:47:00.003-07:00

Art thou abroad on this stormy night

on thy journey of love, my friend?

The sky groans like one in despair.

I have no sleep tonight.

Ever and again I open my door and look out on

the darkness, my friend!

I can see nothing before me.

I wonder where lies thy path!

By what dim shore of the ink-black river,

by what far edge of the frowning forest,

through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading

thy course to come to me, my friend?

Boat

2008-04-14T08:47:00.001-07:00

I must launch out my boat.

The languid hours pass by on the

shore---Alas for me!

The spring has done its flowering and taken leave.

And now with the burden of faded futile flowers I wait and linger.

The waves have become clamorous, and upon the bank in the shady lane

the yellow leaves flutter and fall.

What emptiness do you gaze upon!

Do you not feel a thrill passing through the air

with the notes of the far-away song

floating from the other shore?

Lotus

2008-04-11T21:29:00.001-07:00

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying,

and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my

dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.

That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to

me that is was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.

I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this

perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.

Patience

2008-04-11T21:28:00.002-07:00

If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it.

I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil

and its head bent low with patience.

The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish,

and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.

Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests,

and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.

Strong Mercy

2008-04-11T21:28:00.001-07:00

My desires are many and my cry is pitiful,

but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals;

and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple,

great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked---this sky and the light, this body and the

life and the mind---saving me from perils of overmuch desire.

There are times when I languidly linger

and times when I awaken and hurry in search of my goal;

but cruelly thou hidest thyself from before me.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of thy full acceptance by

refusing me ever and anon, saving me from perils of weak, uncertain desire.

Song Unsung

2008-04-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.

I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set;

only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.

The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by.

I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice;

only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house.

The livelong day has passed in spreading his seat on the floor;

but the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house.

I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.

Journey Home

2008-04-08T08:59:00.001-07:00

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my

voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,

and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,

and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!'

The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand

streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!'

Leave This

2008-04-08T08:58:00.002-07:00

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads!

Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut?

Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground

and where the pathmaker is breaking stones.

He is with them in sun and in shower,

and his garment is covered with dust.

Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance?

Where is this deliverance to be found?

Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation;

he is bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense!

What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained?

Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.

Fool

2008-04-08T08:58:00.001-07:00

O Fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders!

O beggar, to come beg at thy own door!

Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all,

and never look behind in regret.

Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath.

It is unholy---take not thy gifts through its unclean hands.

Accept only what is offered by sacred love.

Flower

2008-04-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it

droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch of

pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am

aware, and the time of offering go by.

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower

in thy service and pluck it while there is time.

Moment's Indulgence

2008-04-06T22:10:00.003-07:00

I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works

that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.

Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite,

and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.

Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and

the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.

Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing

dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Purity

2008-04-06T22:10:00.001-07:00

Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing

that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing

that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.

I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my

love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.

And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it

is thy power gives me strength to act.

Little Flute

2008-04-06T22:02:00.002-07:00

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail

vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales,

and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in

joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.

Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

Mind Without Fear

2008-04-06T22:02:00.001-07:00

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up

into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason

has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Life of rabindranath tagore

2008-04-05T04:24:00.000-07:00

1861
Born on Monday, May 7th, (Vaisakha 25, Saka Era 1783, Bengali Era 1268).

1865
Admitted to Calcutta Training Academy.

1868
Admitted to Oriental Seminary and later to Normal School.

1871
Admitted to Bengal Academy.

1873
Goes with his father Debendranath Tagore on a trip to the Himalayas; his
first
visit to Bolpur on the way, composes a drama, Prithviraj Parajay.

1874

His poem entitled Abhilash appears in the Tattvabodhini Patrika.
He is admitted to St. Xavier's School in Calcutta.

1875
On the 11th February, in his first public appearance, recites a patriotic
poem
at the Hindu Mela.

1877
Starts
to publish poems and articles regularly in his family's monthly journal,
Bharati.

1878
Goes
to England with brother, Satyendranath.

1880
Returns
to India without completing any course of study.

1881
Composes his first set of devotional songs for anniversary of Brahmo Samaj-Maghotsav.
His first musical play, Valmiki-Pratibha staged at Jorasanko.

1883
Marries Mrinalini Devi.

1884
Is appointed Secretary to the Adi Brahmo Samaj, enters into controversy
with
Bankimchandra over the neo-Hindu movement.

1885
makes charge of Balak, a monthly magazine for the young.

1890
Severely
attacks the anti-Indian policy of Lord Cross, then Secretary of State
for India.
Takes charge of the management of the Tagore Estates with Selaidah as
his headquarters.

1891
Writes his first six short stories including Post Master.

1892
At the request of the Rajshahi Association writes his first criticism of
the system
of education, Sikshar Herpher, a logical and vigorous proposal for
the
acceptance of mother tongue as the medium of instruction.

1894
Takes over editorial charge of Sadhana.

1898
Initiates
agricultural experiments on his estates.
Sedition Bill; arrest of Bal Gangadhar Tilak; he reads his paper Kantha-Rodh
(The Throttled) at a public meeting in Calcutta.

1899
At the anniversary of 7 Poush, leads the prayer and delivers his first sermon
on
Brahmoponishad in the Mandir at Santiniketan.

1901
Establishes
school at Santiniketan. Revives Bangadarshan, editing it for five years.
Comes into contact with Brahmabandhab Upadhyay.

1905
Agitation against Lord Curzon's proposal to partition Bengal. Rabindranath
advocates policy
of constructive non-cooperation against the British. On 16th October (the
day partition
becomes a settled fact), Rabindranath initiates the Rakhi-bandhan ceremony
as a symbol of
unity in Bengal. Leads a huge procession through the streets of Calcutta
singing
Banglar mati, Banglar jal.

1906
Writes
a series of articles on problems of education and draws up a comprehensive
programme of work for the National Council of Education.

1908
Initiates organised village uplift work in the Patisar region of the Tagore
estates
with the help of Kalimohan Ghosh and others.

1910
Christmas Day is observed at Santiniketan for the first time - the Poet
conducts the service.

1912
English Gitanjali published by the India Society, London.

1913
English
versions of Gitanjali, The Crescent Moon, The Gardener
and Chitra
were published by Macmillan.
On 13th November, Rabindranath was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1914
Gandhi's students from Phoenix, South Africa come to Santiniketan.

1915
Receives
knighthood. Meets Gandhi for the first time.

1916
Travels to Japan and USA, giving lectures on Nationalism and Personality.

1917
Lends support to Pramatha Chaudhuri's attempts to popularise spoken Bengali
as a vehicle of literary expression and himself contributes to Sabujpatra,
his first story
written in colloquial Bengali, Paila Nambar.

1918
Formal foundation stone of Visva-Bharati is laid.

1919
Cautions
Gandhi against misuse of passive resistance.
Renounces knighthood in protest against Jalianwallah Bagh massacre.

1920
Leaves for England on a lecture tour to raise funds for Visva-Bharati. Travels
to France, Holland and USA.

1921
Visits England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

1922
Rural Reconstruction Institute at Sriniketan is formally inaugurated with
Elmhirst
as its first director.

1923
Visva-Bharati Quarterly starts publication under his editorship. Visarjan
is staged at
the Empire Theatre, Calcutta where the Poet plays the role of Jaysingha.

1924
Visits China and Japan and then sails for South America; stays in Buenos
Aires as the
guest of Victoria Ocampo.

1926
Travels
to Italy (as a guest of Mussolini), Switzerland (where he meets Romain Rolland)
and other countries of Europe.

1927
Tour of Southeast Asia.

1928
Starts
painting regularly.

1930
His paintings are exhibited at the Gallerie Pigalle in Paris. Other exhibitions
follow in
Birmingham, in several European capitals and in USA.
Delivers Hibbert lectures in Oxford (published as The Religion of Man).
Writes The Child, his one and only original English poem.

1932
Starts experimenting with vers libre in his Punascha.

1937
Rabindranath
falls seriously ill. Prantik (Borderland) poems published. Convocation
address in Bengali.

1940
Oxford
University holds special Convocation at Santiniketan to confer
Doctorate on Rabindranath.

1941
His final lecture, Crisis in Civilisation is read on his eightieth
birthday.
Dies 7th August.

conversation between tagore and einstein

2008-03-31T04:23:00.000-07:00

Tagore and Einstein met through a common friend, Dr. Mendel. Tagore visited Einstein at his residence at Kaputh in the suburbs of Berlin on July 14, 1930, and Einstein returned the call and visited Tagore at the Mendel home. Both conversations were recorded and the above photograph was taken. The July 14 conversation is reproduced here, and was originally published in The Religion of Man (George, Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London), Appendix II, pp. 222-225.

TAGORE: I was discussing with Dr. Mendel today the new mathematical discoveries which tell us that in the realm of infinitesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character.

EINSTEIN: The facts that make science tend toward this view do not say good-bye to causality.

TAGORE: Maybe not, yet it appears that the idea of causality is not in the elements, but that some other force builds up with them an organized universe.

EINSTEIN: One tries to understand in the higher plane how the order is. The order is there, where the big elements combine and guide existence, but in the minute elements this order is not perceptible.

TAGORE: Thus duality is in the depths of existence, the contradiction of free impulse and the directive will which works upon it and evolves an orderly scheme of things.

EINSTEIN: Modern physics would not say they are contradictory. Clouds look as one from a distance, but if you see them nearby, they show themselves as disorderly drops of water.

TAGORE: I find a parallel in human psychology. Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization?

EINSTEIN: Even the elements are not without statistical order; elements of radium will always maintain their specific order, now and ever onward, just as they have done all along. There is, then, a statistical order in the elements.

TAGORE: Otherwise, the drama of existence would be too desultory. It is the constant harmony of chance and determination which makes it eternally new and living.

EINSTEIN: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

TAGORE: There is in human affairs an element of elasticity also, some freedom within a small range which is for the expression of our personality. It is like the musical system in India, which is not so rigidly fixed as western music. Our composers give a certain definite outline, a system of melody and rhythmic arrangement, and within a certain limit the player can improvise upon it. He must be one with the law of that particular melody, and then he can give spontaneous expression to his musical feeling within the prescribed regulation. We praise the composer for his genius in creating a foundation along with a superstructure of melodies, but we expect from the player his own skill in the creation of variations of melodic flourish and ornamentation. In creation we follow the central law of existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from it, we can have sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the fullest self-expression.

EINSTEIN: That is possible only when there is a strong artistic tradition in music to guide the people's mind. In Europe, music has come too far away from popular art and popular feeling and has become something like a secret art with conventions and traditions of its own.

TAGORE: You have to be absolutely obedient to this too complicated music. In India, the measure of a singer's freedom is in his own creative personality. He can sing the composer's song as his own, if he has the power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law of the melody which he is given to interpret.

EINSTEIN: It requires a very high standard of art to realize fully the great idea in the original music, so that one can make variations upon it. In our country, the variations are often prescribed.

TAGORE: If in our conduct we can follow the law of goodness, we can have real liberty of self-expression. The principle of conduct is there, but the character which makes it true and individual is our own creation. In our music there is a duality of freedom and prescribed order.

EINSTEIN: Are the words of a song also free? I mean to say, is the singer at liberty to add his own words to the song which he is singing?

TAGORE: Yes. In Bengal we have a kind of song-kirtan, we call it-which gives freedom to the singer to introduce parenthetical comments, phrases not in the original song. This occasions great enthusiasm, since the audience is constantly thrilled by some beautiful, spontaneous sentiment added by the singer.

EINSTEIN: Is the metrical form quite severe?

TAGORE: Yes, quite. You cannot exceed the limits of versification; the singer in all his variations must keep the rhythm and the time, which is fixed. In European music you have a comparative liberty with time, but not with melody.

EINSTEIN: Can the Indian music be sung without words? Can one understand a song without words?

TAGORE: Yes, we have songs with unmeaning words, sounds which just help to act as carriers of the notes. In North India, music is an independent art, not the interpretation of words and thoughts, as in Bengal. The music is very intricate and subtle and is a complete world of melody by itself.

EINSTEIN: Is it not polyphonic?

TAGORE: Instruments are used, not for harmony, but for keeping time and adding to the volume and depth. Has melody suffered in your music by the imposition of harmony?

EINSTEIN: Sometimes it does suffer very much. Sometimes the harmony swallows up the melody altogether.

TAGORE: Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

EINSTEIN: It is a beautiful comparison; line is also much older than color. It seems that your melody is much richer in structure than ours. Japanese music also seems to be so.

TAGORE: It is difficult to analyze the effect of eastern and western music on our minds. I am deeply moved by the western music; I feel that it is great, that it is vast in its structure and grand in its composition. Our own music touches me more deeply by its fundamental lyrical appeal. European music is epic in character; it has a broad background and is Gothic in its structure.

EINSTEIN: This is a question we Europeans cannot properly answer, we are so used to our own music. We want to know whether our own music is a conventional or a fundamental human feeling, whether to feel consonance and dissonance is natural, or a convention which we accept.

TAGORE: Somehow the piano confounds me. The violin pleases me much more.

EINSTEIN: It would be interesting to study the effects of European music on an Indian who had never heard it when he was young.

TAGORE: Once I asked an English musician to analyze for me some classical music, and explain to me what elements make for the beauty of the piece.

EINSTEIN: The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

TAGORE: Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer is beyond himself.

EINSTEIN: The same uncertainty will always be there about everything fundamental in our experience, in our reaction to art, whether in Europe or in Asia. Even the red flower I see before me on your table may not be the same to you and me.

TAGORE: And yet there is always going on the process of reconciliation between

BANQUET SPEECH

2008-03-29T01:31:00.001-07:00

Telegram from Rabindranath Tagore, read by Mr. Clive, British Chargé d'Affaires, at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1913

I beg to convey to the Swedish Academy my grateful appreciation of the breadth of understanding which has brought the distant near, and has made a stranger a brother.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

BIBLIOGRAPHY

2008-03-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned the honour as a protest against British policies in India.

Tagore had early success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained a luminous height, taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship. For the world he became the voice of India's spiritual heritage; and for India, especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.

Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Tagore's major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders]. He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Rabindranath Tagore died on August 7, 1941.

CONVERSATION

2008-03-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

Tagore and H.G. Wells met in Geneva in early June, 1930. Their conversation is reported here.

TAGORE: The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform. Calcutta, Bombay, Hong Kong, and other cities are more or less alike, wearing big masks which represent no country in particular.

WELLS: Yet don't you think that this very fact is an indication that we are reaching out for a new world-wide human order which refuses to be localized?

TAGORE: Our individual physiognomy need not be the same. Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed.

WELLS: We are gradually thinking now of one human civilization on the foundation of which individualities will have great chance of fulfillment. The individual, as we take him, has suffered from the fact that civilization has been split up into separate units, instead of being merged into a universal whole, which seems to be the natural destiny of mankind.

TAGORE: I believe the unity of human civilization can be better maintained by linking up in fellowship and cooperation of the different civilizations of the world. Do you think there is a tendency to have one common language for humanity?

WELLS: One common language will probably be forced upon mankind whether we like it or not. Previously, a community of fine minds created a new dialect. Now it is necessity that will compel us to adopt a universal language.

TAGORE: I quite agree. The time for five-mile dialects is fast vanishing. Rapid communication makes for a common language. Yet, this common language would probably not exclude national languages. There is again the curious fact that just now, along with the growing unities of the human mind, the development of national self-consciousness is leading to the formation or rather the revival of national languages everywhere. Don't you think that in America, in spite of constant touch between America and England, the English language is tending toward a definite modification and change?

WELLS: I wonder if that is the case now. Forty or fifty years ago this would have been the case, but now in literature and in common speech it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between English and American. There seems to be much more repercussion in the other direction. Today we are elaborating and perfecting physical methods of transmitting words. Translation is a bother. Take your poems - do they not lose much by that process? If you had a method of making them intelligible to all people at the same time, it would be really wonderful.

TAGORE: Music of different nations has a common psychological foundation, and yet that does not mean that national music should not exist. The same thing is, in my opinion, probably true for literature.

WELLS: Modern music is going from one country to another without loss - from Purcell to Bach, then Brahms, then Russian music, then oriental. Music is of all things in the world most international.

TAGORE: May I add something? I have composed more than three hundred pieces of music. They are all sealed from the West because they cannot properly be given to you in your own notation. Perhaps they would not be intelligible to your people even if I could get them written down in European notation.

WELLS: The West may get used to your music.

TAGORE: Certain forms of tunes and melodies which move us profoundly seem to baffle Western listeners; yet, as you say, perhaps closer acquaintance with them may gradually lead to their appreciation in the West.

WELLS: Artistic expression in the future will probably be quite different from what it is today; the medium will be the same and comprehensible to all. Take radio, which links together the world. And we cannot prevent further invention. Perhaps in the future, when the present clamor for national languages and dialects in broadcasting subsides, and new discoveries in science are made, we shall be conversing with one another through a common medium of speech yet undreamed of.

TAGORE: We have to create the new psychology needed for this age. We have to adjust ourselves to the new necessities and conditions of civilization.

WELLS: Adjustments, terrible adjustments!

TAGORE: Do you think there are any fundamental racial difficulties?

WELLS: No. New races are appearing and reappearing, perpetual fluctuations. There have been race mixtures from the earliest times; India is the supreme example of this. In Bengal, for instance, there has been an amazing mixture of races in spite of caste and other barriers.

TAGORE: Then there is the question of racial pride. Can the West fully acknowledge the East? If mutual acceptance is not possible, then I shall be very sorry for that country which rejects another's culture. Study can bring no harm, though men like Dr. Haas and Henri Matisse seem to think that the eastern mind should not go outside eastern countries, and then everything will be all right.

WELLS: I hope you disagree. So do I!

TAGORE: It is regrettable that any race or nation should claim divine favoritism and assume inherent superiority to all others in the scheme of creation.

WELLS: The supremacy of the West is only a question of probably the past hundred years. Before the battle of Lepanto the Turks were dominating the West; the voyage of Columbus was undertaken to avoid the Turks. Elizabethan writers and even their successors were struck by the wealth and the high material standards of the East. The history of western ascendancy is very brief indeed.

TAGORE: Physical science of the nineteenth century probably has created this spirit of race superiority in the West. When the East assimilates this physical science, the tide may turn and take a normal course.

WELLS: Modern science is not exactly European. A series of accidents and peculiar circumstances prevented some of the eastern countries from applying the discoveries made by humanists in other parts of the world. They themselves had once originated and developed a great many of the sciences that were later taken up by the West and given greater perfection. Today,

Japanese, Chinese and Indian names in the world of science are gaining due recognition.

TAGORE: India has been in a bad situation.

WELLS: When Macaulay imposed a third-rate literature and a poor system of education on India, Indians naturally resented it. No human being can live on Scott's poetry. I believe that things are now changing. But, remain assured, we English were not better off. We were no less badly educated than the average Indian, probably even worse.

TAGORE: Our difficulty is that our contact with the great civilizations of the West has not been a natural one. Japan has absorbed more of the western culture because she has been free to accept or reject according to her needs.

WELLS: It is a very bad story indeed, because there have been such great opportunities for knowing each other.

TAGORE: And then, the channels of education have become dry river beds, the current of our resources having been systematically been diverted along other directions.

WELLS: I am also a member of a subject race. I am taxed enormously. I have to send my check - so much for military aviation, so much for the diplomatic machinery of the government! You see, we suffer from the same evils. In India, the tradition of officialdom is, of course, more unnatural and has been going on for a long time. The Moguls, before the English came, seem to have been as indiscriminate as our own people.

TAGORE: And yet, there is a difference! The Mogul government was not scientifically efficient and mechanical to a degree. The Moguls wanted money, and so long as they could live in luxury they did not wish to interfere with the progressive village communities in India. The Muslim emperors did not dictate terms and force the hands of Indian educators and villagers. Now, for

instance, the ancient educational systems of India are completely disorganized, and all indigenous educational effort has to depend on official recognition.

WELLS: "Recognition" by the state, and good-bye to education!

TAGORE: I have often been asked what my plans are. My reply is that I have no scheme. My country, like every other, will evolve its own constitution; it will pass through its experimental phase and settle down into something quite different from what you or I expect.

THE CABULIWALLAH

2008-03-23T13:11:00.001-07:00

(THE FRUITSELLER FROM CABUL)

My five years' old daughter Mini cannot live without chattering. I
really believe that in all her life she has not wasted a minute in
silence. Her mother is often vexed at this, and would stop her prattle,
but I would not. To see Mini quiet is unnatural, and I cannot bear it
long. And so my own talk with her is always lively.

One morning, for instance, when I was in the midst of the seventeenth
chapter of my new novel, my little Mini stole into the room, and putting
her hand into mine, said: "Father! Ramdayal the door-keeper calls a
crow a krow! He doesn't know anything, does he?"

Before I could explain to her the differences of language in this world,
she was embarked on the full tide of another subject. "What do you
think, Father? Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing
water out of his trunk, and that is why it rains!"

And then, darting off anew, while I sat still making ready some reply to
this last saying, "Father! what relation is Mother to you?"

"My dear little sister in the law!" I murmured involuntarily to myself,
but with a grave face contrived to answer: "Go and play with Bhola,
Mini! I am busy!"

The window of my room overlooks the road. The child had seated herself
at my feet near my table, and was playing softly, drumming on her knees.
I was hard at work on my seventeenth chapter, where Protrap Singh, the
hero, had just caught Kanchanlata, the heroine, in his arms, and was
about to escape with her by the third story window of the
castle, when all of a sudden Mini left her play, and ran to the window,
crying, "A Cabuliwallah! a Cabuliwallah!" Sure enough in the street
below was a Cabuliwallah, passing slowly along. He wore the loose
soiled clothing of his people, with a tall turban; there was a bag on
his back, and he carried boxes of grapes in his hand.

I cannot tell what were my daughter's feelings at the sight of this man,
but she began to call him loudly. "Ah!" I thought, "he will come in,
and my seventeenth chapter will never be finished!" At which exact
moment the Cabuliwallah turned, and looked up at the child. When she
saw this, overcome by terror, she fled to her mother's protection, and
disappeared. She had a blind belief that inside the bag, which the big
man carried, there were perhaps two or three other children like
herself. The pedlar meanwhile entered my doorway, and greeted me with a
smiling face.

So precarious was the position of my hero and my heroine, that my first
impulse was to stop and buy something, since the man had been called. I
made some small purchases, and a conversation began about Abdurrahman,
the Russians, she English, and the Frontier Policy.

As he was about to leave, he asked: "And where is the little girl, sir?"

And I, thinking that Mini must get rid of her false fear, had her
brought out.

She stood by my chair, and looked at the Cabuliwallah and his bag. He
offered her nuts and raisins, but she would not be tempted, and only
clung the closer to me, with all her doubts increased.

This was their first meeting.

One morning, however, not many days later, as I was leaving the house, I
was startled to find Mini, seated on a bench near the door, laughing and
talking, with the great Cabuliwallah at her feet. In all her life, it
appeared; my small daughter had never found so patient a listener, save
her father. And already the corner of her little sari was
stuffed with almonds and raisins, the gift of her visitor, "Why did you
give her those?" I said, and taking out an eight-anna bit, I handed it
to him. The man accepted the money without demur, and slipped it into
his pocket.

Alas, on my return an hour later, I found the unfortunate coin had made
twice its own worth of trouble! For the Cabuliwallah had given it to
Mini, and her mother catching sight of the bright round object, had
pounced on the child with: "Where did you get that eight-anna bit? "

"The Cabuliwallah gave it me," said Mini cheerfully.

"The Cabuliwallah gave it you!" cried her mother much shocked. "Oh,
Mini! how could you take it from him?"

I, entering at the moment, saved her from impending disaster, and
proceeded to make my own inquiries.

It was not the first or second time, I found, that the two had met. The
Cabuliwallah had overcome the child's first terror by a judicious
bribery of nuts and almonds, and the two were now great friends.

They had many quaint jokes, which afforded them much amusement. Seated
in front of him, looking down on his gigantic frame in all her tiny
dignity, Mini would ripple her face with laughter, and begin: "O
Cabuliwallah, Cabuliwallah, what have you got in your bag?"

And he would reply, in the nasal accents of the mountaineer: "An
elephant!" Not much cause for merriment, perhaps; but how they both
enjoyed the witticism! And for me, this child's talk with a grown-up
man had always in it something strangely fascinating.

Then the Cabuliwallah, not to be behindhand, would take his turn: "Well,
little one, and when are you going to the father-in-law's house?"

Now most small Bengali maidens have heard long ago about the
father-in-law's house; but we, being a little new-fangled, had kept
these things from our child, and Mini at this question must have been a
trifle bewildered. But she would not show it, and with ready tact
replied: "Are you going there?"

Amongst men of the Cabuliwallah's class, however, it is well known that
the words father-in-law's house have a double meaning. It is a
euphemism for jail, the place where we are well cared for, at no expense
to ourselves. In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my
daughter's question. "Ah," he would say, shaking his fist at an
invisible policeman, "I will thrash my father-in-law!" Hearing this,
and picturing the poor discomfited relative, Mini would go off into
peals of laughter, in which her formidable friend would join.

These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went
forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in
Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very
name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight
of a foreigner in the streets, I would fall to weaving a network of
dreams, --the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home,
with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of
far-away wilds. Perhaps the scenes of travel conjure themselves up
before me, and pass and repass in my imagination all the more vividly,
because I lead such a vegetable existence, that a call to travel would
fall upon me like a thunderbolt. In the presence of this Cabuliwallah,
I was immediately transported to the foot of arid
mountain peaks, with narrow little defiles twisting in and out amongst
their towering heights. I could see the string of camels bearing the
merchandise, and the company of turbaned merchants, carrying some of
their queer old firearms, and some of their spears, journeying downward
towards the plains. I could see--but at some such point Mini's mother
would intervene, imploring me to "beware of that man."

Mini's mother is unfortunately a very timid lady. Whenever she hears a
noise in the street, or sees people coming towards the house, she always
jumps to the conclusion that they are either thieves, or drunkards, or
snakes, or tigers, or malaria or cockroaches, or caterpillars, or an
English sailor. Even after all these years of experience, she is not
able to overcome her terror. So she was full of doubts about the
Cabuliwallah, and used to beg me to keep a watchful eye on him.

I tried to laugh her fear gently away, but then she would turn round on
me seriously, and ask me solemn questions.

Were children never kidnapped?

Was it, then, not true that there was slavery in Cabul?

Was it so very absurd that this big man should be able to carry off a
tiny child?

I urged that, though not impossible, it was highly improbable. But this
was not enough, and her dread persisted. As it was indefinite, however,
it did not seem right to forbid the man the house, and the intimacy went
on unchecked.

continued in archives.........

THE CABULIWALLAH CONTINUES

2008-03-23T13:09:00.001-07:00

Once a year in the middle of January Rahmun, the Cabuliwallah, was in
the habit of returning to his country, and as the time approached he
would be very busy, going from house to house collecting his debts.
This year, however, he could always find time to come and see Mini. It
would have seemed to an outsider that there was some conspiracy between
the two, for when he could not come in the morning, he would appear in
the evening.

Even to me it was a little startling now and then, in the corner of a
dark room, suddenly to surprise this tall, loose-garmented, much
bebagged man; but when Mini would run in smiling, with her, "O!
Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!" and the two friends, so far apart in age,
would subside into their old laughter and their old jokes, I felt
reassured.

One morning, a few days before he had made up his mind to go, I was
correcting my proof sheets in my study. It was chilly weather. Through
the window the rays of the sun touched my feet, and the slight warmth
was very welcome. It was almost eight o'clock, and the early
pedestrians were returning home, with their heads covered. All at once,
I heard an uproar in the street, and, looking out, saw Rahmun being led
away bound between two policemen, and behind them a crowd of curious
boys. There were blood-stains on the clothes of the Cabuliwallah, and
one of the policemen carried a knife. Hurrying out, I stopped them, and
enquired what it all meant. Partly from one, partly from another, I
gathered that a certain neighbour had owed the pedlar something for a
Rampuri shawl, but had falsely denied having bought it, and that in the
course of the quarrel, Rahmun had struck him. Now in the heat of his
excitement, the prisoner began calling his enemy all sorts of names,
when suddenly in a verandah of my house appeared my little Mini, with
her usual exclamation: "O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!" Rahmun's face
lighted up as he turned to her. He had no bag under his arm today, so
she could not discuss the elephant with him. She at once therefore
proceeded to the next question: "Are you going to the father-in-law's
house?" Rahmun laughed and said: "Just where I am going, little one!"
Then seeing that the reply did not amuse the child, he held up his
fettered hands. " Ali," he said, " I would have thrashed that old
father-in-law, but my hands are bound!"

On a charge of murderous assault, Rahmun was sentenced to some years'
imprisonment.

Time passed away, and he was not remembered. The accustomed work in the
accustomed place was ours, and the thought of the once-free mountaineer
spending his years in prison seldom or never occurred to us. Even my
light-hearted Mini, I am ashamed to say, forgot her old friend. New
companions filled her life. As she grew older, she spent more of her
time with girls. So much time indeed did she spend with them that she
came no more, as she used to do, to her father's room. I was scarcely
on speaking terms with her.

Years had passed away. It was once more autumn and we had made
arrangements for our Mini's marriage. It was to take place during the
Puja Holidays. With Durga returning to Kailas, the light of our home
also was to depart to her husband's house, and leave her father's in the
shadow.

The morning was bright. After the rains, there was a sense of ablution
in the air, and the sun-rays looked like pure gold. So bright were they
that they gave a beautiful radiance even to the sordid brick walls of
our Calcutta lanes. Since early dawn to-day the wedding-pipes had been
sounding, and at each beat my own heart throbbed. The wail of the tune,
Bhairavi, seemed to intensify my pain at the approaching separation. My
Mini was to be married to-night.

>From early morning noise and bustle had pervaded the house. In the
courtyard the canopy had to be slung on its bamboo poles; the
chandeliers with their tinkling sound must be hung in each room and
verandah. There was no end of hurry and excitement. I was sitting in
my study, looking through the accounts, when some one entered, saluting
respectfully, and stood before me. It was Rahmun the Cabuliwallah. At
first I did not recognise him. He had no bag, nor the long hair, nor
the same vigour that he used to have. But he smiled, and I knew him
again.

"When did you come, Rahmun?" I asked him.

"Last evening," he said, "I was released from jail."

The words struck harsh upon my ears. I had never before talked with one
who had wounded his fellow, and my heart shrank within itself, when I
realised this, for I felt that the day would have been better-omened had
he not turned up.

"There are ceremonies going on," I said, "and I am busy. Could you
perhaps come another day?"

At once he turned to go; but as he reached the door he hesitated, and
said: "May I not see the little one, sir, for a moment?" It was his
belief that Mini was still the same. He had pictured her running to him
as she used, calling "O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!" He had imagined
too that they would laugh and talk together, just as of old. In fact,
in memory of former days he had brought, carefully wrapped up in paper,
a few almonds and raisins and grapes, obtained somehow from a
countryman, for his own little fund was dispersed.

I said again: "There is a ceremony in the house, and you will not be
able to see any one to-day."

The man's face fell. He looked wistfully at me for a moment, said "Good
morning," and went out. I felt a little sorry, and would have called
him back, but I found he was returning of his own accord. He came close
up to me holding out his offerings and said: "I brought these few
things, sir, for the little one. Will you give them to her?"

I took them and was going to pay him, but he caught my hand and said:
"You are very kind, sir! Keep me in your recollection. Do not offer me
money!--You have a little girl, I too have one like her in my own home.
I think of her, and bring fruits to your child, not to make a profit for
myself."

Saying this, he put his hand inside his big loose robe, and brought out
a small and dirty piece of paper. With great care he unfolded this, and
smoothed it out with both hands on my table. It bore the impression of
a little band. Not a photograph. Not a drawing. The impression of an
ink-smeared hand laid flat on the paper. This touch of his own little
daughter had been always on his heart, as he had come year after year to
Calcutta, to sell his wares in the streets.

Tears came to my eyes. I forgot that he was a poor Cabuli fruit-seller,
while I was--but no, what was I more than he? He also was a father.
That impression of the hand of his little Parbati in her distant
mountain home reminded me of my own little Mini.

I sent for Mini immediately from the inner apartment. Many difficulties
were raised, but I would not listen. Clad in the red silk of her
wedding-day, with the sandal paste on her forehead, and adorned as a
young bride, Mini came, and stood bashfully before me.

The Cabuliwallah looked a little staggered at the apparition. He could
not revive their old friendship. At last he smiled and said: "Little
one, are you going to your father-in-law's house?"

But Mini now understood the meaning of the word "father-in-law," and she
could not reply to him as of old. She flushed up at the question, and
stood before him with her bride-like face turned down.

I remembered the day when the Cabuliwallah and my Mini had first met,
and I felt sad. When she had gone, Rahmun heaved a deep sigh, and sat
down on the floor. The idea had suddenly come to him that his daughter
too must have grown in this long time, and that he would have to make
friends with her anew. Assuredly he would not find her, as he used to
know her. And besides, what might not have happened to her in these
eight years?

The marriage-pipes sounded, and the mild autumn sun streamed round us.
But Rahmun sat in the little Calcutta lane, and saw before him the
barren mountains of Afghanistan.

I took out a bank-note, and gave it to him, saying: "Go back to your own
daughter, Rahmun, in your own country, and may the happiness of your
meeting bring good fortune to my child!"

Having made this present, I had to curtail some of the festivities. I
could not have the electric lights I had intended, nor the military
band, and the ladies of the house were despondent at it. But to me the
wedding feast was all the brighter for the thought that in a distant
land a long-lost father met again with his only child.

THE RENUNCIATION

2008-03-22T05:51:00.002-07:00

I

It was a night of full moon early in the month of Phalgun. The youthful
spring was everywhere sending forth its breeze laden with the fragrance
of mango-blossoms. The melodious notes of an untiring papiya (One of the
sweetest songsters in Bengal. Anglo-Indian writers have nicknamed it the
"brain-fever bird," which is a sheer libel.), concealed within the thick
foliage of an old lichi tree by the side of a tank, penetrated a
sleepless bedroom of the Mukerji family. There Hemanta now restlessly
twisted a lock of his wife's hair round his finger, now beat her churl
against her wristlet until it tinkled, now pulled at the chaplet of
flowers about her head, and left it hanging over hex face. His mood was
that of as evening breeze which played about a favourite flowering
shrub, gently shaking her now this side, now that, in the hope of
rousing her to animation.

But Kusum sat motionless, looking out of the open window, with eyes
immersed in the moonlit depth of never-ending space beyond. Her
husband's caresses were lost on her.

At last Hemanta clasped both the hands of his wife, and, shaking them
gently, said: "Kusum, where are you? A patient search through a big
telescope would reveal you only as a small speck-you seem to have
receded so far away. O, do come closer to me, dear. See how beautiful
the night is."

Kusum turned her eyes from the void of space towards her husband, and
said slowly: "I know a mantra (A set of magic words.), which could in
one moment shatter this spring night and the moon into pieces."

"If you do," laughed Hemanta, "pray don't utter it. If any mantra of
yours could bring three or four Saturdays during the week, and prolong
the nights till 5 P.M. the next day, say it by all means."

Saying this, he tried to draw his wife a little closer to him. Kusum,
freeing herself from the embrace, said: "Do you know, to-night I feel a
longing to tell you what I promised to reveal only on my death-bed.
To-night I feel that I could endure whatever punishment you might
inflict on me."

Hemanta was on the point of making a jest about punishments by reciting
a verse from Jayadeva, when the sound of an angry pair of slippers was
heard approaching rapidly. They were the familiar footsteps of his
father, Haribar Mukerji, and Hemanta, not knowing what it meant, was in
a flutter of excitement.

Standing outside the door Harihar roared out: "Hemanta, turn your wife
out of the house immediately."

Hemanta looked at his wife, and detected no trace of surprise in her
features. She merely buried her face within the palms of her hands, and,
with all the strength and intensity of her soul, wished that she could
then and there melt into nothingness. It was the same papiya whose song
floated into the room with the south breeze, and no one heard it.
Endless are the beauties of the earth-but alas, how easily everything is
twisted out of shape.

II

Returning from without, Hemanta asked his wife: "Is it true?"

"It is," replied Kusum.

"Why didn't you tell me long ago?"

"I did try many a time, and I always failed. I am a wretched woman."

"Then tell me everything now."

Kusum gravely told her story in a firm unshaken voice. She waded
barefooted through fire, as it were, with slow unflinching steps, and
nobody knew how much she was scorched. Having heard her to the end,
Hemanta rose and walked out.

Kusum thought that her husband had gone, never to return to her again.
It did not strike her as strange. She took it as naturally as any other
incident of everyday life-so dry and apathetic had her mind become
during the last few moments. Only the world and love seemed to her as a
void and make-believe from beginning to end. Even the memory of the
protestations of love, which her husband had made to her in days past,
brought to her lips a dry, hard, joyless smile, like a sharp cruel knife
which had cut through her heart. She was thinking, perhaps, that
the love which seemed to fill so much of one's life, which brought in
its train such fondness and depth of feeling, which made even the
briefest separation so exquisitely painful and a moment's union so
intensely sweet, which seemed boundless in its extent and eternal in its
duration, the cessation of which could not be imagined even in births to
come--that this was that love! So feeble was its support! No sooner does
the priesthood touch it than your "eternal" love crumbles
into a handful of dust! Only a short while ago Hemanta had whispered to
her: "What a beautiful night!" The same night was not yet at an end, the
same yapiya was still warbling, the same south breeze still blew into
the roam, making the bed-curtain shiver; the same moonlight lay on the
bed next the open window, sleeping like a beautiful heroine exhausted
with gaiety. All this was unreal! Love was more falsely dissembling than
she herself!

III

The next morning Hemanta, fagged after a sleepless night, and looking
like one distracted, called at the house of Peari Sankar Ghosal. "What
news, my son?" Peari Sankar greeted him.

Hemanta, flaring up like a big fire, said in a trembling voice: "You
have defiled our caste. You have brought destruction upon us. And you
will have to pay for it." He could say no more; be felt choked.

"And you have preserved my caste, presented my ostracism from the
community, and patted me on the back affectionately!" said Peari Sankar
with a slight sarcastic smile.

Hemanta wished that his Brahmin-fury could reduce Peari Sankar to ashes
in a moment, but his rage burnt only himself. Peari Sankar sat before
him unscathed, and in the best of health.

"Did I ever do you any harm?" demanded Hemanta in a broken voice.

"Let me ask you one question," said Peari Sankar. "My daughter--my only
child-what harm had she done your father? You were very young then, and
probably never heard. Listen, then. Now, don't you excite yourself.
There is much humour in what I am going to relate.

"You were quite small when my son-in-law Nabakanta ran away to England
after stealing my daughter's jewels. You might truly remember the
commotion in the village when he returned as a barrister five years
later. Or, perhaps, you were unaware of it, as you were at school in
Calcutta at the time. Your father, arrogating to himself the headship of
the community, declared that if I sent my daughter to her husband's
home, I must renounce her for good, and never again allow her to cross
my threshold. I fell at your father's feet, and implored him, saying:
'Brother, save me this once. I will make the boy swallow cow-dung, and
go through the prayaschittam ceremony. Do take him back into caste.' But
your father remained obdurate. For my part, I could not disown my only
child, and, bidding good-bye to my village and my kinsmen, I betook
myself to Calcutta. There, too, my troubles followed me. When I had made
every arrangement for my nephew's marriage, your father stirred up the
girl's people, and they broke the match off. Then I
took a solemn vow that, if there was a drop of Brahmin blood flowing in
my veins, I would avenge myself. You understand the business to some
extent now, don't you? But wait a little longer. You will enjoy it, when
I tell you the whole story; it is interesting.

"When you were attending college, one Bipradas Chatterji used to live
next door to your lodgings. The poor fellow is dead now. In his house
lived a child-widow called Kusum, the destitute orphan of a Kayestha
gentleman. The girl was very pretty, and the old Brahmin desired to
shield her from the hungry gaze of college students. But for a young
girl to throw dust in the eyes of her old guardian was not at all a
difficult task. She often went to the top of the roof, to hang her
washing out to dry, and, I believe, you found your own roof best suited
for your studies. Whether you two spoke to each other, when on your
respective roofs, I cannot tell, but the girl's behaviour excited
suspicion in the old man's mind. She made frequent mistakes in her
household duties, and, like Parbati (The wife of Shiva the Destroyer),
engaged in her devotions, began gradually to renounce food and sleep.
Some evenings she would burst into tears in the presence of the old
gentleman, without any apparent reason.

"At last he discovered that you two saw each other from the roofs pretty
frequently, and that you even went the length of absenting yourself from
college to sit on the roof at mid-day with a book in your hand, so fond
had you grown suddenly of solitary study. Bipradas came to me for
advice, and told me everything. 'Uncle,' said I to him, `for a long
while you have cherished a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Benares. You
had better do it now, and leave the girl in my charge. I will take care
of her.'

"So he went. I lodged the girl in the house of Sripati Chatterji,
passing him off as her father. What happened next is known to you. I
feel a great relief to-day, having told you everything from the
beginning. It sounds like a romance, doesn't it? I think of turning it
into a book, and getting it printed. But I am not a writing-man myself.
They say my nephew has some aptitude that way--I will get him to write
it for me. But the best thing would be, if you would collaborate with
him, because the conclusion of the story is not known to me so well."

Without paying much attention to the concluding remarks of Peari Sankar,
Hemanta asked: "Did not Kusum object to this marriage?"

"Well," said Peari Sankar, "it is very difficult to guess. You know, my
boy, how women's minds are constituted. When they say 'no,' they mean
'yes.' During the first few days after her removal to the new home, she
went almost crazy at not seeing you. You, too, seemed to have discovered
her new address somehow, as you used to lose your way after starting for
college, and loiter about in front of Sripati's house. Your eyes did not
appear to be exactly in search of the Presidency College, as they were
directed towards the barred windows of a private house, through which
nothing but insects and the hearts of moon-struck young men could obtain
access. I felt very sorry for you both. I could see that your studies
were being seriously interrupted, and that the plight of the girl was
pitiable also.

"One day I called Kusum to me, and said: 'Listen to me, my daughter. I
am an old man, and you need feel no delicacy in my presence. I know whom
you desire at heart. The young man's condition is hopeless too. I wish I
could bring about your union.' At this Kusum suddenly melted into tears,
and ran away. On several evenings after that, I visited Sripati's house,
and, calling Kusum to me, discussed with her matters relating to you,
and so I succeeded in gradually overcoming her shyness. At last, when I
said that I would try to bring about a marriage, she asked me: 'How can
it be?' 'Never mind,' I said, 'I would pass you off as a Brahmin
maiden.' After a good deal of argument, she begged me to find out
whether you would approve of it. 'What
nonsense,' replied I, 'the boy is well-nigh mad as it were, what's the
use of disclosing all these complications to him? Let the ceremony be
over smoothly and then--all's well that ends well. Especially, as there
is not the slightest risk of its ever leaking out, why go out of the way
to make a fellow miserable for life?'

"I do not know whether the plan had Kusum's assent or not. At times she
wept, and at other times she remained silent. If I said, `Let us drop it
then,' she would become very restless. When things were in this state, I
sent Sripati to you with the proposal of marriage; you consented without
a moment's hesitation. Everything was settled.

"Shortly before the day fixed, Kusum became so obstinate that I had the
greatest difficulty in bringing her round again. `Do let it drop,
uncle,' she said to me constantly. 'What do you mean, you silly child,'
I rebuked her,' how can we back out now, when everything has been
settled?'

"'Spread a rumour that I am dead,' she implored. 'Send me away
somewhere.'

"'What would happen to the young man then?' said I.' He is now in the
seventh heaven of delight, expecting that his long cherished desire
would be fulfilled to-morrow; and to-day you want me to send him the
news of your death. The result would be that to-morrow I should have to
bear the news of his death to you, and the same evening your death would
be reported to me. Do you imagine, child, that I am capable of
committing a girl-murder and a Brahmin-murder at my age?'

"Eventually the happy marriage was celebrated at the auspicious moment,
and I felt relieved of a burdensome duty which I owed to myself. What
happened afterwards you know best."

"Couldn't you stop after having done us an irreparable injury?" burst
out Hemanta after a short silence. "Why have you told the secret now?"

With the utmost composure, Peari Sankar replied: "When I saw that all
arrangements had been made for the wedding of your sister, I said to
myself: 'Well, I have fouled the caste of one Brahmin, but that was only
from a sense of duty. Here, another Brahmin's caste is imperilled, and
this time it is my plain duty to prevent it.' So I wrote to them saying
that I was in a position to prove that you bad taken the daughter of a
sudra to wife."

Controlling himself with a gigantic effort, Hemanta said: "What will
become of this girl whom I shall abandon now? Would you give her food
and shelter?"

"I have done what was mine to do," replied Peari Sankar calmly. "It is
no part of my duty to look after the discarded wives of other people.
Anybody there? Get a glass of cocoanut milk for Hemanta Babu with ice in
it. And some pan too."

Hemanta rose, and took his departure without waiting for this luxurious
hospitality.

IV

It was the fifth night of the waning of the moon--and the night was
dark. No birds were singing. The lichi tree by the tank looked like a
smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was
blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in
the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the
darkness, in their effort to fathom some profound mystery.

No light shone in the bedroom. Hemanta was sitting on the side of the
bed next the open window, gazing at the darkness in front of him. Kusum
lay on the floor, clasping her husband's feet with both her arms, and
her face resting on them. Time stood like an ocean hushed into
stillness. On the background of eternal night, Fate seemed to have
painted this one single picture for all time--annihilation on every
side, the judge in the centre of it, and the guilty one at his feet.

The sound of slippers was heard again. Approaching the door, Harihar
Mukerji said: "You have had enough time, --I can't allow you more. Turn
the girl out of the house."

Kusum, as she heard this, embraced her husband's feet with all the
ardour of a lifetime, covered them with kisses, and touching her
forehead to them reverentially, withdrew herself.

Hemanta rose, and walking to the door, said: "Father, I won't forsake my
wife."

"What!" roared out Harihar, "would you lose your caste, sir?"

"I don't care for caste," was Hemanta's calm reply.

"Then you too I renounce."

"WE CROWN THEE KING"

2008-03-22T05:51:00.001-07:00

When Nabendu Sekhar was wedded to Arunlekha, the God of marriage smiled
from behind the sacrificial fire. Alas! what is sport for the gods is
not always a joke to us poor mortals.

Purnendu Sekhar, the father of Nabendu, was a man well known amongst the
English officials of the Government. In the voyage of life he had
arrived at the desert shores of Rai Bahadurship by diligently plying his
oats of salaams. He held in reserve enough for further advancement, but
at the age of fifty-five, his tender gaze still fixed on the misty peals
of Raja-hood, he suddenly found himself transported to a region where
earthly honours and decorations are naught, and his salaam-wearied neck
found everlasting repose on the funeral pyre.

According to modern science, force is not destroyed, but is merely
converted to another form, and applied to another point. So Purnendu's
salaam-force, constant handmaid of the fickle Goddess of Fortune,
descended from the shoulder of the father to that of his worthy son; and
the youthful head of Nabendu Sekhar began to move up and down, at the
doors of high-placed Englishmen, like a pumpkin swayed by the wind.

The traditions of the family into which he had married were entirely
different. Its eldest son, Pramathanath, had won for himself the love of
his kinsfolk and the regard of all who knew him. His kinsmen and his
neighbours looked up to him as their ideal in all things.

Pramathanath was a Bachelor of Arts, and in addition was gifted with
common sense. But he held no high official position; he had no handsome
salary; nor did he exert any influence with his pen. There was no one in
power to lend him a helping hand, because he desired to keep away from
Englishmen, as much as they desired to keep away from him. So it
happened that he shone only within the sphere of his family and his
friends, and excited no admiration beyond it.

Yet this Pramathanath had once sojourned in England for some three
years. The kindly treatment he received during his stay there
overpowered him so much that he forgot the sorrow and the humiliation of
his own country, and came back dressed in European clothes. This rather
grieved his brothers and his sisters at first, but after a few days they
began to think that European clothes suited nobody better, and gradually
they came to share his pride and dignity.

On his return from England, Pramathanath resolved that he would show the
world how to associate with Anglo-Indians on terms of equality. Those of
our countrymen who think that no such association is possible, unless we
bend our knees to them, showed their utter lack of self-respect, and
were also unjust to the English-so thought Pramathanath.

He brought with him letters of introduction from many distinguished
Englishmen at home, and these gave him some recognition in Anglo-Indian
society. He and his wife occasionally enjoyed English hospitality at
tea, dinner, sports and other entertainments. Such good luck intoxicated
him, and began to produce a tingling sensation in every vein of his
body.

About this time, at the opening of a new railway line, many of the town,
proud recipients of official favour, were invited by the
Lieutenant-Governor to take the first trip. Pramathanath was among them.
On the return journey, a European Sergeant of the Police expelled some
Indian gentlemen from a railway-carriage with great insolence.
Pramathanath, dressed in his European clothes, was there. He, too, was
getting out, when the Sergeant said: " You needn't move, sir. Keep your
seat, please."

At first Pramathanath felt flattered at the special respect thus shown
to him. When, however, the train went on, the dull rays of the setting
sun, at the west of the fields, now ploughed up and stripped of green,
seemed in his eyes to spread a glow of shame over the whole country.
Sitting near the window of his lonely compartment, he seemed to catch a
glimpse of the down-cast eyes of his Motherland, hidden behind the
trees. As Pramathanath sat there, lost in reverie, burning tears flowed
down his cheeks, and his heart burst with indignation.

He now remembered the story of a donkey who was drawing the chariot of
an idol along the street. The wayfarers bowed down to the idol, and
touched the dusty ground with their foreheads. The foolish donkey
imagined that all this reverence was being shown to him. "The only
difference," said Pramathanath to himself, " between the donkey and
myself is this: I understand to-day that the respect I receive is not
given to me but to the burden on my back."

Arriving home, Pramathanath called together all the children of the
household, and lighting a big bonfire, threw all his European clothes
into it one by one. The children danced round and round it, and the
higher the flames shot up, the greater was their merriment. After that,
Pramathanath gave up his sip of tea and bits of toast in Anglo-Indian
houses, and once again sat inaccessible within the castle of his house,
while his insulted friends went about from the door of one Englishman to
that of another, bending their turbaned heads as before.

By an irony of fate, poor Nabendu Sekhar married the second daughter of
this house. His sisters-in-law were well educated and handsome. Nabendu
considered he had made a lucky bargain. But he lost no time in trying to
impress on the family that it was a rare bargain on their side also. As
if by mistake, he would often hand to his sisters-in-law sundry letters
that his late father had received from Europeans. And when the cherry
lips of those young ladies smiled sarcastically, and the point of a
shining dagger peeped out of its sheath of red velvet, the unfortunate
man saw his folly, and regretted it.

Labanyalekha, the eldest sister, surpassed the rest in beauty and
cleverness. Finding an auspicious day, she put on the mantel-shelf of
Nabendu's bedroom two pairs of English boots, daubed with vermilion, and
arranged flowers, sandal-paste, incense and a couple of burning candles
before them in true ceremonial fashion. When Nabendu came in, the two
sisters-in-law stood on either side of him, and said with mock
solemnity: "Bow down to your gods, and may you prosper through their
blessings."

The third sister Kiranlekha spent many days in embroidering with red
silk one hundred common English names such as Jones, Smith, Brown,
Thomson, etc., on a chadar. When it was ready, she presented this
namavoli (A namavoli is a sheet of cloth printed all over with the names
of Hindu gods and goddesses and worn by pious Hindus when engaged in
devotional exercises.) to Nabendu Sekhar with great ceremony.

The fourth, Sasankalekha, of tender age and therefore of no account,
said: " I will make you a string of beads, brother, with which to tell
the names of your gods-the sahibs." Her sisters reproved her, saying:
"Run away, you saucy girl."

Feelings of shame and irritation assailed by turns the mind of Nabendu
Sekhar. Still he could not forego the company of his sisters-in-law,
especially as the eldest one was beautiful. Her honey was no less than
her gall, and Nabendu's mind tasted at once the sweetness of the one and
the bitterness of the other. The butterfly, with its bruised wings,
buzzes round the flower in blind fury, unable to depart.

The society of his sisters-in-Law so much infatuated him that at last
Nabendu began to disavow his craving for European favours. When he went
to salaam the Burra Sahib, he used to pretend that he was going to
listen to a speech by Mr. Surendranath Banerjea. When he went to the
railway station to pay respects to the Chota Sahib, returning from
Darjeeling, he would tell his sisters-in-law that he expected his
youngest uncle.

It was a sore trial to the unhappy man placed between the cross-fires of
his Sahibs and his sisters-in-law. The sisters-in-law, however, secretly
vowed that they would not rest till the Sahibs had been put to rout.

About this time it was rumoured that Nabendu's name would be included in
the forthcoming list of Birthday honours, and that he would mount the
first step of the ladder to Paradise by becoming a Rai Bahadur. The poor
fellow had not the courage to break the joyful news to his
sisters-in-law. One evening, however, when the autumn moon was flooding
the earth with its mischievous beams, Nabendu's heart was so full that
he could not contain himself any longer, and he told his wife. The next
day, Mrs. Nabendu betook herself to her eldest sister's house in a
palanquin, and in a voice choked with tears bewailed her lot.

"He isn't going to grow a tail," said Labanya, "by becoming a Rai
Bahadur, is he? Why should you feel so very humiliated? "

"Oh, no, sister dear," replied Arunlekha, "I am prepared to be
anything--but not a Rai-Baha-durni.'' The fact was that in her circle of
acquaintances there was one Bhutnath Babu, who was a Rai Bahadur, and
that explained her intense aversion to that title.

Labanya said to her sister in soothing tones: " Don't be upset about it,
dear; I will see what I can do to prevent it"

Babu Nilratan, the husband of Labanya, was a pleader at Buxar. When the
autumn was over, Nabendu received an invitation from Labanya to pay them
a visit, and he started for Buxar greatly pleased.

The early winter of the western province endowed Labanyalekha with new
health and beauty, and brought a glowing colour to her pale cheeks, She
looked like the flower-laden kasa reeds on a clear autumn day, growing
by the lonely bank of a rivulet. To Nabendu's enchanted eyes she
appeared like a malati plant in full blossom, showering dew-drops
brilliant with the morning light.

Nabendu had never felt better in his life. The exhilaration of his own
health and the genial company of his pretty sister-in-law made him think
himself light enough to tread on air. The Ganges in front of the garden
seemed to him to be flowing ceaselessly to regions unknown, as though it
gave shape to his own wild fantasies.

As he returned in the early morning from his walk on the bank of the
river, the mellow rays of the winter sun gave his whole frame that
pleasing sensation of warmth which lovers feel in each other's arms.
Coming home, he would now and then find his sister-in-Law amusing
herself by cooking some dishes. He would offer his help, and display his
want of skill and ignorance at every step. But Nabendu did not appear to
be at all anxious to improve himself by practice and attention. On the
contrary he thoroughly enjoyed the rebukes he received from his
sister-in-law. He was at great pains to prove every day that he was
inefficient and helpless as a new-born babe in mixing spices, handling
the saucepan, and regulating the heat so as to
prevent things getting burnt-and he was duly rewarded with pitiful
smiles and scoldings.

In the middle of the day he ate a great deal of the good food set before
him, incited by his keen appetite and the coaxing of his sister-in-law.
Later on, he would sit down to a game of cards--at
which he betrayed the same lack of ability. He would cheat, pry into his
adversary's hand, quarrel--but never did he win a single rubber, and
worse still, he would not acknowledge defeat. This brought him abuse
every day, and still he remained incorrigible.

There was, however, one matter in which his reform was complete. For the
time at least, he had forgotten that to win the smiles of Sahibs was the
final goal of life. He was beginning to understand how happy and worthy
we might feel by winning the affection and esteem of those near and dear
to us.

Besides, Nabendu was now moving in a new atmosphere. Labanya's husband,
Babu Nilratan, a leader of the bar, was reproached by many, because
he refused to pay his respects to European officials. To all such
reproaches Nilratan would reply: "No, thank you, --if they are not
polite enough to return my call, then the politeness I offer them is
a loss that can never be made up for. The sands of the desert may be
very white and shiny, but I would much rather sow my seeds in black
soil, where I can expect a return."

And Nabendu began to adopt similar ideas, all regardless of the future.
His chance of Rai Bahadurship throve on the soil carefully prepared by
his late father and also by himself in days gone by, nor was any fresh
watering required. Had he not at great expense laid out a splendid
race-course in a town, which was a fashionable resort of Europeans?

When the time of Congress drew near, Nilratan received a request from
head-quarters to collect subscriptions. Nabendu, free from anxiety, was
merrily engaged in a game of cards with his sister-in. law, when
Nilratan Babu came upon him with a subscription-book in his hand, and
said: "Your signature, please."

>From old habit Nabendu looked horrified. Labanya, assuming an air of
great concern and anxiety, said: "Never do that. It would ruin your
racecourse beyond repair."

Nabendu blurted out: "Do you suppose I pass sleepless nights through
fear of that?"

"We won't publish your name in the papers," said Nilratan reassuringly.

Labanya, looking grave and anxious, said: "Still, it wouldn't be safe.
Things spread so, from mouth to mouth—"

Nabendu replied with vehemence: "My name wouldn't suffer by appearing in
the newspapers." So saying, he snatched the subscription list from
Nilratan's hand, and signed away a thousand rupees. Secretly he hoped
that the papers would not publish the news.

Labanya struck her forehead with her palm and gasped out: What--have
you--done?"

"Nothing wrong," said Nabendu boastfully.

"But—but--," drawled Labanya, "the Guard sahib of Sealdah Station, the
shop-assistant at Whiteaway's, the syce-sahib of Hart Bros.--these
gentlemen might be angry with you, and decline to come to your Poojah
dinner to drink your champagne, you know. Just think, they mightn't pat
you on the back, when you meet them again!"

"It wouldn't break my heart," Nabendu snapped out.

A few days passed. One morning Nabendu was sipping his tea, and glancing
at a newspaper. Suddenly a letter signed "X" caught his eye. The writer
thanked him profusely for his donation, and declared that the increase
of strength the Congress had acquired by having such a man within its
fold, was inestimable.

Alas, father Purnendu Sekhar! Was it to increase the strength of the
Congress, that you brought this wretch into the world?

Put the cloud of misfortune had its silver lining. That he was not a
mere cypher was clear from the fact that the Anglo-Indian community on
the one side and the Congress on the other were each waiting patiently,
eager to hook him, and land him on their own side. So Nabendu, beaming
with pleasure took the paper to his sister-in-law, and showed her the
letter. Looking as though she knew nothing about it, Labanya exclaimed
in surprise: "Oh, what a pity! Everything has come out! Who bore you
such ill-will? Oh, how cruel of him, how wicked of him!"

Nabendu laughed out, saying: " Now--now—don't call him names, Labanya. I
forgive him with all my heart, and bless him too."

A couple of days after this, an anti-Congress Anglo-Indian paper
reached Nabendu through the post. There was a letter in it, signed "One
who knows," and contradicting the above report. "Those who have the
pleasure of Babu Nabendu Sekhar's personal acquaintance," the writer
went on, "cannot for a moment believe this absurd libel to be true. For
him to turn a Congresswalla is as impossible as it is for the leopard to
change his spots. He is a man of genuine worth, and neither a
disappointed candidate for Government employ nor a briefless
barrister. He is not one of those who, after a brief sojourn in England,
return aping our dress and manners, audaciously try to thrust themselves
on Anglo-Indian society, and finally go back in dejection. So there is
absolutely no reason why Balm Nabendu Sekhar," etc., etc.

Ah, father Purnendu Sekhar! What a reputation you had made with the
Europeans before you died!

This letter also was paraded before his sister-in-law, for did it not
assert that he was no mean, contemptible scallywag, but a man of real
worth?

Labanya exclaimed again in feigned surprise: "Which of your friends
wrote it now? Oh, come--is it the Ticket Collector, or the hide
merchant, or is it the drum-major of the Fort? "

"You ought to send in a contradiction, I think," said Nilratan.

"Is it necessary?" said Nabendu loftily. Must I contradict every little
thing they choose to say against me? "

Labanya filled the room with a deluge of laughter. Nabendu felt a little
disconcerted at this, and said: "Why? What's the matter?" She went on
laughing, unable to check herself, and her youthful slender form waved
to and fro. This torrent of merriment had the effect of overthrowing
Nabendu completely, and he said in pitiable accents: "Do you imagine
that I am afraid to contradict it?"

"Oh, dear, no," said Labanya; "I was thinking that you haven't yet
ceased trying to save that race-course of yours, so full of promise.
While there is life, there is hope, you know."

"That's what I am afraid of, you think, do you? Very well, you shall
see," said Nabendu desperately, and forthwith sat down to write his
contradiction. When he had finished, Labanya and Nilratan read it
through, and said: "It isn't strong enough. We must give it them pretty
hot, mustn't we?" And they kindly undertook to revise the composition.
Thus it ran: "When one connected to us by ties of blood turns our enemy
he becomes far more dangerous than any outsider. To the Government of
India, the haughty Anglo-Indians are worse enemies than the
Russians or the frontier Pathans themselves--they are the impenetrable
barrier, forever hindering the growth of any bond of friendship between
the Government and people of the country. It is the Congress which has
opened up the royal road to a better understanding between the rulers
and the ruled, and the Anglo-Indian papers have planted themselves like
thorns across the whole breadth of that road," etc., etc.

Nabendu had an inward fear as to the mischief this letter might do, but
at the same time he felt elated at the excellence of its composition,
which he fondly imagined to be his own. It was duly published, and for
some days comments, replies, and rejoinders went on in various
newspapers, and the air was full of trumpet-notes, proclaiming the fact
that Nabendu had joined the Congress, and the amount of his
subscription.

Nabendu, now grown desperate, talked as though he was a patriot of the
fiercest type. Labanya laughed inwardly, and said to herself: "Well—-
well--you have to pass through the ordeal of fire yet."

One morning when Nabendu, before his bath, had finished rubbing oil over
his chest, and was trying various devices to reach the inaccessible
portions of his back, the bearer brought in a card inscribed with the
name of the District Magistrate himself! Good heavens!--What would he
do? He could not possibly go, and receive the Magistrate Sahib, thus
oil-besmeared. He shook and twitched like a koi-fish, ready dressed for
the frying pan. He finished his bath in a great hurry, tugged on his
clothes somehow, and ran breathlessly to the outer apartments. The
bearer said that the Sahib had just left after waiting for a long time.
How much of the blame for concocting this drama of invented incidents
may be set down to Labanya, and how much to the bearer is a nice problem
for ethical mathematics to solve.

Nabendu's heart was convulsed with pain within his breast, like the tail
of a lizard just cut off. He moped like an owl all day long.

Labanya banished all traces of inward merriment from her face, and kept
on enquiring in anxious tones: "What has happened to you? You are not
ill, I hope?"

Nabendu made great efforts to smile, and find a humorous reply. "How can
there be," he managed to say, "any illness within your jurisdiction,
since you yourself are the Goddess of Health?"

But the smile soon flickered out. His thoughts were: "I subscribed to
the Congress fund to begin with, published a nasty letter in a
newspaper, and on the top of that, when the Magistrate Sahib himself did
me the honour to call on me, I kept him waiting. I wonder what he is
thinking of me."

Alas, father Purnendu Sekhar, by an irony of Fate I am made to appear
what I am not.

The next morning, Nabendu decked himself in his best clothes, wore his
watch and chain, and put a big turban on his head.

"Where are you off to?" enquired his sister-in-law.

"Urgent business," Nabendu replied. Labanya kept quiet.

Arriving at the Magistrate's gate, he took out his card-case.

"You cannot see him now," said the orderly peon icily.

Nabendu took out a couple of rupees from his pocket. The peon at once
salaamed him and said: "There are five of us, sir." Immediately Nabendu
pulled out a ten-rupee note, and handed it to him.

He was sent for by the Magistrate, who was writing in his dressing-gown
and bedroom slippers. Nabendu salaamed him. The Magistrate pointed to a
chair with his finger, and without raising his eyes from the paper
before him said: "What can I do for you, Babu?"

Fingering his watch-chain nervously, Nabendu said is shaky tones:
"Yesterday you were good enough to call at my place, sir—"

The Sahib knitted his brows, and, lifting just one eye from his paper,
said: "I called at your place! Babu, what nonsense are you talking?"

"Beg your pardon, sir," faltered out Nabendu. There has been a mistake--
some confusion," and wet with perspiration, he tumbled out of the room
somehow. And that night, as he lay tossing on his bed, a distant
dream-like voice came into his ear with a recurring persistency: "Babu,
you are a howling idiot."

On his way home, Nabendu came to the conclusion that the Magistrate
denied having called, simply because he was highly offended.

So he explained to Labanya that he had been out purchasing rose-water.
No sooner had he uttered the words than half-a-dozen chuprassis wearing
the Collectorate badge made their appearance, and after salaaming
Nabendu, stood there grinning.

"Have they come to arrest you because you subscribed to the Congress
fund?" whispered Labanya with a smile.

The six peons displayed a dozen rows of teeth and said: Bakshish--
Babu-Sahib."

>From a side room Nilratan came out, and said in an irritated manner:
"Bakshish? What for?"

The peons, grinning as before, answered: "The Babu-Sahib went to see the
Magistrate--so we have come for bakshish"

"I didn't know," laughed out Labanya, "that the Magistrate was selling
rose-water nowadays. Coolness wasn't the special feature of his trade
before."

Nabendu in trying to reconcile the story of his purchase with his visit
to the Magistrate, uttered some incoherent words, which nobody could
make sense of.

Nilratan spoke to the peons: "There has been no occasion for bakshish;
you shan't have it."

Nabendu said, feeling very small: "Oh, they are poor men--what's the
harm of giving them something?" And he took out a currency note.
Nilratan snatched it way from Nabendu's hand, remarking: "There are
poorer men in the world--I will give it to them for you."

Nabendu felt greatly distressed that he was not able to appease these
ghostly retainers of the angry Siva. When the peons were leaving, with
thunder in their eyes, he looked at them languishingly, as much as to
say: "You know everything, gentlemen, it is not my fault."

The Congress was to be held at Calcutta this year. Nilratan went down
thither with his wife to attend the sittings. Nabendu accompanied them.

As soon as they arrived at Calcutta, the Congress party surrounded
Nabendu, and their delight and enthusiasm knew no bounds. They cheered
him, honoured him, and extolled him up to the skies. Everybody said
that, unless leading men like Nabendu devoted themselves to the Cause,
there was no hope for the country. Nabendu was disposed to agree with
them, and emerged out of the chaos of mistake and confusion as a leader
of the country. When he entered the Congress Pavilion on the first
day, everybody stood up, and shouted " Hip, hip, hurrah," in a loud
outlandish voice, hearing which our Motherland reddened with shame to
the root of her ears.

In due time the Queen's birthday came, and Nabendu's name was not found
in the list of Rai Bahadurs.

He received an invitation from Labanya for that evening. When he arrived
there, Labanya with great pomp and ceremony presented him with a robe of
honour, and with her own hand put a mark of red sandal paste on the
middle of his forehead. Each of the other sisters threw round his neck a
garland of flowers woven by herself. Decked in a pink Sari and dazzling
jewels, his wife Arunlekha was waiting in a side room, her face lit up
with smiles and blushes. Her sisters rushed to her, and,
placing another garland in her hand, insisted that she also should come,
and do her part in the ceremony, but she would not listen to it; and
that principal garland, cherishing a desire for Nabendu's
neck, waited patiently for the still secrecy of midnight.

The sisters said to Nabendu : "To-day we crown thee King. Such honour
will not be done to any body else in Hindoostan."

Whether Nabendu derived any consolation from this, he alone can tell;
but we greatly doubt it. We believe, in fact, that he will become a Rai
Bahadur before he has done, and the Englishman and the Pioneer will
write heart-rending articles lamenting his demise at the proper time.
So, in the meanwhile, Three Cheers for Babu Purnendu Sekhar! Hip,
hip, hurrah--Hip, hip, hurrah--Hip, hip, hurrah.

LIVING OR DEAD?

2008-03-22T05:47:00.000-07:00

I

The widow in the house of Saradasankar, the Ranihat zemindar, had no
kinsmen of her father's family. One after another all had died. Nor had
she in her husband's family any one she could call her own, neither
husband nor son. The child of her brother-in-law Saradasankar was her
darling. Far a long time after his birth, his mother had been very ill,
and the widow, his aunt Kadambini, had fostered him. If a woman fosters
another's child, her love for him is all the stronger because she has
no claim upon him-no claim of kinship, that is, but simply the claim of
love. Love cannot prove its claim by any document which society accepts,
and does not wish to prove it; it merely worships with double passion
its life's uncertain treasure. Thus all the widow's thwarted love went
out to wards this little child. One night in Sraban Kadambini died
suddenly. For some reason her heart stopped beating. Everywhere else the
world held on its course; only m this gentle little breast,
suffering with love, the watch of time stood still for ever.

Lest they should be harassed by the poike, four of the zemindar's
Brahmin servants took away the body, without ceremony, to be burned.
The burning-ground of Ranihat was very far from the village. There was
a hut beside a tank, a huge banian near it, and nothing more. Formerly
a river, now completely dried up, ran through the ground, and part of
the watercourse had been dug out to make a tank for the performance of
funeral rites. The people considered the tank as part of the river and
reverenced it as such.

Taking the body into the hut, the four men sat down to wait for the
wood. The time seemed so long that two of the four grew restless, and
went to see why it did not come. Nitai and Gurucharan being gone, Bidhu
and Banamali remained to watch over the body.

It was a dark night of Sraban. Heavy clouds hung In a starless sky.
The two men sat silent in the dark room. Their matches and lamp were
useless. The matches were damp, and would not light, for all their
efforts, and the lantern went out.

After a long silence, one said: "Brother, it would be good if we had a
bowl of tobacco. In our hurry we brought none."

The other answered: "I can run and bring all we want."

Understanding why Banarnali wanted to go (From fear of ghosts, the
burning-ground being considered haunted.), Bidhu said: "I daresay!
Meanwhile, I suppose I am to sit here alone!"

Conversation ceased again. Five minutes seemed like an hour. In their
minds they cursed the two, who had gone to fetch the wood, and they
began to suspect that they sat gossiping in some pleasant nook. There
was no sound anywhere, except the incessant noise of frogs and crickets
from the tank. Then suddenly they fancied that the bed
shook slightly, as if the dead body had turned on its side. Bidhu and
Banamali trembled, and began muttering: "Ram, Ram." A deep sigh was
heard in the room. In a moment the watchers leapt out of the hut, and
raced for the village.

After running aboat three miles, they met their colleagues coming back
with a lantern. As a matter of fact, they had gone to smoke, and knew
nothing about the wood. But they declared that a tree had been cut down,
and that, when it was split up, it would be brought along at once. Then
Bidhu and Banamali told them what had happened in the hut. Nitai and
Gurucharan scoffed at the story, and abused Bidhu and Banamali angrily
for leaving their duty.

Without delay all four returned to the hut. As they entered, they saw at
once that the body was gone; nothing but an empty bed remained. They
stared at one another. Could a jackal have taken it? But there was no
scrap of clothing anywhere. Going outside, they saw that on the mud
that had collected at the door of the but there were a woman's tiny
footprints, newly made. Saradasankar was no fool, and they could hardly
persuade him to believe in this ghost story. So after much discussion
the four decided that it would be best to say that the body had been
burnt.

Towards dawn, when the men with the wood arrived they were told that,
owing to their delay, the work had been done without them; there had
been some wood in the but after all. No one was likely to question this,
since a dead body is not such a valuable property that any one
would steal it.

II

Every one knows that, even when there is no sign, life is often secretly
present, and may begin again in an apparently dead body. Kadambini was
not dead; only the machine of her life had for some reason suddenly
stopped.

When consciousness returned, she saw dense darkness on all sides. It
occurred to her that she was not lying in her usual place. She called
out " Sister," but no answer came from the darkness. As she sat up,
terror-stricken, she remembered her death-bed, the sudden pain at her
breast, the beginning of a choking sensation. Her elder sister-in-law
was warming some milk for the child, when Kadambini became faint, and
fell on the bed, saying with a choking voice: "Sister, bring the child
here. I am worried." After that everything was black, as when an inkpot
is upset over an exercise-book. Kadambini's memory and consciousness,
all the letters of the world's book, in a moment became formless. The
widow could not remember whether the child, in the sweet voice of love,
called her " Auntie," as if for the last time, or not; she could not
remember whether, as she left the world she knew for death's endless
unknown journey, she had received a parting gift of affection, love's
passage-money for the silent land. At first, I fancy, she thought the
lonely dark place was the House of Yama, where there is nothing to see,
nothing to hear, nothing to do, only an eternal watch. But when a cold
damp wind drove through the open door, and she heard the croaking of
frogs, she remembered vividly and in a moment all the rains of her short
life, and could feel her kinship with the earth. Then came a
flash of lightning, and she saw the tank, the banian, the great plain,
the far-off trees. She remembered how at full moon she had sometimes
come to bathe in this tank, and how dreadful death had seemed when she
saw a corpse on the burning-ground.

Her first thought was to return home. But then she reflected: "I am
dead. How can I return home? That would bring disaster on them. I have
left the kingdom of the living; I am my own ghost!" If this were not so,
she reasoned, how could she have got out of Saradasankar's well-guarded
zenana, and come to this distant burningground at midnight? Also, if her
funeral rites had not been finished, where had the men gone who should
burn her? Recalling her death-moment in Saradasankar's brightly-lit
house, she now found herself alone in a distant, deserted, dark burning.
ground. Surely she was no member of earthly society! Surely she was a
creature of horror, of ill-omen, her own ghost!

At this thought, all the bonds were snapped which bound her to the
world. She felt that she had marvellous strength, endless freedom. She
could do what she liked, go where she pleased. Mad with the inspiration
of this new idea, she rushed from the but like a gust of wind, and stood
upon the burning. ground. All trace of shame or fear had left her.

But as she walked on and on, her feet grew tired, her body weak. The
plain stretched on endlessly; here and there were paddy-fields;
sometimes she found herself standing knee-deep in water.

At the first glimmer of dawn she heard one or two birds cry from the
bamboo-clumps 6y the distant houses. Then terror seized her. She could
not tell in what new relation she stood to the earth and to living folk.
So long as she had been on the plain, on the burning-ground,
covered by the dark night of Sraban, so long she had been fearless, a
denizen of her own kingdom. By daylight the homes of men filled her with
fear. Men and ghosts dread each other, for their tribes inhabit
different banks of the river of death.

III

Her clothes were clotted in the mud; strange thoughts and walking by
night had given her the aspect of a madwoman; truly, her apparition was
such that folk might have been afraid of her, and children might have
stoned her or run away. Luckily, the first to catch sight of her was a
traveller. He came up, and said: "Mother, you look a respectable woman.
Wherever are you going, alone and in this guise?"

Kadambini, unable to collect her thoughts, stared at him in silence. She
could not think that she was still in touch with the world, that she
looked like a respectable woman, that a traveller was asking her
questions.

Again the min said: "Come, mother, I will see you home. Tell me where
you live."

Kadambini thought. To return to her father-in-law's house would be
absurd, and she had no father's house. Then she remembered the friend of
her childhood. She had not seen Jogmaya since the days of her youth, but
from time to time they had exchanged letters. Occasionally there had
been quarrels between them, as was only right, since Kadambini wished to
make it dear that her love for Jogmaya was unbounded, while her friend
complained that Kadambini did not return a love equal to her own. They
were both sure that, if they once met, they would be inseparable.

Kadambini said to the traveller: "I will go to Sripati's house at
Nisindapur."

As he was going to Calcutta, Nisindapur, though not near, was on his
way. So he took Kadambini to Sripati s house, and the friends met again.
At first they did not recognise one another, but gradually each
recognised the features of the other's childhood.

"What luck!" said Jogmaya. "I never dreamt that I should see you again.
But how hate you come here, sister? Your father-in-law's folk surely
didn't let you go!"

Kadambini remained silent, and at last said: "Sister, do not ask about
my father-in-law. Give me a corner, and treat me as a servant: I will do
your work."

"What?" cried Jogmaya. "Keep you like a servant! Why, you are my closest
friend, you are my –" and so on and so on.

Just then Sripati came in. Kadambini stared at him for some time, and
then went out very slowly. She kept her head uncovered, and showed not
the slightest modesty or respect. Jogmaya, fearing that Sripati would be
prejudiced against her friend, began an elaborate explanation. But
Sripati, who readily agreed to anything Jogmaya said, cut short her
story, and left his wife uneasy in her mind.

Kadambini had come, but she was not at one with her friend: death was
between them. She could feel no intimacy for others so long as her
existence perplexed her and consciousness remained. Kadambini would look
at Jogmaya, and brood. She would think: " She has her husband and her
work, she lives in a world far away from mine. She shares affection and
duty with the people of the world; I am an empty shadow. She is among
the living; I am in eternity."

Jogmaya also was uneasy, but could not explain why. Women do not love
mystery, because, though uncertainty may be transmuted into poetry, into
heroism, into scholarship, it cannot be turned to account in household
work. So, when a woman cannot understand a thing, she either destroys
and forgets it, or she shapes it anew for her own use; if
she fails to deal with it in one of these ways, she loses her temper
with it. The greater Kadambini's abstraction became, the more impatient
was Jogmaya with her, wondering what trouble weighed upon her mind.

Then a new danger arose. Kadambini was afraid of herself; yet she could
not flee from herself. Those who fear ghosts fear those who are behind
them; wherever they cannot see there is fear. But Kadambini's chief
terror lay in herself, for she dreaded nothing external. At the dead of
night, when alone in her room, she screamed; in the evening, when she
saw her shadow in the lamp-light, her whole body shook. Watching her
fearfulness, the rest of the house fell into a sort of terror. The
servants and Jogmaya herself began to see ghosts.

One midnight, Kadambini came out from her bedroom weeping, and wailed at
Jogmaya's door: "Sister, sister, let me lie at your feet! Do not put me
by myself!"

Jogmaya's anger was no less than her fear. She would have liked to drive
Kadambini from the house that very second. The good-natured Sripati,
after much effort, succeeded in quieting their guest, and put her in the
next room.

Next day Sripati was unexpectedly summoned to his wife's apartments. She
began to upbraid him: " You, do you call yourself a man? A woman runs
away from her father-in-law, and enters your house; a month passes, and
you haven't hinted that she should go away, nor have I heard the
slightest protest from you. I should cake it as a favour if you would
explain yourself. You men are all alike."

Men, as a race, have a natural partiality for womankind in general, foe
which women themselves hold them accountable. Although Sripati was
prepared to touch Jogmaya's body, and swear that his kind feeling
towards the helpless but beautiful Kadambini was no whit greater than it
should be, he could not prove it by his behaviour. He thought that her
father-in-law's people must have treated this forlorn widow abominably,
if she could bear it no longer, and was driven to take refuge with him.
As she had neither father nor mother, how could he desert her? So
saying, he let the matter drop, far he had no mind to distress Kadambini
by asking her unpleasant questions.

His wife, then, tried other means of her sluggish lord, until at last he
saw that for the sake of peace he must send word to Kadambini's
father-in-law. The result of a letter, he thought, might not be
satisfactory; so he resolved to go to Ranihat, and act on what he
learnt.

So Sripati went, and Jogmaya on her part said to Kadambini "Friend, it
hardly seems proper for you to stop here any longer. What will people
say? "

Kadambini stared solemnly at Jogmaya, and said: "What have I to do with
people?"

Jogmaya was astounded. Then she said sharply: "If you have nothing to do
with people, we have. How can we explain the detention of a woman
belonging to another house?"

Kadambini said: "Where is my father-in-law's house?"

"Confound it!" thought Jogmaya. "What will the wretched woman say next?"

Very slowly Kadambini said: "What have I to do with you? Am I of the
earth? You laugh, weep, love; each grips and holds his own; I merely
look. You are human, I a shadow. I cannot understand why God has kept me
in this world of yours."

So strange were her look and speech that Jogmaya understood something of
her drift, though not all. Unable either to dismiss her, or to ask her
any more questions, she went away, oppressed with thought.

IV

It was nearly ten o'clock at night when Sripati returned from Ranihat.
The earth was drowned in torrents of rain. It seemed that the downpour
would never stop, that the night would never end.

Jogmaya asked: "Well?"

"I've lots to say, presently."

So saying, Sripati changed his clothes, and sat down to supper; then he
lay dawn for a smoke. His mind was perplexed.

His wife stilled her curiosity for a long time; then she came to his
couch and demanded: "What did you hear?"

"That you have certainly made a mistake."

Jogmaya was nettled. Women never make mistakes, or, if they do, a
sensible man never mentions them; it is better to take them on his own
shoulders. Jogmaya snapped: "May I be permitted to hear how?"

Sripati replied: "The woman you have taken into your house is not your
Kadambini."

Hearing this, she was greatly annoyed, especially since it was her
husband who said it. "What! I don't know my own friend? I must come to
you to recognise her! You are clever, indeed!"

Sripati explained that there was no need to quarrel about his
cleverness. He could prove what he said. There was no doubt that
Jogmaya's Kadambini was dead.

Jogmaya replied: "Listen! You've certainly made some huge mistake.
You've been to the wrong house, or are confused as to what you have
heard. Who told you to go yourself? Write a letter, and everything will
be cleared up."

Sripati was hurt by his wife's lack of faith in his executive ability;
he produced all sorts of proof, without result. Midnight found them
still asserting and contradicting. Although they were both agreed now
that Kadambini should be got out of the house, although Sripati believed
that their guest had deceived his wife all the time by a pretended
acquaintance, and Jogmaya that she was a prostitute, yet in the present
discussion neither would acknowledge defeat. By degrees their voices
became so loud that they forgot that Kadambini was sleeping in the next
room.

The one said: "We're in a nice fix! I tell you, I heard it with my own
ears!" And the other answered angrily: "What do I care about that? I can
see with my own eyes, surely."

At length Jogmaya said: "Very well. Tell me when Kadambini died." She
thought that if she could find a discrepancy between the day of death
and the date of some letter from Kadambini, she could prove that Sripati
erred.

He told her the date of Kadambini's death, and they both saw that it
fell on the very day before she came to their house. Jogmaya's heart
trembled, even Sripati was not unmoved.

Just then the door flew open; a damp wind swept in and blew the lamp
out. The darkness rushed after it, and filled the whole house. Kadambini
stood in the room. It was nearly one o'clock, the rain was pelting
outside.

Kadambini spoke: "Friend, I am your Kadambini, but I am no longer
living. I am dead."

Jogmaya screamed with terror; Sripati could speak.

"But, save in being dead, I have done you no wrong. If I have no place
among the living, I have none among the dead. Oh! whither shall I go?"

Crying as if to wake the sleeping Creator in the dense night of rain,
she asked again: " Oh! whither shall I go? "

So saying Kadambini left her friend fainting in the dark house, and went
out into the world, seeking her own place.

V

It is hard to say how Kadambini reached Ranihat. At first she showed
herself to no one, but spent the whole day in a ruined temple, starving.
When the untimely afternoon of the rains was pitch-black, and people
huddled into their houses for fear of the impending storm, then
Kadambini came forth. Her heart trembled as she reached her father-in-
law's house; and when, drawing a thick veil over her face, she entered,
none of the doorkeepers objected, since they took her for a servant. And
the rain was pouring down, and the wind howled.

The mistress, Saradasankar's wife, was playing cards with her widowed
sister. A servant was in the kitchen, the sick child was sleeping in the
bedroom. Kadambini, escaping every one's notice, entered this room. I do
not know why she had come to her father-in-law's house; she herself did
not know; she felt only that she wanted to see her child again. She had
no thought where to go next, or what to do.

In the lighted room she saw the child sleeping, his fists clenched, his
body wasted with fever. At sight of him, her heart became parched and
thirsty. If only she could press that tortured body to her breast!
Immediately the thought followed: "I do not exist. Who would see it? His
mother loves company, loves gossip and cards. All the time that she left
me in charge, she was herself free from anxiety, nor was she troubled
about him in the least. Who will look after him now as I did?"

The child turned on his side, and cried, half-asleep: "Auntie, give me
water." Her darling had not yet forgotten his auntie! In a fever of
excitement, she poured out some water, and, taking him to her breast,
she gave it him.

As long as he was asleep, the child felt no strangeness in taking water
from the accustomed hand. But when Kadambini satisfied her long-starved
longing, and kissed him and began rocking him asleep again, he awoke and
embraced her. "Did you die, Auntie?" he asked.

"Yes, darling."

"And you have come back? Do not die again."

Before she could answer disaster overtook her. One of the maidservants
coming in with a cup of sago dropped it, and fell down. At the crash the
mistress left her cards, and entered the room. She stood like a pillar
of wood, unable to flee or speak. Seeing all this, the child, too,
became terrified, and burst out weeping: " Go away, Auntie," he said,
"go away!"

Now at last Kadambini understood that she had not died. The old room,
the old things, the same child, the same love, all returned to their
living state, without change or difference between her and them. In her
friend's house she had felt that her childhood's companion was dead. In
her child's room she knew that the boy's "Auntie" was not dead at all.
In anguished tones she said: "Sister, why do you dread me? See, I am as
you knew me."

Her sister-in-law could endure no longer, and fell into a faint.
Saradasankar himself entered the zenana. With folded hands, he said
piteously: "Is this right? Satis is my only son. Why do you show
yourself to him? Are we not your own kin? Since you went, he has wasted
away daily; his fever has been incessant; day and night he cries:
`Auntie, Auntie.' You have left the world; break these bonds of maya
(Illusory affection binding a soul to the world). We will perform all
funeral honours."

Kadambini could bear no more. She said: "Oh, I am not dead, I am not
dead. Oh, how can I persuade you that I am not dead? I am living,
living!" She lifted a brass pot from the ground and dashed it against
her forehead. The blood ran from her brow. "Look!" she cried, "I am
living!" Saradasankar stood like an image; the child screamed with fear,
the two fainting women lay still.

Then Kadambini, shouting "I am not dead, I am not dead," went down the
steps to the zenana well, and plunged in. From the upper storey
Saradasankar heard the splash.

All night the rain poured; it poured next day at dawn, was pouring still
at noon. By dying, Kadambini had given proof that she was not dead.

THE BABUS OF NAYANJORE

2008-03-22T05:45:00.000-07:00

I

Once upon a time the Babus of Nayanjore were famous landholders. They
were noted for their princely extravagance. They would tear off the
rough border of their Dacca muslin, because it rubbed against their
skin. They could spend many thousands of rupees over the wedding of a
kitten. On a certain grand occasion it is alleged that in order to
turn night into day they lighted numberless lamps and showered silver
threads from the sky to imitate sunlight. Those were the days before the
flood. The flood came. The line of succession among these old-world
Babus, with their lordly habits, could not continue for long. Like a
lamp with too many wicks burning, the oil flared away quickly, and the
light went out.

Kailas Babu, our neighbour, is the last relic of this extinct
magnificence. Before he grew up, his family had very nearly reached its
lowest ebb. When his father died, there was one dazzling outburst of
funeral extravagance, and then insolvency. The property was sold to
liquidate the debt. What little ready money was left over was altogether
insufficient to keep up the past ancestral splendours.

Kailas Babu left Nayanjore, and came to Calcutta. His son did not remain
long in this world of faded glory. He died, leaving behind him an only
daughter.

In Calcutta we are Kailas Baba's neighbours. Curiously enough our own
family history is just the opposite to his. My father got his money by
his own exertions, and prided himself on never spending a penny more
than was needed. His clothes were those of a working man, and his hands
also. He never had any inclination to earn the title of Baba by
extravagant display, and I myself his only son, owe him gratitude for
that. He gave me the very best education, and I was able to make my way
in the world. I am not ashamed of the fact that I am a self-made man.
Crisp bank-notes in my safe are dearer to me than a long pedigree in an
empty family chest.

I believe this was why I disliked seeing Kailas Baba drawing his heavy
cheques on the public credit from the bankrupt bank of his ancient Babu
reputation I used to fancy that he looked down on me, because my father
had earned money with his own hands.

I ought to have noticed that no one showed any vexation towards Kailas
Babu except myself. Indeed it would have been difficult to find an old
man who did less harm than he. He was always ready with his kindly
little acts of courtesy in times of sorrow and joy. He would join in all
the ceremonies and religious observances of his neighbours. His familiar
smile would greet young and old alike. His politeness in asking details
about domestic affairs was untiring. The friends who met him in the
street were perforce ready to be button-holed, while a long string of
questions of this kind followed one another from his lips:

"My dear friend, I am delighted to see you. Are quite well? How is
Shashi? and Dada—is he all right? Do you know, I've only just heard that
Madhu's son has got fever. How is he? Have you heard? And Hari Charan
Babu—I've not seen him for a long time--I hope he is not ill. What's the
matter with Rakkhal? And, er--er, how are the ladies of your family?"

Kailas Balm was spotlessly neat in his dress on all occasions, though
his supply of clothes was sorely limited. Every day he used to air his
shirts and vests and coats and trousers carefully, and put them out in
the sun, along with his bed-quilt, his pillowcase, and the small carpet
on which he always sat. After airing them he would shake them, and brush
them, and put them on the rock. His little bits of furniture made his
small room decent, and hinted that there was more in reserve if needed.
Very often, for want of a servant, he would shut up his house for a
while. Then he would iron out his shirts and linen with his own hands,
and do other little menial tasks. After this he would open his door and
receive his friends again.

Though Kailas Balm, as I have said, had lost all his landed property, he
had still same family heirlooms left. There was a silver cruet for
sprinkling scented water, a filigree box for otto-of-roses, a small gold
salver, a costly ancient shawl, and the old-fashioned ceremonial dress
and ancestral turban. These he had rescued with the greatest difficulty
from the money-lenders' clutches. On every suitable occasion he would
bring them out in state, and thus try to save the world-famed
dignity of the Babus of Nayanjore. At heart the most modest of men, in
his daily speech he regarded it as a sacred duty, owed to his rank, to
give free play to his family pride. His friends would encourage this
trait in his character with kindly good-humour, and it gave them great
amusement.

The neighbourhood soon learnt to call him their Thakur Dada
(Grandfather). They would flock to his house, and sit with him for hours
together. To prevent his incurring any expense, one or other of his
friends would bring him tobacco, and say: " Thakur Dada, this morning
some tobacco was sent to me from Gaya. Do take it, and see how you like
it"

Thakur Dada would take it, and say it was excellent. He would then go on
to tell of a certain exquisite tobacco which they once smoked in the old
days at Nayanjore at the cost of a guinea an ounce.

"I wonder," he used to say, "I wonder if any one would like to try it
now. I have some left, and can get it at once"

Every one knew, that, if they asked for it, then somehow or other the
key of the cupboard would he missing; or else Ganesh, his old family
servant, had put it away somewhere.

"You never can be sure," he would add, " where things go to when
servants are about. Now, this Ganesh of mine,- I can't tell you what a
fool he is, but I haven't the heart to dismiss him."

Ganesh, for the credit of the family, was quite ready to bear all the
blame without a word.

One of the company usually said at this point: "Never mind, Thakur Dada.
Please don't trouble to look for it. This tobacco we're smoking will do
quite well. The other would be too strong."

Then Thakur Dada would be relieved, and settle down again, and the talk
would go on.

When his guests got up to go away, Thakur Dada would accompany them to
the door, and say to them on the door-step: "Oh, by the way, when are
you all coming to dine with me?"

One or other of us would answer: "Not just yet, Thakur Dada, not just
yet. We'll fix a day later."

"Quite right," he would answer. "Quite right. We had much better wait
till the rains come. It's too hot now. And a grand rich dinner such as I
should want to give you would upset us in weather like this."

But when the rains did come, every one careful not to remind him of his
promise. If the subject was brought up, some friend would suggest gently
that it was very inconvenient to get about when the rains were so
severe, that it would be much better to wait till they were over. And so
the game went on.

His poor lodging was much too small for his position, and we used to
condole with him about it. His friends would assure him they quite
understood his difficulties: it was next to impossible to get a decent
house in Calcutta. Indeed, they had all been looking out for years for a
house to suit him, but, I need hardly add, no friend had been foolish
enough to find one. Thakur Dada used to say, after a long sigh of
resignation: " Well, well, I suppose I shall have to put up with this
house after all." Then he would add with a genial smile: "But, you know,
I could never bear to he away from my friends. I must be near you. That
really compensates for everything."

Somehow I felt all this very deeply indeed. I suppose the real reason
was, that when a man is young stupidity appears to him the worst of
crimes. Kailas Babu was not really stupid. In ordinary business matters
every one was ready to consult him.

But with regard to Nayanjore his utterances were certainly void of
common sense. Because, out of amused affection for him, no one
contradicted his impossible statements, he refused to keep them in
bounds. When people recounted in his hearing the glorious history of
Nayanjore with absurd exaggerations he would accept all they said with
the utmost gravity, and never doubted, even in his dreams, that any one
could disbelieve it.

II

When I sit down and try to analyse the thoughts and feelings that I had
towards Kailas Babu I see that there was a still deeper reason for my
dislike. I will now explain.

Though I am the son of a rich man, and might have wasted time at
college, my industry was such that I took my M.A. degree in Calcutta
University when quite young. My moral character was flawless. In
addition, my outward appearance was so handsome, that if I were to call
myself beautiful, it might be thought a mark of self-estimation, but
could not be considered an untruth.

There could be no question that among the young men of Bengal I was
regarded by parents generally as a very eligible match. I was myself
quite clear on the point, and had determined to obtain my full value in
the marriage market. When I pictured my choice, I had before my mind's
eye a wealthy father's only daughter, extremely beautiful and highly
educated. Proposals came pouring in to me from far and near; large sums
in cash were offered. I weighed these offers with rigid impartiality, in
the delicate scales of my own estimation. But there was no one fit to be
my partner. I became convinced, with the poet Bhabavuti, that

In this worlds endless time and boundless space
One may be born at last to match my sovereign grace.

But in this puny modern age, and this contracted space of modern Bengal,
it was doubtful if the peerless creature existed as yet.

Meanwhile my praises were sung in many tunes, and in different metres,
by designing parents.

Whether I was pleased with their daughters or not, this worship which
they offered was never unpleasing. I used to regard it as my proper due,
because I was so good. We are told that when the gods withhold their
boons from mortals they still expect their worshippers to pay them
fervent honour, and are angry if it is withheld. I had that divine
expectance strongly developed in myself.

I have already mentioned that Thakur Dada had an only grand-daughter. I
had seen her many times, but had never mistaken her for beautiful. No
thought had ever entered my mind that she would be a possible partner
for myself. All the same, it seemed quite certain to me that some day
ox other Kailas Babu would offer her, with all due worship, as an
oblation at my shrine. Indeed-this was the secret of my dislike-I was
thoroughly annoyed that he had not done it already.

I heard he had told his friends that the Babus of Nayanjore never craved
a boon. Even if the girl remained unmarried, he would not break the
family tradition. It was this arrogance of his that made me angry. My
indignation smouldered for some time. But I remained perfectly silent,
and bore it with the utmost patience, because I was so good.

As lightning accompanies thunder, so in my character a flash of humour
was mingled with the mutterings of my wrath. It was, of course,
impossible for me to punish the old man merely to give vent to my rage;
and for a long time I did nothing at all. But suddenly one day such an
amusing plan came into my head, that I could not resist the temptation
of carrying it into effect.

I have already said that many of Kailas Babu's friends used to flatter
the old man's vanity to the full. One, who was a retired Government
servant, had told him that whenever he saw the Chota Lord Sahib he
always asked for the latest news about the Babus of Nayanjore, and the
Chota Lard had been heard to say that in all Bengal the only really
respectable families were those of the Maharaja of Burdwan and the Babus
of Nayanjore. When this monstrous falsehood was told to Kailas Balm he
was extremely gratified, and often repeated the story. And
wherever after that he met this Government servant in company he would
ask, along with other questions:

"Oh! er--by the way, how is the Chota Lord Sahib? Quite well, did you
say? Ah, yes, I am so delighted to hear it I And the dear Mem Sahib, is
she quite well too? Ah, yes! and the little children-are they quite well
also? Ah, yes I that's very goad news! Be sure and give them my
compliments when you see them."

Kailas Balm would constantly express his intention of going some day and
paying a visit to the Sahib.

But it may be taken for granted that many Chota Lords and Burro Lords
also would come and go, and much water would pass down the Hoogly,
before the family coach of Nayanjore would be furnished up to pay a
visit to Government House.

One day I took Kailas Babu aside, and told him in a whisper: "Thakur
Dada, I was at the Levee yesterday, and the Chota Lord happened to
mention the Babes of Nayanjore. I told him that Kailas Balm had come to
town. Do you know, he was terribly hurt because you hadn't called. He
told me he was going to put etiquette on one side, and pay you a private
visit himself this very afternoon."

Anybody else could have seen through this plot of mine in a moment. And,
if it had been directed against another person, Kailas Balm would have
understood the joke. But after all he had heard from his friend the
Government servant, and after all his own exaggerations, a visit from
the Lieutenant-Governor seemed the most natural thing in the world. He
became highly nervous and excited at my news. Each detail of the coming
visit exercised him greatly -most of all his own ignorance of English.
How on earth was that difficulty to be met? I told him
there was no difficulty at all: it was aristocratic not to know English:
and, besides, the Lieutenant-Governor always brought an interpreter with
him, and he had expressly mentioned that this visit was to be private.

About mid-day, when most of our neighbours are at work, and the rest are
asleep, a carriage and pair stopped before the lodging of Kailas Babu.
Two flunkeys in livery came up the stairs, and announced in a loud
voice, "The Chota Lord Sahib hoe arrived." Kailas Babu was ready,
waiting for him, in his old-fashioned ceremonial robes and ancestral
turban, and Ganesh was by his side, dressed in his master's best suit of
clothes for the occasion. When the Chota Lord Sahib was announced,
Kailas Balm ran panting and puffing and trembling to the door, and led
in a friend of mine, in disguise, with repeated salaams, bowing low at
each step, and walking backward as best he could. He had his old family
shawl spread over a hard wooden chair, and he asked the Lord Sahib to be
seated. He then made a high. flown speech in Urdu, the ancient Court
language of the Sahibs, and presented on the golden salver a string of
gold mohurs, the last relics of his broken fortune. The old family
servant Ganesh, with an expression of awe bordering on terror, stood
behind with the scent-sprinkler, drenching the Lord Sahib, touching him
gingerly from time to time with the otto-of-roses from the filigree box.

Kailas Babu repeatedly expressed his regret at not being able to receive
His Honour Bahadur with all the ancestral magnificence of his own family
estate at Nayanjore. There he could have welcomed him properly with due
ceremonial. But in Calcutta he was a mere stranger and sojourner-in fact
a fish out of water.

My friend, with his tall silk hat on, very gravely nodded. I need hardly
say that according to English custom the hat ought to have been removed
inside the room. But my friend did not dare to take it off for fear of
detection; and Kailas Balm and his old servant Ganesh were sublimely
unconscious of the breach of etiquette.

After a ten minutes' interview, which consisted chiefly of nodding the
head, my friend rose to his feet to depart. The two flunkeys in livery,
as had been planned beforehand, carried off in state the string of gold
mohurs, the gold salver, the old ancestral shawl, the silver scent-
sprinkler, and the otto-of-roses filigree box; they placed them
ceremoniously in the carriage. Kailas Babu regarded this as the usual
habit of Chota Lard Sahibs.

I was watching all the while from the next room. My sides were aching
with suppressed laughter. When I could hold myself in no longer, I
rushed into a further room, suddenly to discover, in a corner, a young
girl sobbing as if her heart would break. When she saw my uproarious
laughter she stood upright in passion, flashing the lightning of her big
dark eyes in mine, and said with a tear-choked voice:

"Tell me! What harm has my grandfather done to you? Why have you come
to deceive him? Why have you come here? Why--"

She could say no more. She covered her face with her hands, and broke
into sobs.

My laughter vanished in a moment. It had never occurred to me that there
was anything but a supremely funny joke in this act of mine, and here I
discovered that I had given the cruelest pain to this tenderest little
heart. All the ugliness of my cruelty rose up to condemn me. I slunk out
of the room in silence, like a kicked dog.

Hitherto I had only looked upon Kusum, the grand-daughter of Kailas
Babu, as a somewhat worthless commodity in the marriage market, waiting
in vain to attract a husband. But now I found, with a shock of surprise,
that in the corner of that room a human heart was beating.

The whole night through I had very little sleep. My mind was in a
tumult. On the next day, very early in the morning, I took all those
stolen goods back to Kailas Babe's lodgings, wishing to hand them over
in secret to the servant Ganesh. I waited outside the door, and, not
finding any one, went upstairs to Kailas Babu's room. I heard from the
passage Kusum asking her grandfather in the most winning voice: "Dada,
dearest, do tell me all that the Chota Lord Sahib said to you yesterday.
Don't leave out a single word. I am dying to hear it all over again."

And Dada needed no encouragement. His face beamed over with pride as he
related all manner of praises, which the Lard Sahib had been good enough
to utter concerning the ancient families of Nayanjore. The girl was
seated before him, looking up into his face, and listening with rapt
attention. She was determined, out of love for the old man, to play her
part to the full.

My heart was deeply touched, and tears came to my eyes. I stood there in
silence in the passage, while Thakur Dada finished all his
embellishments of the Chota Lord Sahib's wonderful visit. When he left
the room at last, I took the stolen goods and laid them at the feet of
the girl and came away without a word.

Later in the day I called again to see Kailas Balm himself. According to
our ugly modern custom, I had been in the habit of making no greeting at
all to this old man when I came into the room. But on this day I made a
low bow, and touched his feet. I am convinced the old man
thought that the coming of the Chota Lord Sahib to his house was the
cause of my new politeness. He was highly gratified by it, and an air of
benign severity shone from his eyes. His friends had flocked in, and he
had already begun to tell again at full length the story of the
Lieutenant-Governor's visit with still further adornments of a most
fantastic kind. The interview was already becoming an epic, both in
quality and in length.

When the other visitors had taken their leave, I made my proposal to the
old man in a humble manner. I told him that, " though I could never for
a moment hope to be worthy of marriage connection with such an
illustrious family, yet . . . etc. etc."

When I made clear my proposal of marriage, the old man embraced me, and
broke out in a tumult of joy: " I am a poor man, and could never have
expected such great good fortune."

That was the first and last time in his life that Kailas Babu confessed
to being poor. It was also the first and last time in his life that he
forgot, if only for a single moment, the ancestral dignity that belongs
to the Babus of Nayanjore.

VISION

2008-03-22T05:40:00.000-07:00

I

When I was a very young wife, I gave birth to a dead child, and came
near to death myself. I recovered strength very slowly, and my eyesight
became weaker and weaker.

My husband at this time was studying medicine. He was not altogether
sorry to have a chance of testing his medical knowledge on me. So he
began to treat my eyes himself.

My elder brother was reading for his law examination. One day he came
to see me, and was alarmed at my condition.

"What are you doing?" he said to my husband. "You are ruining Kumo's
eyes. You ought to consult a good doctor at once."

My husband said irritably: "Why! what can a good doctor do more than I
am doing? The case is quite a simple one, and the remedies are all well
known."

Dada answered with scorn: "I suppose you think there is no difference
between you and a Professor in your own Medical College."

My husband replied angrily: "If you ever get married, and there is a
dispute about your wife's property, you won't take my advice about Law.
Why, then, do you now come advising me about Medicine?"

While they were quarrelling, I was saying to myself that it was always
the poor grass that suffered most when two kings went to war. Here was
a dispute going on between these two, and I had to bear the brunt of it.

It also seemed to me very unfair that, when my family had given me in
marriage, they should interfere afterwards. After all, my pleasure and
pain are my husband's concern, not theirs.

>From that day forward, merely over this trifling matter of my eyes, the
bond between my husband and Dada was strained.

To my surprise one afternoon, while my husband was away, Dada brought a
doctor in to see me. He examined my eyes very carefully, and looked
grave. He said that further neglect would be dangerous. He wrote out a
prescription, and Dada for the medicine at once. When the strange
doctor had gone, I implored my Dada not to interfere. I was sure that
only evil would come from the stealthy visits of a doctor.

I was surprised at myself for plucking up courage speak to my brother
like that. I had always hitherto been afraid of him. I am sure also
that Dada was surprised at my boldness. He kept silence for a while,
and then said to me: "Very well, Kumo. I won't call in the doctor any
more. But when the medicine comes you must take it."

Dada then went away. The medicine came from chemist. I took it--
bottles, powders, prescriptions and all--and threw it down the well!

My husband had been irritated by Dada's interference, and he began to
treat my eyes with greater diligence than ever. He tried all sorts of
remedies. I bandaged my eyes as he told me, I wore his coloured
glasses, I put in his drops, I took all his powders. I even drank the
cod-liver oil he gave me, though my gorge rose against it.

Each time he came back from the hospital, he would ask me anxiously how
I felt; and I would answer: "Oh! much better." Indeed I became an
expert in self-delusion. When I found that the water in my eyes was
still increasing, I would console myself with the thought that it was a
good thing to get rid of so much bad fluid; and, when the flow of water
in my eyes decreased, I was elated at my husband's skill.

But after a while the agony became unbearable. My eyesight faded away,
and I had continual headaches day and night. I saw how much alarmed my
husband was getting. I gathered from his manner that he was casting
about for a pretext to call in a doctor. So I hinted that it might be
as well to call one in.

That he was greatly relieved, I could see. He called in an English
doctor that very day. I do not know what talk they had together, but I
gathered that the Sahib had spoken very sharply to my husband.

He remained silent for some time after the doctor had gone. I took his
hands in mine, and said: "What an ill-mannered brute that was! Why
didn't you call in an Indian doctor? That would have been much better.
Do you think that man knows better than you do about my eyes?"

My husband was very silent for a moment, and then said with a broken
voice: "Kumo, your eyes must be operated on."

I pretended to be vexed with him for concealing the fact from me so
long.

"Here you have known this all the time," said I, "and yet you have said
nothing about it! Do you think I am such a baby as to be afraid of an
operation?"

At that be regained his good spirits: "There are very few men," said he,
"who are heroic enough to look forward to an operation without
shrinking."

I laughed at him: "Yes, that is so. Men are heroic only before their
wives!"

He looked at me gravely, and said: "You are perfectly right. We men are
dreadfully vain."

I laughed away his seriousness: "Are you sure you can beat us women even
in vanity? "

When Dada came, I took him aside: "Dada, that treatment your doctor
recommended would have done me a world of good; only unfortunately. I
mistook the mixture for the lotion. And since the day I made the
mistake, my eyes have grown steadily worse; and now an operation is
needed."

Dada said to me: "You were under your husband's treatment, and that is
why I gave up coming to visit you."

"No," I answered. "In reality, I was secretly treating myself in
accordance with your doctor's directions."

Oh! what lies we women have to tell! When we are mothers, we tell lies
to pacify our children; and when we are wives, we tell lies to pacify
the fathers of our children. We are never free from this necessity.

My deception had the effect of bringing about a better feeling between
my husband and Dada. Dada blamed himself for asking me to keep a secret
from my husband: and my husband regretted that he had not taken my
brother's advice at the first.

At last, with the consent of both, an English doctor came, and operated
on my left eye. That eye, however, was too weak to bear the strain; and
the last flickering glimmer of light went out. Then the other eye
gradually lost itself in darkness.

One day my husband came to my bedside. "I cannot brazen it out before
you any longer," said he, "Kumo, it is I who have ruined your eyes."

I felt that his voice was choking with tears, and so I took up his right
hand in both of mine and said: "Why! you did exactly what was right.
You have dealt only with that which was your very own. Just imagine, if
some strange doctor had come and taken away my eyesight. What
consolation should I have had then? But now I can feel that all has
happened for the best; and my great comfort is to know that it is at
your hands I have lost my eyes. When Ramchandra found one lotus too few
with which to worship God, he offered both his eyes in place of the
lotus. And I hate dedicated my eyes to my God. From now, whenever you
see something that is a joy to you, then you must describe it to me; and
I will feed upon your words as a sacred gift left over from your
vision."

I do not mean, of course, that I said all this there and then, for it is
impossible to speak these things an the spur of the moment. But I used
to think over words like these for days and days together. And when I
was very depressed, or if at any time the light of my devotion became
dim, and I pitied my evil fate, then I made my mind utter these
sentences, one by one, as a child repeats a story that is told. And so
I could breathe once more the serener air of peace and love.

At the very time of our talk together, I said enough to show my husband
what was in my heart.

"Kumo," he said to me, "the mischief I have done by my folly can never
be made good. But I can do one thing. I can ever remain by your side,
and try to make up for your want of vision as much as is in my power."

"No," said I. "That will never do. I shall not ask you to turn your
house into an hospital for the blind. There is only one thing to be
done, you must marry again."

As I tried to explain to him that this was necessary, my voice broke a
little. I coughed, and tried to hide my emotion, but he burst out
saying:

"Kumo, I know I am a fool, and a braggart, and all that, but I am not a
villain! If ever I marry again, I swear to you--I swear to you the most
solemn oath by my family god, Gopinath--may that most hated of all sins,
the sin of parricide, fall on my head!"

Ah! I should never, never have allowed him to swear that dreadful oath.
But tears were choking my voice, and I could not say a word for
insufferable joy. I hid my blind face in my pillows, and sobbed, and
sobbed again. At last, when the first flood of my tears was over, I
drew his head down to my breast.

"Ah I " said I, "why did you take such a terrible oath? Do you think I
asked you to marry again for your own sordid pleasure? No! I was
thinking of myself, for she could perform those services which were mine
to give you when I had my sight."

"Services! " said he, "services! Those can be done by servants. Do you
think I am mad enough to bring a slave into my house, and bid her share
the throne with this my Goddess?"

As he said the word "Goddess," he held up my face in his hands, and
placed a kiss between my brows. At that moment the third eye of divine
wisdom was opened, where he kissed me, and verily I had a consecration.

I said in my own mind: "It is well. I am no longer able to serve him in
the lower world of household cares. But I shall rise to a higher
region. I shall bring down blessings from above. No more lies! No
more deceptions for me! All the littlenesses and hypocrisies of my
former life shall be banished for ever!"

That day, the whole day through, I felt a conflict going on within me.
The joy of the thought, that after this solemn oath it was impossible
for my husband to marry again, fixed its roots deep in my heart, and I
could not tear them out. But the new Goddess, who had taken her new
throne in me, said: "The time might come when it would be good for your
husband to break his oath and marry again." But the woman, who was
within me, said: "That may be; but all the same an oath is an oath, and
there is no way out." The Goddess, who was within me, answered: "That
is no reason why you should exult over it." But the woman, who was
within me, replied: "What you say is quite true, no doubt; all the same
he has taken his oath." And the same story went on again and again. At
last the Goddess frowned in silence, and the darkness of a horrible fear
came down upon me.

My repentant husband would not let the servants do my work; he must do
it all himself. At first it gave me unbounded delight to be dependent
on him thus for every little thing. It was a means of keeping him by my
side, and my desire to have him with me had become intense since my
blindness. That share of his presence, which my eyes had lost, my other
senses craved. When he was absent from my side, I would feel as if I
were hanging in mid-air, and had lost my hold of all things tangible.

Formerly, when my husband came back late from the hospital, I used to
open my window and gaze at the road. That road was the link which
connected his world with mine. Now when I had lost that link through my
blindness, all my body would go out to seek him. The bridge that united
us had given way, and there was now this unsurpassable chasm. When he
left my side the gulf seemed to yawn wide open. I could only wait for
the time when he should cross back again from his own shore to mine.

But such intense longing and such utter dependence can never be good. A
wife is a burden enough to a man, in all conscience, and to add to it
the burden of this blindness was to make his life unbearable. I vowed
that I would suffer alone, and never wrap my husband round in the folds
of my all-pervading darkness.

Within an incredibly short space of time I managed to train myself to do
all my household duties by the help of touch and sound and smell. In
fact I soon found that I could get on with greater skill than before.
For sight often distracts rather than helps us. And so it came to pass
that, when these roving eyes of mine could do their work no longer, all
the other senses took up their several duties with quietude and
completeness.

When I had gained experience by constant practice, I would not let my
husband do any more household duties for me. He complained bitterly at
first that I was depriving him of his penance.

This did not convince me. Whatever he might say, I could feel that he
had a real sense of relief when these household duties were over. To
serve daily a wife who is blind can never make up the life of a man.

II

My husband at last had finished his medical course. He went away from
Calcutta to a small town to practise as a doctor. There in the country
I felt with joy, through all my blindness, that I was restored to the
arms of my mother. I had left my village birthplace for Calcutta when I
was eight years old. Since then ten years had passed away, and in the
great city the memory of my village home had grown dim. As long as I
had eyesight, Calcutta with its busy life screened from view the memory
of my early days. But when I lost my eyesight I knew for the first time
that Calcutta allured only the eyes: it could not fill the mind. And
now, in my blindness, the scenes of my childhood shone out once more,
like stars that appear one by one in the evening sky at the end of the
day.

It was the beginning of November when we left Calcutta for Harsingpur.
The place was new to me, but the scents and sounds of the countryside
pressed round and embraced me. The morning breeze coming fresh from the
newly ploughed land, the sweet and tender smell of the flowering
mustard, the shepherd-boy's flute sounding in the distance, even the
creaking noise of the bullock-cart, as it groaned over the broken
village road, filled my world with delight. The memory of my past life,
with all its ineffable fragrance and sound, became a living present to
me, and my blind eyes could not tell me I was wrong. I went back, and
lived over again my childhood. Only one thing was absent: my mother was
not with me.

I could see my home with the large peepul trees growing along the edge
of the village pool. I could picture in my mind's eye my old
grandmother seated on the ground with her thin wisps of hair untied,
warming her back in the sun as she made the little round lentil balls to
be dried and used for cooking. But somehow I could not recall the songs
she used to croon to herself in her weak and quavering voice. In the
evening, whenever I heard the lowing of cattle, I could almost watch the
figure of my mother going round the sheds with lighted lamp in her hand.
The smell of the wet fodder and the pungent smoke of the straw fire
would enter into my very heart. And in the distance I seemed to hear
the clanging of the temple bell wafted up by the breeze from the river
bank.

Calcutta, with all its turmoil and gossip, curdles the heart. There,
all the beautiful duties of life lose their freshness and innocence. I
remember one day, when a friend of mine came in, and said to me: "Kumo,
why don't you feel angry? If I had been treated like you by my husband,
I would never look upon his face again."

She tried to make me indignant, because he had been so long calling in a
doctor.

"My blindness," said I, "was itself a sufficient evil. Why should I
make it worse by allowing hatred to grow up against my husband?"

My friend shook her head in great contempt, when she heard such old-
fashioned talk from the lips of a mere chit of a girl. She went away in
disdain. But whatever might be my answer at the time, such words as
these left their poison; and the venom was never wholly got out of the
soul, when once they had been uttered.

So you see Calcutta, with its never-ending gossip, does harden the
heart. But when I came back to the country all my earlier hopes and
faiths, all that I held true in life during childhood, became fresh and
bright once more. God came to me, and filled my heart and my world. I
bowed to Him, and said:

"It is well that Thou has taken away my eyes. Thou art with me."

Ah! But I said more than was right. It was a presumption to say: "Thou
art with me." All we can say is this: "I must be true to Thee." Even
when nothing is left for us, still we have to go on living.

III

We passed a few happy months together. My husband gained some
reputation in his profession as a doctor. And money came with it.

But there is a mischief in money. I cannot point to any one event; but,
because the blind have keener perceptions than other people, I could
discern the change which came over my husband along with the increase of
wealth.

He had a keen sense of justice when he was younger, and had often told
me of his great desire to help the poor when once he obtained a practice
of his own. He had a noble contempt far those in his profession who
would not feel the pulse of a poor patient before collecting his fee.
But now I noticed a difference. He had become strangely hard. Once
when a poor woman came, and begged him, out of charity, to save the life
of her only child, he bluntly refused. And when I implored him myself
to help her, he did his work perfunctorily.

While we were less rich my husband disliked sharp practice in money
matters. He was scrupulously honourable in such things. But since he
had got a large account at the bank he was often closeted for hours with
some scamp of a landlord's agent, for purposes which clearly boded no
good.

Where has he drifted? What has become of this husband of mine, --the
husband I knew before I was blind; the husband who kissed me that day
between my brows, and enshrined me on the throne of a Goddess? Those
whom a sudden gust of passion brings down to the dust can rise up
again with a new strong impulse of goodness. But those who, day by day,
become dried up in the very fibre of their moral being; those who by
some outer parasitic growth choke the inner life by slow degrees,--such
wench one day a deadness which knows no healing.

The separation caused by blindness is the merest physical trifle. But,
ah! it suffocates me to find that he is no longer with me, where he
stood with me in that hour when we both knew that I was blind. That is
a separation indeed!

I, with my love fresh and my faith unbroken, have kept to the shelter of
my heart's inner shrine. But my husband has left the cool shade of
those things that are ageless and unfading. He is fast disappearing
into the barren, waterless waste in his mad thirst for gold.

Sometimes the suspicion comes to me that things not so bad as they seem:
that perhaps I exaggerate because I am blind. It may be that, if my
eyesight were unimpaired, I should have accepted world as I found it.
This, at any rate, was the light in which my husband looked at all my
moods and fancies.

One day an old Musalman came to the house. He asked my husband to visit
his little grand-daughter. I could hear the old man say: "Baba, I am a
poor man; but come with me, and Allah will do you good." My husband
answered coldly: "What Allah will do won't help matters; I want to know
what you can do for me."

When I heard it, I wondered in my mind why God had not made me deaf as
well as blind. The old man heaved a deep sigh, and departed. I sent
my maid to fetch him to my room. I met him at the door of the inner
apartment, and put some money into his hand.

"Please take this from me," said I, "for your little grand-daughter, and
get a trustworthy doctor to look after her. And-pray for my husband."

But the whole of that day I could take no food at all. In the
afternoon, when my husband got up from sleep, he asked me: "Why do you
look so pale?"

I was about to say, as I used to do in the past: "Oh! It's nothing ";
but those days of deception were over, and I spoke to him plainly.

"I have been hesitating," I said, "for days together to tell you
something. It has been hard to think out what exactly it was I wanted
to say. Even now I may not be able to explain what I had in my mind.
But I am sure you know what has happened. Our lives have drifted
apart."

My husband laughed in a forced manner, and said: "Change is the law of
nature."

I said to him: "I know that. But there are some things that are
eternal."

Then he became serious.

"There are many women," said he, "who have a real cause for sorrow.
There are some whose husbands do not earn money. There are others whose
husbands do not love them. But you are making yourself wretched about
nothing at all."

Then it became clear to me that my very blindness had conferred on me
the power of seeing a world which is beyond all change. Yes! It is
true.
I am not like other women. And my husband will never understand me.

IV

Our two lives went on with their dull routine for some time. Then there
was a break in the monotony. An aunt of my husband came to pay us a
visit.

The first thing she blurted out after our first greeting was this:
"Well, Krum, it's a great pity you have become blind; but why do you
impose your own affliction on your husband? You must get him to another
wife."

There was an awkward pause. If my husband had only said something in
jest, or laughed in her face, all would have been over. But he
stammered and hesitated, and said at last in a nervous, stupid way: "Do
you really think so? Really, Aunt, you shouldn't talk like that"

His aunt appealed to me. "Was I wrong, Kumo?"

I laughed a hollow laugh.

"Had not you better," said I, "consult some one more competent to
decide? The pickpocket never asks permission from the man whose pocket
he is going to pick."

"You are quite right," she replied blandly. "Abinash, my dear, let us
have our little conference in private. What do you say to that?"

After a few days my husband asked her, in my presence, if she knew of
any girl of a decent family who could come and help me in my household
work. He knew quite well that I needed no help. I kept silence.

"Oh! there are heaps of them," replied his aunt. "My cousin has a
daughter who is just of the marriageable age, and as nice a girl as you
could wish. Her people would be only too glad to secure you as a
husband."

Again there came from him that forced, hesitating laugh, and he said:
"But I never mentioned marriage."

"How could you expect," asked his aunt, "a girl of decent family to come
and live in your house without marriage? "

He had to admit that this was reasonable, and remained nervously silent.

I stood alone within the closed doors of my blindness after he had gone,
and called upon my God and prayed: "O God, save my husband."

When I was coming out of the household shrine from my morning worship a
few days later, his aunt took hold of both my hands warmly.

"Kumo, here is the girl," said she, "we were speaking about the other
day. Her name is Hemangini. She will be delighted to meet you. Hemo,
come here and be introduced to your sister."

My husband entered the room at the same moment. He feigned surprise
when he saw the strange girl, and was about to retire. But his aunt
said: "Abinash, my dear, what are you running away for? There is no
need to do that. Here is my cousin's daughter, Hemangini, come to see
you. Hemo, make your bow to him."

As if taken quite by surprise, he began to ply his aunt with questions
about the when and why and how of the new arrival.

I saw the hollowness of the whole thing, and took Hemangini by the hand
and led her to my own room. I gently stroked her face and arms and
hair, and found that she was about fifteen years old, and very
beautiful.

As I felt her face, she suddenly burst out laughing and said: "Why!
what are you doing? Are you hypnotising me?"

That sweet ringing laughter of hers swept away in a moment all the dark
clouds that stood between us. I threw my right arm about her neck.

"Dear one," said I, "I am trying to see you." And again I stroked her
soft face with my left hand.

"Trying to see me? " she said, with a new burst of laughter. "Am I like
a vegetable marrow, grown in your garden, that you want to feel me all
round to see how soft I am?"

I suddenly bethought me that she did not know I had lost my sight.

"Sister, I am blind," said I.

She was silent. I could feel her big young eyes, full of curiosity,
peering into my face. I knew they were full of pity. Then she grew
thoughtful and puzzled, and said, after a short pause:

"Oh! I see now. That was the reason your husband invited his aunt to
come and stay here."

"No!" I replied, "you are quite mistaken. He did not ask her to come.
She came of her own accord."

Hemangini went off into a peal of laughter. "That's just like my aunt,"
said she. "Oh I wasn't it nice of her to come without any invitation?
But now she's come, you won't get her to move for some time, I can
assure you!"

Then she paused, and looked puzzled.

"But why did father send me?" she asked. "Can you tell me that? "

The aunt had come into the room while we were talking. Hemangini said
to her: "When are you thinking of going back, Aunt? "

The aunt looked very much upset.

"What a question to ask!" said she, "I've never seen such a restless
body as you. We've only just come, and you ask when we're going back!"

"It is all very well for you," Hemangini said, "for this house belongs
to your near relations. But what about me? I tell you plainly I can't
stop here." And then she held my hand and said: "What do you think,
dear?"

I drew her to my heart, but said nothing. The aunt was in a great
difficulty. She felt the situation was getting beyond her control; so
she proposed that she and her niece should go out together to bathe.

"No! we two will go together," said Hemangini, clinging to me. The
aunt gave in, fearing opposition if she tried to drag her away.

Going down to the river Hemangini asked me: "Why don't you have
children? "

I was startled by her question, and answered: "How can I tell? My God
has not given me any. That is the reason."

"No! That's not the reason," said Hemangini quickly. "You must have
committed some sin. Look at my aunt. She is childless. It must be
because her heart has some wickedness. But what wickedness is in your
heart?"

The words hurt me. I have no solution to offer for the problem of evil.
I sighed deeply, and said in the silence of my soul: "My God! Thou
knowest the reason."

"Gracious goodness," cried Hemangini, "what are you sighing for? No one
ever takes me seriously."

And her laughter pealed across the river.

V

I found out after this that there were constant interruptions in my
husband's professional duties. He refused all calls from a distance,
and would hurry away from his patients, even when they were close at
hand.

Formerly it was only during the mid-day meals and at night-time that he
could come into the inner apartment. But now, with unnecessary anxiety
for his aunt's comfort, he began to visit her at all hours of the day.
I knew at once that he had come to her room, when I heard her shouting
for Hemangini to bring in a glass of water. At first the girl would do
what she was told; but later on she refused altogether.

Then the aunt would call, in an endearing voice: "Hemo! Hemo!
Hemangini." But the girl would cling to me with an impulse of pity. A
sense of dread and sadness would keep her silent. Sometimes she would
shrink towards me like a hunted thing, who scarcely knew what was
coming.

About this time my brother came down from Calcutta to visit me. I knew
how keen his powers of observation were, and what a hard judge he was.
I feared my husband would be put on his defence, and have to stand his
trial before him. So I endeavoured to hide the true situation
behind a mask of noisy cheerfulness. But I am afraid I overdid the
part: it was unnatural for me.

My husband began to fidget openly, and asked bow long my brother was
going to stay. At last his impatience became little short of insulting,
and my brother had no help for it but to leave. Before going he placed
his hand on my head, and kept it there for some time. I noticed that
his hand shook, and a tear fell from his eyes, as he silently gave me
his blessing.

I well remember that it was an evening in April, and a market-day.
People who had come into the town were going back home from market.
There was the feeling of an impending storm in the air; the smell of the
wet earth and the moisture in the wind were all-pervading. I never
keep a lighted lamp in my bedroom, when I am alone, lest my clothes
should catch fire, or some accident happen. I sat on the floor in my
dark room, and called upon the God of my blind world.

"O my Lord," I cried, "Thy face is hidden. I cannot see. I am blind.
I hold tight this broken rudder of a heart till my hands bleed. The
waves have become too strong for me. How long wilt thou try me, my God,
how long?"

I kept my head prone upon the bedstead and began to sob. As I did so, I
felt the bedstead move a little. The next moment Hemangini was by my
side. She clung to my neck, and wiped my tears away silently. I do not
know why she had been waiting that evening in the inner room, or why
she had been lying alone there in the dusk. She asked me no question.
She said no word. She simply placed her cool hand on my forehead, and
kissed me, and departed.

The next morning Hemangini said to her aunt in my presence : "If you
want to stay on, you can. But I don't. I'm going away home with our
family servant."

The aunt said there was no need for her to go alone, for she was going
away also. Then smilingly and mincingly she brought out, from a plush
case, a ring set with pearls.

"Look, Hemo," said she, "what a beautiful ring my Abinash brought for
you."

Hemangini snatched the ring from her hand.

"Look, Aunt," she answered quickly, "just see how splendidly I aim."
And she flung the ring into the tank outside the window.

The aunt, overwhelmed with alarm, vexation, and surprise, bristled like
a hedgehog. She turned to me, and held me by the hand.

"Kumo," she repeated again and again, "don't say a word about this
childish freak to Abinash. He would be fearfully vexed."

I assured her that she need not fear. Not a word would reach him about
it from my lips.

The next day before starting for home Hemangini embraced me, and said:
"Dearest, keep me in mind; do not forget me."

I stroked her face over and over with my fingers, and said: "Sister, the
blind have long memories."

I drew her head towards me, and kissed her hair and her forehead. My
world suddenly became grey. All the beauty and laughter and tender
youth, which had nestled so close to me, vanished when Hemangini
departed. I went groping about with arms outstretched, seeking to find
out what was left in my deserted world.

My husband came in later. He affected a great relief now that they were
gone, but it was exaggerated and empty. He pretended that his aunt's
visit had kept him away from work.

Hitherto there had been only the one barrier of blindness between me and
my husband. Now another barrier was added, --this deliberate silence
about Hemangini. He feigned utter indifference, but I knew he was
having letters about her.

It was early in May. My maid entered my room one morning, and asked me:
"What is all this preparation going on at the landing on the river?
Where is Master going?"

I knew there was something impending, but I said to the maid: "I can't
say."

The maid did not dare to ask me any more questions. She sighed, and
went away.

Late that night my husband came to me.

"I have to visit a patient in the country," said he. "I shall have to
start very early to-morrow morning, and I may have to be away for two or
three days."

I got up from my bed. I stood before him, and cried aloud: "Why are you
telling me lies?"

My husband stammered out: "What--what lies have I told you?"

I said: "You are going to get married."

He remained silent. For some moments there was no sound in the room.
Then I broke the silence:

"Answer me," I cried. "Say, yes."

He answered, "Yes," like a feeble echo.

I shouted out with a loud voice: "No! I shall never allow you. I shall
save you from this great disaster, this dreadful sin. If I fail in
this, then why am I your wife, and why did I ever worship my God?"

The room remained still as a stone. I dropped on the floor, and clung
to my husband's knees.

"What have I done?" I asked. "Where have I been lacking? Tell me
truly. Why do you want another wife?"

My husband said slowly: "I will tell you the truth. I am afraid of you.
Your blindness has enclosed you in its fortress, and I have now no
entrance. To me you are no longer a woman. You are awful as my God. I
cannot live my every day life with you. I want a woman--just an
ordinary woman--whom I can be free to chide and coax and pet and scold."

Oh, tear open my heart and see! What am I else but that, --just an
ordinary woman? I am the same girl that I was when I was newly wed, a
girl with all her need to believe, to confide, to worship.

I do not recollect exactly the words that I uttered. I only remember
that I said: "If I be a true wife, then, may God be my witness, you
shall never do this wicked deed, you shall never break your oath.
Before you commit such sacrilege, either I shall become a widow, or
Hemangini shall die."

Then I fell down on the floor in a swoon. When I came to myself, it was
still dark. The birds were silent. My husband had gone.

All that day I sat at my worship in the sanctuary at the household
shrine. In the evening a fierce storm, with thunder and lightning and
rain, swept down upon the house and shook it. As I crouched before the
shrine, I did not ask my God to save my husband from the storm, though
he must have been at that time in peril on the river. I prayed that
whatever might happen to me, my husband might be saved from this great
sin.

Night passed. The whole of the next day I kept my seat at worship.
When it was evening there was the noise of shaking and beating at the
door. When the door was broken open, they found me lying unconscious on
the ground, and carried me to my room.

When I came to myself at last, I heard some one whispering in my ear:
"Sister."

I found that I was lying in my room with my head on Hemangini's lap.
When my head moved, I heard her dress rustle. It was the sound of
bridal silk.

O my God, my God! My prayer has gone unheeded! My husband has fallen!

Hemangini bent her head low, and said in a sweet whisper: "Sister,
dearest, I have come to ask your blessing on our marriage."

At first my whole body stiffened like the trunk of a tree that has been
struck by lightning. Then I sat up, and said, painfully, forcing myself
to speak the words: "Why should I not bless you? You have done no
wrong."

Hemangini laughed her merry laugh.

"Wrong!" said she. "When you married it was right; and when I marry, you
call it wrong! "

I tried to smile in answer to her laughter. I said in my mind: "My
prayer is not the final thing in this world. His will is all. Let the
blows descend upon my head; but may they leave my faith and hope in God
untouched."

Hemangini bowed to me, and touched my feet. "May you be happy," said I,
blessing her, "and enjoy unbroken prosperity."

Hemangini was still unsatisfied.

"Dearest sister," she said, "a blessing for me is not enough. You must
make our happiness complete. You must, with those saintly hands of
yours, accept into your home my husband also. Let me bring him to you."

I said: "Yes, bring him to me."

A few moments later I heard a familiar footstep, and the question,
"Kumo, how are you ? "

I started up, and bowed to the ground, and cried: "Dada! "

Hemangini burst out laughing.

"You still call him elder brother?" she asked. "What nonsense! Call him
younger brother now, and pull his ears and cease him, for he has married
me, your younger sister."

Then I understood. My husband had been saved from that great sin. He
had not fallen.

I knew my Dada had determined never to marry. And, since my mother had
died, there was no sacred wish of hers to implore him to wedlock. But
I, his sister, by my sore need bad brought it to pass. He had married
for my sake.

Tears of joy gushed from my eyes, and poured down my cheeks. I tried,
but I could not stop them. Dada slowly passed his fingers through my
hair. Hemangini clung to me, and went on laughing.

I was lying awake in my bed for the best part of the night, waiting with
straining anxiety for my husband's return. I could not imagine how he
would bear the shock of shame and disappointment.

When it was long past the hour of midnight, slowly my door opened. I
sat up on my bed, and listened. They were the footsteps of my husband.
My heart began to beat wildly. He came up to my bed, held my band in
his.

"Your Dada," said he, "has saved me from destruction. I was being
dragged down and down by a moments madness. An infatuation had seized
me, from which I seemed unable to escape. God alone knows what a load I
was carrying on that day when I entered the boat. The storm came down
on river, and covered the sky. In the midst of all fears I had a secret
wish in my heart to be drowned, and so disentangle my life from the knot
which I had tied it. I reached Mathurganj. There I heard the news which
set me free. Your brother had married Hemangini. I cannot tell you
with what joy and shame I heard it. I hastened on board the boat again.
In that moment of self-revelation I knew that I could have no happiness
except with you. You are a Goddess."

I laughed and cried at the same time, and said: "No, no, no! I am not
going to be a Goddess any longer I am simply your own little wife. I am
an ordinary woman."

"Dearest," he replied, "I have also something I want to say to you.
Never again put me to shame by calling me your God."

On the next day the little town became joyous with sound of conch
shells. But nobody made any reference to that night of madness, when
all was so nearly lost.

THE DEVOTEE

2008-03-22T05:36:00.001-07:00

I

At a time, when my unpopularity with a part of my readers had reached
the nadir of its glory, and my name had become the central orb of the
journals, to be attended through space with a perpetual rotation of
revilement, I felt the necessity to retire to some quiet place and
endeavour to forget my own existence.

I have a house in the country some miles away from Calcutta, where I can
remain unknown and unmolested. The villagers there have not, as yet,
come to any conclusion about me. They know I am no mere holiday-maker
or pleasure-seeker; for I never outrage the silence of the village
nights with the riotous noises of the city. Nor do they regard me as
ascetic, because the little acquaintance they have of me carries the
savour of comfort about it. I am not, to them, a traveller; for, though
I am a vagabond by nature, my wandering through the village fields is
aimless. They are hardly even quite certain whether I am married or
single; for they have never seen me with my children. So, not being
able to classify me in any animal or vegetable kingdom that they know,
they have long since given me up and left me stolidly alone.

But quite lately I have come to know that there is one person in the
village who is deeply interested in me. Our acquaintance began on a
sultry afternoon in July. There had been rain all the morning, and the
air was still wet and heavy with mist, like eyelids when weeping is
over.

I sat lazily watching a dappled cow grazing on the high bank of the
river. The afternoon sun was playing on her glossy hide. The simple
beauty of this dress of light made me wonder idly at man's deliberate
waste of money in setting up tailors' shops to deprive his own skin of
its natural clothing.

While I was thus watching and lazily musing, a woman of middle age came
and prostrated herself before me, touching the ground with her forehead.
She carried in her robe some bunches of flowers, one of which she
offered to me with folded hands. She said to me, as she offered it:
"This is an offering to my God."

She went away. I was so taken aback as she uttered these words, that I
could hardly catch a glimpse of her before she was gone. The whole
incident was entirely simple, but it left a deep impression on my mind;
and as I turned back once more to look at the cattle in the field, the
zest of life in the cow, who was munching the lush grass with deep
breaths, while she whisked off the flies, appeared to me fraught with
mystery. My readers may laugh at my foolishness, but my heart was full
of adoration. I offered my worship to the pure joy of living, which is
God's own life. Then, plucking a tender shoot from the mango tree, I
fed the cow with it from my own hand, and as I did this I had the
satisfaction of having pleased my God.

The next year when I returned to the village it was February. The cold
season still lingered on. The morning sun came into my room, and I was
grateful for its warmth. I was writing, when the servant came to tell
me that a devotee, of the Vishnu cult, wanted to see me. I told him, in
an absent way, to bring her upstairs, and went on with my writing. The
Devotee came in, and bowed to me, touching my feet. I found that she
was the same woman whom I had met, for a brief moment, a year ago.

I was able now to examine her more closely. She was past that age when
one asks the question whether a woman is beautiful or not. Her stature
was above the ordinary height, and she was strongly built; but
her body was slightly bent owing to her constant attitude of veneration.
Her manner had nothing shrinking about it. The most remarkable of her
features were her two eyes. They seemed to have a penetrating power
which could make distance near.

With those two large eyes of hers, she seemed to push me as she entered.

"What is this?" she asked. "Why have you brought me here before your
throne, my God? I used to see you among the trees; and that was much
better. That was the true place to meet you."

She must have seen me walking in the garden without my seeing her. For
the last few clays, however, I had suffered from a cold, and had been
prevented from going out. I had, perforce, to stay indoors and pay my
homage to the evening sky from my terrace. After a silent pause the
Devotee said to me: "O my God, give me some words of good."

I was quite unprepared for this abrupt request, and answered her on the
spur of the moment: "Good words I neither give nor receive. I simply
open my eyes and keep silence, and then I can at once both hear and see,
even when no sound is uttered. Now, while I am looking at you, it is as
good as listening to your voice."

The Devotee became quite excited as I spoke, and exclaimed: "God speaks
to me, not only with His mouth, but with His whole body."

I said to her: "When I am silent I can listen with my whole body. I
have come away from Calcutta here to listen to that sound."

The Devotee said: "Yes, I know that, and therefore 1 have come here to
sit by you."

Before taking her leave, she again bowed to me, and touched my feet. I
could see that she was distressed, because my feet were covered. She
wished them to be bare.

Early next morning I came out, and sat on my terrace on the roof.
Beyond the line of trees southward I could see the open country chill
and desolate. I could watch the sun rising over the sugar-cane in
the East, beyond the clump of trees at the side of the village. Out of
the deep shadow of those dark trees the village road suddenly appeared.
It stretched forward, winding its way to some distant villages on the
horizon, till it was lost in the grey of the mist.

That morning it was difficult to say whether the sun had risen or not.
A white fog was still clinging to the tops of the trees. I saw the
Devotee walking through the blurred dawn, like a mist-wraith of the
morning twilight. She was singing her chant to God, and sounding her
cymbals.

The thick haze lifted at last; and the sun, like the kindly grandsire of
the village, took his seat amid all the work that was going on in home
and field.

When I had just settled down at my writing-table, to appease the hungry
appetite of my editor in Calcutta, there came a sound of footsteps on
the stair, and the Devotee, humming a tune to herself, entered, and
bowed before me. I lifted my head from my papers.

She said to me: "My God, yesterday I took as sacred food what was left
over from your meal."

I was startled, and asked her how she could do that.

"Oh," she said, "I waited at your door in the evening, while you were at
dinner, and took some food from your plate when it was carried out."

This was a surprise to me, for every one in the village knew that I had
been to Europe, and had eaten with Europeans. I was a vegetarian, no
doubt, but the sanctity of my cook would not bear investigation, and the
orthodox regarded my food as polluted.

The Devotee, noticing my sign of surprise, said: "My God, why should I
come to you at all, if I could not take your food? "

I asked her what her own caste people would say. She told me she had
already spread the news far and wide all over the village. The caste
people had shaken their heads, but agreed that she must go her own way.

I found out that the Devotee came from a good family in the country, and
that her mother was well to-do, and desired to keep her daughter. But
she preferred to be a mendicant. I asked her how she made her living.
She told me that her followers had given her a piece of land, and that
she begged her food from door to door. She said to me: "The food which
I get by begging is divine."

After I had thought over what she said, I understood her meaning. When
we get our food precariously as alms, we remember God the giver. But
when we receive our food regularly at home, as a matter of course, we
are apt to regard it as ours by right.

I had a great desire to ask her about her husband. But as she never
mentioned him even indirectly, I did not question her.

I found out very soon that the Devotee had no respect at all for that
part of the village where the people of the higher castes lived.

"They never give," she said, "a single farthing to God's service; and
yet they have the largest share of God's glebe. But the poor worship
and starve."

I asked her why she did not go and live among these godless people, and
help them towards a better life. "That," I said with some unction,
"would be the highest form of divine worship."

I had heard sermons of this kind from time to time, and I am rather fond
of copying them myself for the public benefit, when the chance comes.

But the Devotee was not at all impressed. She raised her big round
eyes, and looked straight into mine, and said:

"You mean to say that because God is with the sinners, therefore when
you do them any service you do it to God? Is that so?"

"Yes," I replied, "that is my meaning."

"Of course," she answered almost impatiently, "of course, God is with
them: otherwise, how could they go on living at all? But what is that
to me? My God is not there. My God cannot be worshipped among them;
because I do not find Him there. I seek Him where I can find Him."

As she spoke, she made obeisance to me. What she meant to say was
really this. A mere doctrine of God's omnipresence does not help us.
That God is all-pervading,--this truth may be a mere intangible
abstraction, and therefore unreal to ourselves. Where I can see Him,
there is His
reality in my soul.

I need not explain that all the while she showered her devotion on me
she did it to me not as an individual. I was simply a vehicle of her
divine worship. It was not for me either to receive it or to refuse it:
for it was not mine, but God's.

When the Devotee came again, she found me once more engaged with my
books and papers.

"What have you been doing," she said, with evident vexation, "that my
God should make you undertake such drudgery? Whenever I come, I find
you reading and writing."

"God keeps his useless people busy," I answered; "otherwise they would
be bound to get into mischief. They have to do all the least necessary
things in life. It keeps them out of trouble."

The Devotee told me that she could not bear the encumbrances, with
which, day by day, I was surrounded. If she wanted to see me, she was
not allowed by the servants to come straight upstairs. If she wanted to
touch my feet in worship, there were my socks always in the way. And
when she wanted to have a simple talk with me, she found my mind lost in
a wilderness of letters.

This time, before she left me, she folded her hands, and said: "My God!
I felt your feet in my breast this morning. Oh, how cool! And they
were bare, not covered. I held them upon my head for a long time in
worship. That filled my very being. Then, after that, pray what was
the use of my coming to you yourself? Why did I come? My Lord, tell me
truly,--wasn't it a mere infatuation?"

There were some flowers in my vase on the table. While she was there,
the gardener brought some new flowers to put in their place. The
Devotee saw him changing them.

"Is that all? " she exclaimed. "Have you done with the flowers? Then
give them to me."

She held the flowers tenderly in the cup of her hands, and began to gaze
at them with bent head. After a few moments' silence she raised her
head
again, and said to me: "You never look at these flowers; therefore they
become stale to you. If you would only look into them, then your
reading and writing would go to the winds."

She tied the flowers together in the end of her robe, and placed them,
in an attitude of worship, on the top of her head, saying reverently:
"Let me carry my God with me."

While she did this, I felt that flowers in our rooms do not receive
their due meed of loving care at our hands. When we stick them in
vases, they are more like a row of naughty schoolboys standing on a form
to be punished.

The Devotee came again the same evening, and sat by my feet on the
terrace of the roof.

"I gave away those flowers," she said, "as I went from house to house
this morning, singing God's name. Beni, the head man of our village,
laughed at me for my devotion, and said: `Why do you waste all this
devotion on Him? Don't you know He is reviled up and down the
countryside?' Is that true, my God? Is it true that they are hard
upon you?"

For a moment I shrank into myself. It was a shock to find that the
stains of printers' ink could reach so far.

The Devotee went on: "Beni imagined that he could blow out the flame of
my devotion at one breath! But this is no mere tiny flame: it is a
burning fire. Why do they abuse you, my God?"

I said: "Because I deserved it. I suppose in my greed I was loitering
about to steal people's hearts in secret."

The Devotee said: "Now you see for yourself how little their hearts are
worth. They are full of poison, and this will cure you of your greed."

"When a man," I answered, "has greed in his heart, he is always on the
verge of being beaten. The greed itself supplies his enemies with
poison."

"Our merciful God," she replied, "beats us with His own hand, and drives
away all the poison. He who endures God's beating to the end is saved."

II

That evening the Devotee told me the story of her life. The stars of
evening rose and set behind the trees, as she went on to the end of her
tale.

"My husband is very simple. Some people think that he is a simpleton;
but I know that those who understand simply, understand truly. In
business and household management he was able to hold his own. Because
his needs were small, and his wants few, he could manage carefully on
what we had. He would never meddle in other matters, nor try to
understand them.

"Both my husband's parents died before we had been married long, and we
were left alone. But my husband always needed some one to be over him.
I am ashamed to confess that he had a sort of reverence for me, and
looked upon me as his superior. But I am sure that he could understand
things better than I, though I had greater powers of talking.

"Of all the people in the world he held his Guru Thakur (spiritual
master) in the highest veneration. Indeed it was not veneration merely
but love; and such love as his is rare.

"Guru Thakur was younger than my husband. Oh! how beautiful he was!

"My husband had played games with him when he was a boy; and from that
time forward he had dedicated his heart and soul to this friend of his
early days. Thakur knew how simple my husband was, and used to tease
him mercilessly.

"He and his comrades would play jokes upon him for their own amusement;
but he would bear them all with longsuffering.

"When I married into this family, Guru Thakur was studying at Benares.
My husband used to pay all his expenses. I was eighteen years old when
he returned home to our village.

"At the age of fifteen I had my child. I was so young I did not know
how to take care of him. I was fond of gossip, and liked to be with my
village friends for hours together. I used to get quite cross with my
boy when I was compelled to stay at home and nurse him. Alas! my
child-God came into my life, but His playthings were not ready for Him.
He came to the mother's heart, but the mother's heart lagged behind. He
left me in anger; and ever since I have been searching for Him up and
down the world.

"The boy was the joy of his father's life. My careless neglect used to
pain my husband. But his was a mute soul. He has never been able to
give expression to his pain.

"The wonderful thing was this, that in spite of my neglect the child
used to love me more than any one else. He seemed to have the dread
that I would one day go away and leave him. So even when I was with
him, he would watch me with a restless look in his eyes. He had me very
little to himself, and therefore his desire to be with me was always
painfully eager. When I went each day to the river, he used to fret and
stretch
out his little arms to be taken with me. But the bathing ghal was my
place for meeting my friends, and I did not care to burden myself with
the child.

"It was an early morning in August. Fold after fold of grey clouds had
wrapped the mid-day round with a wet clinging robe. I asked the maid to
take care of the boy, while I went down to the river. The child cried
after me as I went away.

"There was no one there at the bathing ghat when I arrived. As a
swimmer, I was the best among all the village women. The river was
quite full with the rains. I swam out into the middle of the stream
some distance from the shore.

"Then I heard a cry from the bank, 'Mother!' I turned my head and saw
my boy coming down the steps, calling me as he came. I shouted to him
to stop, but he went on, laughing and calling. My feet and hands became
cramped with fear. I shut my eyes, afraid to see. When I opened
them, there, at the slippery stairs, my boy's ripple of laughter had
disappeared for ever.

"I got back to the shore. I raised him from the water. I took him in
my arms, my boy, my darling, who had begged so often in vain for me to
take him. I took him now, but he no more looked in my eyes and called `
Mother.'

"My child-God had come. I had ever neglected Him. I had ever made Him
cry. And now all that neglect began to beat against my own heart, blow
upon blow, blow upon blow. When my boy was with me, I had left him
alone. I had refused to take him with me. And now, when he is dead,
his memory clings to me and never leaves me.

"God alone knows all that my husband suffered. If he had only punished
me for my sin, it would have been better for us both. But be knew only
how to endure in silence, not how to speak.

"When I was almost mad with grief, Guru Thakur came back. In earlier
days, the relation between him and my husband had been that of boyish
friendship. Now, my husband's reverence for his sanctity and learning
was unbounded. He could hardly speak in his presence, his awe of him
was so great.

"My husband asked his Guru to try to give me some consolation. Guru
Thakur began to read and explain to me the scriptures. But I do not
think they had much effect on my mind. All their value for me lay in
the voice that uttered them. God makes the draught of divine life
deepest
in the heart for man to drink, through the human voice. He has no
better vessel in His hand than that; and He Himself drinks His divine
draught out of the same vessel.

"My husband's love and veneration for his Guru filled our house, as
incense fills a temple shrine. I showed that veneration, and had peace.
I saw my God in the form of that Guru. He used to come to take his meal
at our house every morning. The first thought that would come to my
mind on waking from sleep was that of his food as a sacred gift from
God. When I prepared the things for his meal, my fingers would sing for
joy.

"When my husband saw my devotion to his Guru, his respect for me greatly
increased. He noticed his Guru's eager desire to explain the scriptures
to me. He used to think that he could never expect to earn any regard
from his Guru himself, on account of his stupidity; but his wife had
made up for it.

"Thus another five years went by happily, and my whole life would have
passed like that; but beneath the surface some stealing was going on
somewhere in secret. I could not detect it; but it was detected by the
God of my heart. Then came a day when, in a moment our whole life was
turned upside down.

"It was a morning in midsummer. I was returning home from bathing, my
clothes all wet, down a shady lane. At the bend of the road, under the
mango tree, I met my Guru Thakur. He had his towel on his shoulder and
was repeating some Sanskrit verses as he was going to take his bath.
With my wet clothes clinging all about me I was ashamed to meet him. I
tried to pass by quickly, and avoid being seen. He called me by my
name.

"I stopped, lowering my eyes, shrinking into myself. He fixed his gaze
upon me, and said: `How beautiful is your body!'

"All the universe of birds seemed to break into song in the branches
overhead. All the bushes in the lane seemed ablaze with flowers. It
was as though the earth and sky and everything had become a riot of
intoxicating joy.

"I cannot tell how I got home. I only remember that I rushed into the
room where we worship God. But the room seemed empty. Only before my
eyes those same gold spangles of light were dancing which had quivered
in front of me in that shady lane on my way back from the river.

"Guru Thakur came to take his food that day, and asked my husband where
I had gone. He searched for me, but could not find me anywhere.

"Ah! I have not the same earth now any longer. The same sunlight is
not mine. I called on my God in my dismay, and He kept His face turned
away from me.

"The day passed, I know not how. That night I had to meet my husband.
But the night is dark and silent. It is the time when my husband's mind
comes out shining, like stars at twilight. I had heard him speak things
in the dark, and I had been surprised to find how deeply he understood.

"Sometimes I am late in the evening in going to rest on account of
household work. My husband waits for me, seated on the floor, without
going to bed. Our talk at such times had often begun with something
about our Guru.

That night, when it was past midnight, I came to my room, and found my
husband sleeping on the floor. Without disturbing him I lay down on the
ground at his feet, my head towards him. Once he stretched his feet,
while sleeping, and struck me on the breast. That was his last bequest.

"Next morning, when my husband woke up from his sleep, I was already
sitting by him. Outside the window, over the thick foliage of the jack-
fruit tree, appeared the first pale red of the dawn at the fringe of the
night. It was so early that the crows had not yet begun to call.

"I bowed, and touched my husband's feet with my forehead. He sat up,
starting as if waking from a dream, and looked at my face in amazement.
I said:

"' I have made up my mind. I must leave the world. I cannot belong to
you any longer. I must leave your home.'

"Perhaps my husband thought that he was still dreaming. He said not a
word.

Ah! do hear me l' I pleaded with infinite pain. ` Do hear me and
understand I You must marry another wife. I must take my leave.'

"My husband said: ' What is all this wild, mad talk? Who advises you to
leave the world?'

"I said: ` My Guru Thakur.'

"My husband looked bewildered. ' Guru Thakur!' he cried. ' When did he
give you this advice?'

"` In the morning,' I answered, ' yesterday, when I met him on my way
back from the river.'

"His voice trembled a little. He turned, and looked in my face, and
asked me: `Why did he give you such a behest?'

"` I do not know,' I answered. ' Ask him 1 He will tell you himself, if
he can.'

"My husband said: `It is possible to leave the world, even when
continuing to live in it. You need not leave my home. I will speak to
my Guru about it.'

"` Your Guru,' I said, ` may accept your petition; but my heart will
never give its consent. I must leave your home. From henceforth, the
world is no more to me.'

"My husband remained silent, and we sat there on the floor in the dark.
When it was light, he said to me: ' Let us both came to him.'

"I folded my hands and said: ` I shall never meet him again.'

"He looked into my face. I lowered my eyes. He said no more. I knew
that, somehow, he had seen into my mind, and understood what was there.
In this world of mine, there were only two who loved me best-my boy and
my husband. That love was my God, and therefore it could brook no
falsehood. One of these two left me, and I left the other. Now I must
have truth, and truth alone."

She touched the ground at my feet, rose and bowed to me, and departed.