Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895 Read online

  Oh no! The maulabі saheb has arrived with a crowd of peasants* and has salaamed—I feel like saying to him—

  Fie on you, these peasants and these estates—

  Let the estate go to nothing, and take the maulab with it!

  5

  Shahjadpur

  January 1890

  The students of the Entrance School here have formed a Sunіtisancāriṇі Sabhā [Society for the Dissemination of Good Morals] in which they deliver lectures on ethics, and their masters had come to catch hold of me so I could light up the face of their proceedings. When they all got into action about my poetic ability and a variety of other great talents—when they reached top gear on the subject of my gifts in comparison to every master and every pundit ever, with one person taking off at the point at which another had stopped—if one says poet, another says great poet and yet another says that the language and the feeling both equal each other, a fourth says everything is new, Bengali literature has not seen the like of it until now—what the fifth said cannot be declared publicly, hearing what the sixth had to say the tips of my ears became quite red—before the seventh could speak I hurriedly agreed to be present at their Society for the Dissemination of Good Morals. The second master of the school here is a particular fan of my Heňẏāli nāṭya.* He said my ‘Heiňli nāṭya’ was completely new in the Bengali language—‘Reading this, we are falling about laughing!’ The next day, we managed to arrive at the Society for the Dissemination of Good Morals. Boys and old men included, there must have been about five or six hundred people there—some quite thin, with no shoes, sitting upon benches swinging their feet and coughing; some others were quite fancy, with watch chains over massive new black alpaca robes [cāpkān], that is, our munsefs, lawyers, etc.† I was sitting there quite dejected, my hands and feet quite cold, face getting quite red, when suddenly somebody announced that the revered Sri Rabindranath Thakur Esquire should take his seat as chairman. The munsef-babu said, ‘I second that.’ Without a word, I ascended the seat of the chairman. The students are supposed to speak on the subject of modesty today. I wait expectantly … And then a large, sleek boy from amongst them got up and began to deliver a lecture on modesty in the English language. He said:

  Modesty is an ornament of mind. Modest men are praised and immodest men blamed by all. Every man is pleased to see a modest man, but a proud man is very much disliked. Newton was a modest man. When his dog upset an ink bottle on his papers Newton said to his dog, ‘My friend, you do not know what harm you did to me’—such was his modesty. Brethren, let us all be like Newton. One day Chaitanya was walking in the street—a dog was lying on his way—Chaitanya said, ‘My friend, please move a little’—the dog moved away at once—such was the force of his modesty. The dog required no beating. We should treat every man like this dog.

  He gave everybody a lot of good advice in this way. A second student stood up, and in melodious Bengali began to say:

  Once upon a time my travelling companions and I were all sojourning together. Afflicted by the summer heat we entered a pleasant, birdsong-filled forest glade. (A very long description) At one place we saw some men employing manly words while engaged in the fiercest argumentation. We did not know who they were—our companions had fallen behind, so they too could not be asked. After going a little further, we arrived at a flower-bedecked, becalmed poolside upon which swans floated peacefully. (Long description) Upon seeing some beauteous maidens sporting upon the waves, we surmised these must be the daughters of gods. Later we came to know that those aforementioned men were pride and arrogance, and these beauties were modesty. Modesty has endless virtues. Of all the virtues with which God has blessed mankind, modesty is the most valuable virtue of all. Oh, when you see modesty in men then the eyes fill up with tears of joy and the heart is flooded with delight. Etc.

  After this another boy immediately got up and began—

  There is no virtue anywhere that can compare with modesty.

  Everybody everywhere is appreciative of the modest person.

  Be obedient to your mother and father and everybody—

  Only then will everyone call you a modest person.

  Etcetera

  Another boy began with modesty and ended with true love and God’s endless mercy. After every speech, there was ringing applause for some time. I sat there, quite clueless. Suddenly the Headmaster came and said, ‘There are many more compositions, but everybody is eager to hear your speech.’ Face drawn, hands and feet cold, ears ringing, hemming and hawing, I stood up and started. I said, ‘Before I start to speak on the subject of modesty, I should humbly say that I am not sure I will be able to speak very much about the subject. I completely agree with the speakers preceding me, the students who have proved that modesty is among one of our chief virtues: undoubtedly, Newton was very modest, nobody can doubt that any more.’—This was the way things went. Gradually, as I spoke, one or two thoughts made an appearance. After I sat down, two by two they went up and began to praise my qualities and those of my ancestors. The first to rise was the head pundit. He said he didn’t have the power to speak, but after having heard my speech he was so charmed that he was unable to help himself—that the powers of poetry, oratory and, on top of these, singing, could not be found combined anywhere but in me. Having said this, he sat down with a thud. The second master rose and said, ‘I do not think what the master pundit has said is enough, more needs to be said on the subject. The person who is present before us today is no ordinary person; who does not know the name of the revered mahatma (at this point he forgot the name he needed, until somebody nearby prompted him) Dwarakanath Thakur—whose name, it would not be an exaggeration to maintain, is well known all over the world—who is his grandfather, and his father, the great saint, or you could say great king, Debendranath Thakur.’ This was followed by ‘poetic prowess’ and ‘Heiňli nāṭya’. I was completely taken aback. Then he said, what is the need for a lecture on modesty—Example is better than precept—he is himself the best example of modesty. Etc. Etc. Everyone clapped. Then the meeting broke up.

  6

  Shahjadpur

  January 1890

  So it was that in the afternoon I put on my turban, wrote my name on a card, got into my palanquin and set off as the jamidār-bābu. The saheb was dispensing justice from the veranda of his tent, the police spies to his right. Those seeking justice were waiting around on the grounds, the fields, under the trees—the palanquin was put down right under his nose, so the saheb politely seated me on a chair. A young lad, a hint of a moustache, very blonde hair with occasional black patches in between—so that it had turned out very strange; one might suddenly think him an old man, yet the face was very immature. Exchanged a vast amount of felicitations with the saheb; said to him, ‘Come and have dinner with me tomorrow evening.’ He said, ‘I’m leaving for somewhere else today itself to arrange for pig-sticking’ (I was secretly pleased). Said I’m very sorry to hear that. The saheb said, ‘I return on Monday’ (which made me very gloomy). I said, ‘Then make it on Monday.’ He was instantly agreeable. Anyway, I sighed and reminded myself that Monday was still some distance away, and reached home. Terrible clouds darkened the sky—an immense storm, pounding rain. Didn’t feel like touching a book, it was impossible to write, the mind became terribly restless, what in poetic language one would say is a feeling of something missing, some desired one absent and not to be found anywhere near, etc. I paced through this room and that—it had become dark, thunder rolled, lightning struck repeatedly, gusts of wind whistled though the air and seemed to take hold of the low tree in front of our veranda and shake it by its beard—in no time at all our dry canal filled up almost completely … I feel like writing another like that, but perhaps there is nothing more to write. Anyway, while wandering around in this manner, it suddenly struck me that it was my duty to ask the magistrate to shelter in my house in this storm. Dashed off a letter, ‘Saheb, you shouldn’t leave for pig-sticking in this weather—although you
are the son of a saheb, it is impossible for the species who live on land to reside in tents, therefore if you think dry land is a good thing, then do come and take shelter with me.’ After sending off the letter, when I went to inspect the room I saw that it had two bamboo hammocks with mattresses, pillows and dirty quilts hanging from them—the servants’ tobacco, two wooden chests, also theirs, a worn-out quilt, also theirs, a coverless oily pillow and a blackened cane mat, also theirs, a piece of torn jute with a variety of worn-out faded marks—some … boxes with the remnants of broken things—such as the rusted lid of a kettle, a bottomless broken iron oven, a very dirty zinc sheet, the bottom of some glass tumblers, shards of glass from a broken lamp, a dirty candlestick, two filters, a meat safe, some thin liquid gur in a soup-plate that had become thick with layers of dust, many broken and whole plates, a few dirty, wet, black dusters—in one corner, a bucket to wash plates in, Gofur Mian’s dirty kurta and old velvet skull cap, a weather-beaten, ant-eaten, mirror-less dressing table adorned with water marks, oil marks, milk marks, gur marks, black marks, brown marks, white marks and mixed-colour marks—its frameless broken mirror kept leaning somewhere else against a wall, its cavities filled with dust, toothpicks, napkins, old locks, bottoms of broken glass tumblers and soda water bottle wires, some bed stands, rods and rice, one broken-legged washhand stand, a terrible smell, the walls stained and with nails driven in here and there—seeing this state of affairs, I was completely astounded.—‘Call everybody, bring the nāẏeb,* call the khājāñci,† find some coolies—bring the broom, bring water, set up the ladder, untie the cord and the bamboo sticks, pull down the pillows, the quilt, the covers, pick up the pieces of broken glass bit by bit, dislodge the nails one by one …’ ‘Hey, what are all of you doing standing there open-mouthed, take, take these things away one by one—O my God, broken, they’ve broken everything—bang, crash, smash—three glass lamps broken to bits—pick them up piece by piece.’ I pulled down and threw away the broken baskets full of accumulated dust and torn mats with my own hands—five or six cockroaches emerged from under them with their families and scattered all over the place. They had been residing with me as part of my joint family—living off my gur, my bread, and the varnish off my very own burnished new shoes. The saheb wrote, ‘I’m coming right now, am in grave danger.’ ‘Ore, he’s here, he’s almost here—hurry, quickly.’ And then—there comes the saheb! Quickly dusting off my hair and beard, I become quite the bhadralok, sitting with him in the hall as if I had no work at all at hand, as if I had been sitting around relaxing the entire day. With the occasional little smile and much waving of hands I begin to chat with the saheb in a most carefree way. The thought of what had become of the saheb’s bedroom kept pushing its way into my mind from time to time. Went and saw that it had somehow managed to pass muster. Perhaps the night might even pass peacefully, unless those homeless cockroaches tickle the soles of his feet at night. The saheb said, ‘I’ll leave tomorrow morning for shikar.’ I didn’t object. In the evening, the saheb’s broken-down pāik came and reported that his tent had been torn to pieces in the storm. His kāchāri tent too was destroyed in the rain, so the plan to hunt animals had to be put on hold, and he has had to remain stationary at the jamidār-bābu’s for now.*

  7

  London 3

  October 1890

  When I come to this country I really, truly think of that wretched, unfortunate Bharatbhumi of ours as my mother. She does not have the power this country has, the wealth it has, but she loves us. All the love I have felt since I was born, all the happiness, is in her lap. The attractive spit and polish of this place will never be able to lure me—it’ll be such a relief to return to her. If I could sit in one corner of that land and like a honeybee accumulate love in my own hive, remaining unknown to all of civilized society, then there is nothing more I could want.

  8

  London 10

  October 1890

  Is man an iron machine that he shall always run on schedule? Man’s mind is a thing that functions in so many diverse ways—it moves in so many directions—and it has so many claims, that it must lean in one direction or the other. That is its life’s aim, its sign of humanity, its protest against inertia. A person who does not have this hesitation, this weakness, is terribly narrow and hard and lifeless. Our life force is that which we call propensity [prabṭtti], which we are always criticizing in harsh language—through our many joys and sorrows, good deeds and sins, this is what allows us to blossom towards the cosmic. If we completely disbelieve our inclination, we would make the same mistake as the river if it were to wonder at every step, ‘Why, where is the ocean, there is only desert, forest and sandbank to be seen, perhaps the power that pushes me onward is taking me in the wrong direction.’ We too are flowing every day through many apprehensions, we cannot see our end, but He who has given us, in this limitless life, the tremendous force called our propensity, He alone knows how to use that force to direct us. We always make the enormous mistake of thinking that we shall perhaps be abandoned in this place to which our propensity has brought us; we cannot know then that we shall be drawn out of that situation. The power that brings the river to the desert is the same power that takes it to the sea. What pushes us into our mistakes is the very thing that pulls us out again. This is how we move on. The person who doesn’t have this propensity of his, or the plenitude of this life force, whose mind does not manifest its mystery and variety, that person may be happy, or good, and people may call that narrowness mental strength, but he has an inadequate stipend for this limitless life. Here I am …

  9

  Kaligram 17

  January 1891

  This sort of morning is for laziness. Apart from the fact that there is nobody here to tell you to hurry up, a crowd of peasants and responsibilities have not smothered one yet. As a result I’m feeling sort of loose and slack and lonesome. As if there’s no work in the world that’s really necessary, to the extent that one could have a bath or perhaps not have a bath, and the habit of eating one’s meals at the right time seems to be an ancient superstition prevalent among the people of Calcutta. The atmosphere around here too is like that. There’s a small river here all right, but it’s bankrupt of any flow. It seems to have become stupefied by its own moss and watercress, and spreading out its body it lies there and thinks: if it’s quite okay to go on without moving, then why move? The long grass and water plants that have grown in many places in the water would not have moved at all the entire day unless the fishermen came to throw their nets. Six or seven large boats are tied in a row; on the roof of one of them, a boatman has wrapped himself in a sheet from head to foot and sleeps in the sun—on another, someone sits and twines cord while sunning himself; near its oars, a middle-aged man sits bare-chested and stares at our boat for no reason at all. On the shore, many different sorts of people come and go in the most slow and sedate manner; why they come, why they go, why one sits hunched with his arms wrapped around his knees pulled up to his chest, why they stare surprised at nothing in particular—one cannot be sure what any of this means. Only a few ducks display an air of being busy in the midst of this—they make a lot of noise, frequently, excitedly dunking their heads in the water and immediately raising them again with a vigorous shake. Exactly as if they were sticking out their necks each time to investigate the deep mysteries under the water, then forcefully shaking their heads to say, ‘No, nothing, nothing at all!’ The days over here keep lying there, sunning themselves in this way for twelve hours, and in the remaining twelve hours they wrap themselves up in the deepest darkness and go silently to sleep. Here one feels like looking outside all the time in order to sit and be rocked by the feelings in one’s own mind; at the same time, one could hum a little tune; sometimes your eyelids droop with sleepiness. Just like a mother who sits with her son and rocks him on her lap with her back to the afternoon sun in the winter, in the same way …