Letters from a Young Poet (13 page)

Shahjadpur
June 1891

Last night I had a very strange dream. All of Calcutta city seemed enveloped in a great, terrible and yet surprising feeling—the houses could all be seen through a dark black mist—and within it there was some enormous commotion going on. I was travelling through Park Street in a hired carriage—as I went I saw that St Xavier's College was growing exponentially to an enormous size—in that dark mist, it had become impossibly high. Then gradually I came to know that a group of strange people had arrived who could use some sort of trickery to perform these astonishing feats for money. Reaching the Jorasanko house, I saw they had reached there too—awful-looking, with somewhat Mongolian features—thin moustaches, scraggly beards pointing this way and that on either side of their faces. They could make humans grow in size too. That's why all the women of our house were out on the porch—applicants for more height—those people were sprinkling some sort of powder on their heads and whoosh, they were all growing taller. I kept saying—how astonishing, this is just like a dream. Then, somebody proposed that our house be made to grow higher. They agreed and began to break a part of
the house. After smashing up a portion, they said, ‘Now you have to pay us a certain amount of money, or we shall not work on the house any more.' Kunja Sarkar said, ‘How's that possible, the work can't be paid for until it has been completed!' Immediately they became very angry—the whole house then sort of bent out of shape and became horrible, and in some places you could see that half a person was embedded in its walls, with the other half hanging out. Overall it seemed as if all of it was the work of the devil. I said to Baṛ-dada, ‘Baṛ-da, do you see what's happening? Come, let us sit and pray.'
^*
We went to the inner courtyard and sat down to fervent meditation. Emerging from there, I thought I would reprimand them in the name of god—but although my heart felt as if it would burst, I couldn't speak. After that I'm not sure when I woke up. What a strange dream, don't you think? All of Calcutta under the devil's spell—everybody trying to grow with his help and the whole city enveloped in this hellish, dark mist, horribly growing all the while. But there was a bit of farce in it as well—in the entire world, why was the devil so particularly well disposed towards the Jesuits?

After that the teachers at the English school here in Shahjadpur arrived with expectations of an audience with the lordship. They just didn't want to leave, yet I had really nothing very much to say to them—every five minutes or so I asked them one or two questions, to which they gave me an answer or half, and then I sat there like a fool, fiddling with my pen, scratching my head—I ask them what the crops have been like this season over here. The schoolmasters know nothing of crops, and whatever there was to be known about the students has already been said at the start. So I go back to the beginning and start again; I ask, ‘How many students in your school?' One of them says, ‘Eighty.' Another says, ‘No, a hundred and seventy-five!' I think, now these two are going to have a tremendous argument. But instead, both
immediately agree with each other. One and a half hours after that, it's difficult to know exactly why, they suddenly remembered to say, ‘We'll take your leave now.' They could have said so an hour earlier, or they might have remembered to say so twelve hours later—it seems that there's no rule for this sort of thing—just a blind faith in miracles.

Shahjadpur
Saturday, 4 July 1891

There is a boat moored to our ghat, and many ‘common women' from the village are standing in front of it in a crowd … Perhaps one of them is going somewhere and everybody else has come to say goodbye. Lots of little boys, lots of veiled heads and lots of grey heads have got together. But there is one girl among them who attracts my attention more than anybody else. She must be about twelve or thirteen, but looks about fourteen–fifteen because she's well built. Her face is superlative. She's quite dark, yet quite good-looking. Her hair is cut like a boy's, and it suits her face. She has such an intelligent, self-aware, clear and simple look. She stood there with a boy on her hip, staring at me unabashedly with such unalloyed curiosity … Really, her face and figure were very attractive, but she was neither stupid nor lacking in simplicity nor deficient in any way. Her half-boy, half-girl look especially attracted my attention. A boy's complete unselfconsciousness had been mixed with sweetness to create an entirely new kind of girl. I had never expected to see this type of village girl in Bengal. I see that their entire clan is quite un-shy. One of the women is standing on the riverbank in the sun, running her fingers through her hair to disentangle it, while talking to another woman on the boat about domestic affairs at the top of her voice. I heard she had just one
‘gal' [
māiẏyā
], no other ‘kids' [
chāoẏāl nāi
]—but the daughter's not sensible at all—‘says anything to anyone, does anything at any time, has no consciousness of “them” and “us”'…. I further learnt that Gopal Sha's son-in-law wasn't that great and the daughter didn't want to go to him. Finally, when it was time to go, I saw that they were trying very hard to get my short-haired, round-limbed girl with a bangle on her arm and her bright simple face on to the boat, but she just didn't want to go—eventually, they got her on to the boat after a lot of pushing and pulling. I realized that the poor thing was probably being taken from her parental home to her husband's home—after the boat sailed away, the women stood on the shore, looking out, while one or two slowly wiped their faces and eyes with their āncals. A small girl with tightly tied hair climbed up on to an older girl's lap and, putting her arms around her neck and her head on her shoulder, began to cry silently. The one who left was probably the poor thing's elder sister and playmate, who had sometimes joined in when she played with her dolls, maybe giving her a push sometimes if she were naughty. The morning sun and the riverbank and everything seemed to fill up with such deep melancholy! Like the deep sigh of a piteous rāginÄ« of the morning, it seemed that the world was so beautiful, but so full of pain…. The history of this unknown little girl seemed to become very familiar to me. When it's time to leave, to leave upon a boat on this flowing river seems to be even more moving. A little like death—to float away from the shore—those left standing wipe their eyes and turn to leave; the one who floats away, disappears. I know that this deep sorrow shall be forgotten by both those who remain and those who leave, perhaps it is already lost to some extent. The hurt is temporary, while the forgetting is permanent. But if you think about it, it is the pain that is real, not the forgetting. At the time of certain partings and certain deaths, man suddenly realizes how terribly true this pain is. He realizes that man is quite mistaken to live serenely; it is this grief and this anxiety that is the inner truth of the world. Nothing remains,
nobody remains; that's so true that we don't even remember it, and grief departs—and realizing that it is not only that we shall not be here, but that nobody will even remember, man becomes even more desperate. One shall disappear without a trace from both within and without. Truly, with the exception of our country's tender rāginīs, no other song is possible for all of mankind, for mankind throughout the ages.

On the waterway towards Cuttack
August 1891

A gentleman's self-respect is completely lost if he is preoccupied night and day with the fact that his clothes are becoming progressively shabby and unbearable, and his bag of clothes is missing. I cannot now stride around purposefully in society with my head held high in the manner in which I could have if I had had the bag. My only wish is to somehow keep myself concealed and out of sight. I've slept in these clothes at night and am revealed in the same attire in the morning. On top of that the steamer is full of coal dust and shabbiness, and my entire body is steaming in the mid-afternoon heat. Thinking of this state of affairs, coupled with my utterly meek character, you must be trying to hold your laughter in check. Besides which, what's the point of writing to you about the joys on board this
steamer
! There's no end to the variety and number of companions I've found. There's somebody called Aghor-babu here, who insists on referring to every conscious and unconscious object upon this earth as his mother-in-law's brother's nephew.
^*
. Another man with a musical knack
began to practise the Bhaiňro ālāp in the middle of the night.
^*
For various reasons, this appeared to be entirely untimely. We've managed to spend from last evening to about nine o'clock today with our ship stuck in a narrow canal. I was lying down, dejected and lifeless, surrounded by a crowd of passengers in one corner of the deck. I had requested the khansamaji to prepare
luci
for the evening meal—he made some fried floury stuff without shape or substance and presented it without a trace of any accompanying vegetables, fried or curried. I expressed some amount of surprise and regret on seeing this. This person then anxiously said, ‘
Hum abhi bana deta
.'
^†
Seeing that it was very late in the night, I disagreed, and, having eaten the dry luci as well as I could, lay down in the light in the midst of all those people in my
pantaloons
—mosquitoes in the air and cockroaches roaming all around—another person sleeping right at my feet, whose body my legs were touching from time to time, four or five noses snoring continuously, a few mosquito-bitten, wretched, sleepless souls pulling at their tobacco, and through it all, the Bhaiňro rāginі. At around 3.30 a.m., some overenthusiastic people began to wake each other up to encourage them to begin their morning ablutions. Hopelessly tired, I quit my rest and went and sat down, leaning back on my chair, waiting for dawn. The night passed like a strange curse. One of the ship's crew informed me that the steamer was stuck in such a way that it would not be able to move the entire day today. I asked a worker whether it would be possible to board a ship going to Calcutta. He smiled and said, this ship would be returning to Calcutta once it had reached its destination, so if I wanted to, I could always return on the same ship. Fortunately, after a lot of pulling and pushing, around ten o'clock the ship began to move again.

Chandni Chowk, Cuttack
3 September 1891

Our lawyer, Hariballabh-babu, is a man of rounded and expansive proportions—his air is one of a very tall and large Krishna-Vishnu. He's getting on in years. A pleated shawl on his shoulder, very well turned out, the smell of essence on his body, two layers of chin, a proportionate moustache, rolling forehead, big swimming eyes half shut with self-conceit, the pupils of the eyes rising up towards the sky when he speaks—he speaks in a deep rumbling tone in a very mild, slow, and smiling way—time seems to stand like an obedient servant silently by his side, waiting for him—not the tiniest hurry about anything at all. He turned up his eyes and asked me at one point, ‘Where is Jyoti now?'
^*
My insides petrifying with respect at the unflappable seriousness of the questioner, I replied in low and modest tones, letting him know that my brother was in the capital. He said, ‘I was a fellow student of Birendra's.'
^†
Hearing which my soul was even more overcome. After this, when he suggested that my sudden and untimely arrival here without waiting for anybody's advice was childish and an ill-thought-out move, you can image how wan and taken aback I became. I hung my head and kept repeating—I didn't know anything about the actual situation, I've never come before, this is my first visit. Subsequently we began to argue about ‘when did Jyoti visit last'. Calculating this led to complete disagreement between Baṛ-dā and him. He said, '74–'75, Baṛ-dā said, earlier. This will give you some idea how difficult history-writing is. That's why I think I'd better start putting a date to my letters from now on.

Tiron
7 September 1891

The ghat at Baliya is quite pleasant to look at. Tall trees on either side—taken all in all, the canal brings that small river in Poona to mind…. I thought about it quite a bit and decided that if I had known this canal to be a river then I would have liked it much more. Both banks have tall coconut trees, mango trees and all sorts of other shady trees, a clean sloping bank covered with lovely green grass and innumerable blue
lajjābatīlatā
flowers; sometimes a screw-pine forest; at places where the trees thin out a bit you can see an endless field stretching out beyond the high banks of the canal; the fields are such an intense green in the rains that the eyes seem to simply drown in them; occasionally, a small village encircled by date and coconut trees; and the entire scene shaded and dark under the cool shade of the stooping, cloud-covered monsoon sky. The canal bends and winds its way gracefully through the middle of its two clean, green, tender, grassy banks. A slow current; at places where it becomes very narrow there are red and white lotuses and tall grasses to be seen at the edge of the water; all in all, very much like an English
stream
. But still one regrets the fact that this is nothing more than an irrigation canal—the sound of its flowing water has no primeval ancientness, it doesn't know the mystery of a distant, lonely mountain cave—not named after some old feminine name, it has not breastfed the villages on either side of its banks from time immemorial—it can never babble—

Men may come and men may go

But I go on forever.

Even large lakes that belong to ancient times have attained greater glory. From this you can quite make out why an old and great
lineage commands so much respect even if it is, in many respects, poor. It is as though there is an aura of the wealth and beauty of many ages upon it. A gold trader suddenly grown big may obtain a lot of gold, but doesn't find the lustre of that gold very quickly. In any case, a hundred years later, when the trees on the shore are much larger than they are now, when the sparkling-white milestones will have become worn and moss-covered, when the 1871 carved into the lock will seem very far away, if I could travel on this boat on this canal to look into our estates at Pandua with my great-grandson, undoubtedly my mind would be labouring under a completely different set of feelings. But alas for my great-grandson! God knows what fate holds for him! Perhaps an obscure and undistinguished clerkship. A fragment of the Tagore family, torn from it and flung far away, like a dark, extinguished splinter of a meteorite. But I have so many troubles in the present that there's absolutely no need to lament for my great-grandson…. We reached Tarpur at four o'clock. Our journey by palanquin began here. I had thought the road was about twelve miles and that we would reach our bungalow by eight in the evening. Field after field, village after village, mile upon mile passed—the twelve miles seemed endless. At about seven-thirty I asked the bearers how much further, they said—not much more, a little more than six miles. Hearing this, I tried to rearrange myself within the palanquin. Not more than half of me fits into a palanquin—my back aches, my feet go numb, my head starts feeling knocked-about—it might have been more convenient within the palanquin if only there was some way to tuck myself up three or four times and keep myself folded. The road was absolutely terrible. Knee-deep mud everywhere—in some places the bearers were treading very warily, step by step, for fear of slipping. They lost their footing three or four times, but managed to regain balance. Occasionally, there was no road—the rice fields were full of water—we moved ahead, splashing through all of it. The night was very dark because of the clouds, it was drizzling, and the flame of the torch kept going out from time to time for
lack of oil—and had to be lit again by a lot of blowing on it; the bearers began to quarrel about the lack of light. After having advanced in this manner for some distance the
barakand
ā
j
[armed footman] folded his hands and submitted that we had arrived at a river and now needed to convey the palanquin on a boat, except the boats hadn't reached yet, but would very soon—so now the palanquins would have to be set down for some time. So down went the palanquins. But then there was simply no sign of the boats. Slowly the torch went out. In that dark night on the riverbank, the footmen began to call out in their hoarse voices to the boatmen as loudly as they could—the other bank of the river echoed their call, but no boatmen answered. ‘Mukunda-a-a-a-a!' ‘Balkrishnaa-a-a-a!' ‘Neelkantha-a-a-a-a!' Such was the desperation in those voices that Mukunda [Vishnu] and Neelkantha [Shiva] might well have descended from their respective abodes in heaven—but our helmsman had stopped his ears and was resting unperturbed in his abode. There was nothing on that isolated shore, not even a hut, only an empty bullock cart lying by the roadside sans driver or passenger—our bearers sat down upon it and began to chatter among themselves in their foreign tongue. The night resonated with the sound of frogs chattering and crickets calling. I thought to myself that we would perhaps have to stay the night here itself, mangled and crushed and squeezed in the palanquin—perhaps Mukunda and Neelkantha might arrive tomorrow morning. I began to sing to myself—

Oh, if you come to me smiling at the end of the night

Will my smile remain?

This tarnished body, weary with waking,

What will you say when you see me?

Well, whatever will be said will be in the Oriya language, I wouldn't understand a thing. But there's no doubt about the fact that there will be no smile on my face. A long time passed in this manner.
Then suddenly, with a rhythmic
hňui-hňai, hňui-hňai
sound, Baṛ-dā's palanquin appeared. Seeing that there was no prospect of any boats arriving, Baṛ-dā ordered that the river had to be crossed with the palanquins carried on their heads. Hearing this, the bearers began to hesitate, and some hesitation and pity made an appearance in my mind as well. Anyway, after a lot of argument they took the name of god and descended into the river with the palanquins on their heads. They crossed the river with a lot of difficulty. It was half past ten in the night then. I curled up and lay down as best I could. I had just begun to nod off when suddenly one of the bearers slipped and the whole palanquin was given a good shake—waking up all of a sudden, my heart began to thud loudly in my ears. After that, half asleep and half awake, we reached the bungalow at Pandua in the late hours of the night.