Letters from a Young Poet (14 page)

Tiron
9 September 1891

Yesterday, after a long time, the cloud and rain cleared and golden
śarat
sunlight appeared.
^*
It was as if I'd completely forgotten that there was such a thing as sunlight in the world; yesterday, when the sun suddenly broke out at about ten or eleven in the morning, I was filled with amazement—as if I'd seen something completely new. It turned out to be a beautiful day. In the afternoon I was sitting in the front of the veranda after my bath and lunch, with my legs stretched out on the easy chair, half lying down, daydreaming. In front of me I could see some coconut trees of the
compound
of our house—beyond that, as far as the eye could see, only fields of grain,
and right at the end of the fields just an indication of some trees in faint blue. The doves were cooing and occasionally the sound of the bells the cows wore could be heard. The squirrel sits upon its tail and looks up all of a sudden, turning its head this way and that, and then in an instant climbs up the tree trunk to disappear among the branches with its tail lifted upon its back. There's a very still, silent, and secluded feeling. The wind, unobstructed, blows freely through—the leaves of the coconut fronds quiver with a trembling sound. Three or four farmers are grouped together at one place in the field, uprooting the small saplings of grain and tying them up in bundles. That's the only work to be seen being done anywhere.

Shilaidaha
1 October 1891

Woke up late to see marvellous sunlight and the river's śara
t
waters full to the brim and spilling over. The banks and the river waters were almost at the same level—the fields of grain a beautiful green and the village trees dense and alive at the end of the rains. How can I tell you how lovely it looked! There was a sharp shower of heavy rain in the afternoon. After that, in the evening, the sun set by the Padma in our coconut groves. I had climbed up on the riverbank and was strolling slowly along. In front of me, in the distance, the evening shadows were lengthening in the mango orchards, and on my way back, the sky behind the coconut trees was turning golden with gold. Unless you come here you forget how amazingly beautiful the world is and what a large heart she has and how full of a deep fulfilment she is. In the evening when I sit quietly on the
boat
, the waters silent, the riverbank growing hazy, the sun's rays slowly losing their light on the margins of the sky,
my whole body and mind feel such a touch—strangely generous, large, and incommunicable—of silent nature with her downcast eyes! What peace, what affection, what greatness, what limitless tender melancholy! From these inhabited fields of crops to that desolate world of the stars, the sky fills to the brim from end to end with such a stunned heartfelt feeling, and I sit alone, immersed in this limitless mindscape—only the maulabī stands next to me and jabbers on and on, making me disconsolate.

Shilaidaha
Tuesday, 6 October 1891

It's quite a lovely day today, Bob. One or two boats have come up to the ghat—those who live abroad are returning home in the Puja holidays with bundles, boxes and wicker baskets full of all sorts of gifts and things after an entire calendar year. I saw a babu who, the moment the boat approached the ghat, changed from his old clothes into a new pleated dhuti, putting on a white silk China coat on top of his gear, and, with a twisted scarf hung with great care over one shoulder and an umbrella on his back, then set off towards his village. The fields, full of grain, quiver with a shivering sound—piles of white clouds in the sky—the heads of mango and coconut trees can be seen above that—the coconut fronds are trembling in the breeze—one or two
kāś
flowers are preparing to bloom upon the sandbank—all together, it's a very happy scene. The feelings of the man who has just returned to his village from foreign lands, his eagerness to meet his family, and the sky in this śara
t
season, this earth, this cool, light breeze of the morning and the dense, ceaseless shudder within all of the trees, grass, flowers and river's waves, all this mixed together had
completely overcome this lonely youth by the window in joy and sorrow. In this world, if you sit alone by the window and simply open your eyes and look, new desires are born in your heart—not exactly new—the old desires begin to take all sorts of new forms. Day before yesterday I was sitting in the same way quietly by the window, when a boatman passed by on a
dinghy
, singing a song—not that he had a very good voice—suddenly I remembered how many years ago, when I was a boy, I had travelled with Bābāmaśāẏ [Father] on a boat to the Padma—one night, waking up around two o'clock, I had opened the window and, looking out, I saw the still river lit brilliantly by the moonlight and a boy rowing alone on a small
dinghy
singing a song in such a sweet voice—I had never heard a sweeter song till then. Suddenly I thought, what if my life could be returned to me from that day onward! Then I could test it once more and see—this time round I wouldn't leave it lying thirsty and dry and unfulfilled—I would take the poet's song and set out with the evening tide on a slender
dinghy
to float upon the world; to sing and to captivate and to go and see what the world contains; for once, to let myself be known and to know others; carried enthusiastically along by life, by youth, to travel around the world like the blowing wind, and then to return to spend a fulfilled and happy old age at home as a poet. It's not as if it's a very high
ideal
. To do good for mankind and to die like Christ may be a much greater
ideal
—but being the sort of person I am overall, I've never even contemplated that, nor do I wish to wither and die like that…. I don't want to sacrifice this precious life to a self-inflicted lack by starving, looking at the sky, not sleeping, continuously quarrelling with myself and constantly depriving both this world and my humanity at every step. Instead of thinking that the creator of this world has cheated us and that it's the devil's trap, if I can trust it and love it and, if fate is willing, be loved in turn; if I could live like a man and die like one, then that is enough—it is not my work to try and disappear into air like a god.

Shilaidaha
15 October 1891

Last evening I was strolling around the riverbank towards a golden sunset in the west and back again towards a silver moon rising in the east, twirling my moustache as I walked—nature looking at me with the deep, silent and tender melancholy of a mother looking at a sick child—the river water as still as the sky, and our two tied boats lying like sleeping waterbirds with their faces hidden in their wings. All at once the maulabī came up and informed me in a scared whisper, ‘Calcutta's Bhojiya has come.' … I can't tell you how many impossible anxieties sprang up instantly in my mind…. Anyway, suppressing my inward agitation, I went and sat down upon the royal chair in a grave and serious manner and sent for Bhojiya—the moment she entered the room, Bhojiya began to whine and fell at my feet, and I realized at once that if there was any disaster that had occurred, then it had happened to Bhojiya herself. After that she began to narrate a serial tale of disconnected misfortunes in her angular Bengali, howling and snivelling all the while. With great perseverance, we managed to get to the root of her story, which was this: Bhojiya and her mother used to quarrel quite frequently—nothing surprising about that—after all, they are both from a race of heroic women in western Aryavarta—not known for being soft-hearted. One evening, the mother and daughter got into a fight that went from the verbal domain to the physical—not the sort of embrace that comes from affectionate conversation but the fisticuffs that ensue from abusive language. It was the mother who lost that bout of wrestling—and she was also grievously wounded in the process. Bhojiya maintains her mother chased after her aiming a brass bowl at her head, and while she was trying to protect herself her bangle hit her mother
on the head or somewhere and there was bloodshed. Anyway, all this resulted in Choto-bau immediately banishing her from the second floor to the lower reaches. Since then, she absolutely refuses to forgive her. Just look at that, Bob, a whining domestic warfront from the second floor in Calcutta has opened up in the middle of all the official work of this place. This happened about three or four days ago now, but I hadn't been informed—and then a sudden thunder-strike without
notice
in the form of Bhojiya [
binā noṭise bhajiẏāghāt
].

Shilaidaha
18 October 1891

I feel that the moment you travel outside Calcutta, man's belief in his own permanence and greatness recedes to a great extent. Here, man is less and the earth is more—all around, you can see the sort of things that cannot be made today, repaired tomorrow, and sold off the day after, things that have always been standing firmly through man's birth, death, actions and deeds—that travel in the same way every day and flow without rest through all time. When I come to the countryside, I don't see man as an individual any more—just as the river flows through many countries, so too man flows, chattering and winding, through woods and villages and cities forever—this does not end.
Men may come and men may go but I go on forever
—that's not quite the right way to put it. Man too goes on like a river does, through many tributaries and branches, one end of which lies in the fountainhead of birth and the other in the sea of death—two dark mysteries on both sides and a varied
līlā
^*
of work and play and
chatter in between—this has no end in any age. There, listen, the farmer is singing in his field, the fisherman's
dinghy
floats by, the morning lengthens, the sun grows warmer—at the ghat some bathe and some draw water—in this way, on both sides of this peaceful river, hundreds and hundreds of years rush by with a murmuring sound through the villages and the shade of the trees—and a tender sound rises from it all:
I go on forever!
In the still silence of the afternoon, when some cowherd boy calls out to his companion at the top of his voice, and a boat returns homeward with a smacking sound of the oars, and the women push at the water with their pitchers and that itself makes a gurgling sound, and alongside that the many unintentional sounds of nature in mid-afternoon—one or two birds calling, bees humming, the boat bending slowly in the wind, creating its own compassionate sound—all together it's such a tender lullaby—as if a mother has been trying the entire afternoon to comfort her hurt son by lulling him to sleep, saying: don't worry now, don't cry now, no more hitting and punching, don't fight and argue, forget about it for a little while, try and sleep a little! Saying this, she slowly pats a hot forehead.

Shilaidaha
Monday, 19 October 1891

Today is the day of the Kojagar full moon.
^*
… I was walking slowly by the riverside and conversing with myself—one can't exactly call it a ‘conversation'—perhaps I was ranting on all by
myself and that imaginary companion of mine had no option but to listen quietly; the poor thing didn't have a chance to put in a word in his own defence—even if I'd given him a completely inappropriate speech, he couldn't have done anything about it. But how marvellous it was! What more can I say! I've said it so many times, but it can never be told in its entirety. The river had not a single line upon it—there, on the other shore of the sandbank where the Padma's waters had reached their last horizon, from there to here, a wide line of moonlight was shimmering—not a single human being, not a single boat—not a tree to be seen on the new sandbank on the other side, not a blade of grass—it seems as if a melancholy moon is rising over a desolate earth—an aimless river flowing through the middle of an unpopulated world, a lengthy old story has come to an end over an abandoned world; today there is nothing left of all those kings and princesses and bridegrooms and their friends and golden cities, only the ‘boundless fields' [
tep
ā
ntarer m
ā
á¹­h
] and the ‘seven seas and thirteen rivers' of those stories stretch out in the wan moonlight…. I was walking as if I was the one and only last-remaining pulse of a dying world. And all of you were on another shore, on the banks of life—where there's the
British government
and the nineteenth century and tea and
cheroots
. If I could lift somebody out of there on a small boat and bring him here to this uninhabited moonlight, we would stand on this high bank and look out at the endless water and sand, and the fathomless night would shimmer and hum all around us! So many others have over the years stood here like me, alone, and felt this way, and so many poets have tried to express this, but oh, it is ineffable—what is it, what is it for, what impulse is it, what does one call this lost peace, what does it mean—when will that tune emerge, splitting open the heart precisely through the middle, which will exactly express this musicality!

Shilaidaha
Saturday, 21 November 1891

Received a letter from Sholli.
^*
She has written analysing my work in
Bhagnahṛdaẏ
and
Rudracanḍā
. Previously, she had taken the side of
Bhagnahṛdaẏ
and argued with me frequently—now she has come around to my point of view. That is, she has criticized it extensively. She said its poets, Murala, Chapala, etc., are inhabitants of an imaginary grove….

Shilaidaha
Monday, 4 January 1892

Just a short while ago, the engineer from Pabna turned up with his mem and kids. You know, Bob, I don't find it easy to be a host—my head gets completely muddled—besides which, I never knew he was going to bring a couple of kids along. This time I was supposed to be living on my own, so I haven't even brought too many provisions. Anyway, I'm trying to shut my eyes and ears and get through this somehow. Additionally, the mem drinks tea, and I don't have any tea; the mem can't stand dal right from her childhood, and due to the absence of other food, I have ordered for dal to be made; the mem doesn't touch fish from
year's end to year's end
, and I have quite happily ordered catfish curry to be cooked. Thank goodness she loves
country sweets
, that's why she managed with great difficulty to cut into a hard, dry
sandeś
with her fork and eat it. There's a
tin of biscuits left over from last time's rations that's going to come in handy. To top it all, I went and put my foot in it—I said to the saheb, your mem drinks tea, but unfortunately I don't have any tea, I have cocoa. He said, ‘My mem loves cocoa even more than tea.' I rummaged through the cupboard and found that there was no cocoa—it had all been sent back to Calcutta. Now I'll have to tell him again: there's no tea and no cocoa, only the Padma's water and a kettle—let's see what his face looks like then. I can't tell you how mischievous and naughty the sahebs's two sons look! The mem isn't as awful-looking and short-haired as I thought she was—she's sort of medium-looking. From time to time, the saheb and mem are getting into the most tremendous fights which I can hear from this boat. The boys crying, the servants shouting, the couple arguing—it's driving me completely insane. I don't see any chance of being able to read or write or get any work done (the mem is scolding her son:
What a little
śuẏār
[
pig
]
you are!
). Tell me, why has all this trouble descended on my shoulders? And then again, the mem has said she wants to go for a walk this evening and she's asking me to go with her—I'm sitting here in such a stunned state that if you saw me you would fall about laughing—I'm smiling a wry smile of sorrow myself, thinking about the state I'm in. I'd never dreamt I'd have to wander around the estates with a mem clasped under my arm. No doubt the tenants will be very surprised. If I can bid goodbye to them tomorrow morning then I might just survive; if they say they're going to stay one more day then I'm going to die, Bob.