Letters from a Young Poet (32 page)

Calcutta
16 July 1894

Going up to the just-waking second-floor room, I saw my youngest hatchling lying on the bamboo mat on the floor trying to call out. The thing is almost exactly as it was before, its cheeks as plump, eyes gawking in the same silly way, head nodding and bobbing up and down on the shoulders all the while. All in all, the tiny person was like a dewdrop trembling upon the lotus of the vast world. I picked her up on my lap. At first for a while she seemed to be trying to recall her previous acquaintance with me—a thorough review was conducted while looking me up and down in a significant way. Sometimes, for no particular reason, an occasional sweet smile appeared. Gradually, in no time at all, she began to lay her soft fat hands with their sharp nails upon my nose, face, eyes, hair, moustache
and beard—in fact, on whatever she could find in front of her, and not only that, she then began to roar and try to put my nose and eyes into her mouth to eat it all up. After that, lying flat on her stomach on the bed, fat hands and legs waving and head bobbing about, she began to swim enthusiastically for a while. Among the changes I observed, it seemed that she has managed, with a lot of effort, to start pronouncing the consonants in the ‘p' group nowadays, and that a little bit of intelligence has found expression in her eyes. She recognizes the sound of her own name and manages to recognize some of her friends and relatives as well. The smell of her body too has the same baby-baby feeling. Most of my time after returning to Calcutta has been spent in laughter-filled conversations with her.

Calcutta
19 July 1894

It's impossible to get any work done because of Meera, Bob…. When this tiny personality lies flat on the bed and raises both her legs up to the sky as if they were the most precious commodities and then tries to put them into her own mouth, shouting out—
aah baah baah baah
—in the loudest voice, then it is absolutely impossible for me to get any reading or writing or any work done at all. I lie down flat on my stomach next to her somewhere, and she stretches out both her arms, flailing around, and begins a great commotion with my moustache, beard, hair, nose, ears, spectacles and watch-chain, getting increasingly excited and starting to yell. So my time passes in this way. Some days in the night I can hear her wake up and start to make all sorts of sounds—the moment I go near her, she gives me a bit of a smile; the thought is: now I've got someone to play with. Then there's no sleep for a long time, as she lies flat on her stomach and keeps swimming around on the bed.

Calcutta
21 July 1894

I have a great desire to have somebody who can sing or play an instrument live near my room. If Beli becomes a maestro in both Indian and English music then perhaps my desire will be fulfilled to some extent. But by the time she becomes a maestro, she will leave my house. The other day when Abhi was singing I thought to myself that man's happiness is constituted of materials that are not all that inaccessible—a sweet voice for singing is not an absolutely impossible
ideal
in the world, yet the pleasure it gives is very deep. But however easily available it might be, finding the appropriate amount of time for it is very hard. The world is not made up only of those who wish to sing and those who wish to listen; the maximum number of people all around us are those who will never sing and never listen to any singing. That's why, taken all in all, it's something that never happens; day after day passes, one's soul becomes increasingly thirsty, the world seems to turn into worn skin and bone. I often think that it's true that we're sorry when our larger desires remain unfulfilled, but the dissatisfaction of our smaller needs and desires remaining unfulfilled all the time makes our inner selves, unbeknownst to ourselves, become gradually shrivelled and dry—we don't always count those losses, but they're not a negligible amount. When the soul is denied nourishment and remains neglected and starved, it becomes really difficult for it to bear our sorrows. I know that the way I am makes me want song, art, beauty, the company of thinkers, literary discussion—but in this country these are futile desires, futile striving on my part. People here cannot even begin to believe that things like these are absolutely essential for anybody. I too slowly begin to forget that almost none of the roots that feed my self are getting any nutrition. In the end, when suddenly one day some little source of
nourishment becomes available, and I feel the intensity of my eager heart, I remember that all these days I was starving, and that this is an essential requirement for my temperament to continue to live.

Calcutta
1 August 1894

Somebody called Sharatchandra Ray had come to meet me, but I refused to see him. Once you let a Bengali's son into your rooms, it becomes near impossible to oust him. But the Bengali daughter Meera is also no less than anybody—she too, once she enters my rooms with a clamour, doesn't leave in a hurry. She mauls me with her paws and dances on my breast, and then, having messed up my beard, moustache, the parting of my hair, my writing notebooks, the plots of my stories and the continuity of my thoughts with her two tiny hands, is expelled from my room leaving me completely defeated. And the problem is that if she doesn't come to me then I have to go to her—she begins to shout from the next room—anybody nearby who hears the loud shouting abandons all their work and rushes towards the sound—and once they are there, they see this plump, fat figure lying on her stomach in the middle of the huge bed thumping the pillows and hollering with unnecessary joy. The moment she sees the newly arrived person, her face is illuminated with a smile; sometimes she opens her mouth as wide as she can to try to express some unknown thought, but fails. At the end of it all, I stretch my large body out by her tiny one and spend a long time in completely meaningless, disjointed polite conversation, and only then can I go back to concentrating on my work. If you try to have a conversation with a grown-up you run out of subjects, so you may soon be free to go, but where there's
no subject at all but there is conversation, one can't think of where to stop—in all the
tête-à-tête
s that I always have with Meera one can't find a break in the flow of thought anywhere, so if you must stop, you stop by asserting all your bodily strength.

Calcutta
2 August 1894

My visits to Priya-babu are of great help to me in one thing—I can then tangibly see that literature has a huge contribution to make to the history of man, and that there is a significant connection between it and this insignificant personality's insignificant life. Then I feel confident in my ability to preserve myself and complete my work—then in my imagination I can see a wonderful picture of my future life. I see that at the centre-point of my everyday life and all that happens—its joys and sorrows—there is an extremely lonely and silent spot where I sit immersed, forgetting everything, in order to undertake my work of creation—where I am happy. All our important thoughts have a generous renunciation about them. When we study
astronomy
and so go and stand in the sphere of the stars and creation's mystery, how much lighter all the small burdens of life seem! Similarly, if one can make a great sacrifice or involve one's self with some large world affair, immediately the burden of one's own existence seems easily bearable. Unfortunately, even among the educated people of our country, the winds of thought do not blow freely, the connection between life and thought is really very little, and it's impossible to feel, when you're in the company of our countrymen, that literature is an important force for humankind—one feels eternally hungry to find one's own ideals reflected in other people.

Shilaidaha
4 August 1894

There's been a change of scene. Where is that Calcutta, that second-floor terrace, the daily routine of life in the disorganized clutter of bed, bedstead and chair, that
practising
of
scales
on the piano in the next room—that Meera, who although very tiny, occupies such a large space in my world! Suddenly, like a dream, all the towering mansions all around piercing the sky have been transformed into green fields swaying in the wind, the main road of Chitpur flows in the form of an immense, spread-out stream of liquid sound and song, the dust-filled heavy air is clear and transparent, bringing joyful life all over the vast, free sky—in a boat by an open window, at the head of a
camp-table
upon a cane chair is the chief protagonist, Sri Rabindranath, occupied in writing a letter this morning, and opposite him in another cane chair, his friend Sri —— is concentrating completely on writing a story for
S
ā
dhan
ā. This is how today's scene has begun. In a moment the nāẏeb will enter with the
peśkār's
[bench clerk's] notebook and tied-up
bundles
of papers in hand, and then the manner in which the
dialogue
will begin is such as could never have been composed in this day and age by any human playwright, and even if it were, it would have been roundly criticized by the reviewers' faction. But the poet of our providence who divides our lives into new and newer acts and scenes every day, propelling us forward to the denouement of the fifth act, is not the least concerned with synchronizing context and character, or with clever composition, or with the arrangement of events; he allows clerks to gather in this dearest of boats upon the stream of the wave-rocked Padma, causes grammatical and rhetorical faults to crop up in the conversation between hero and heroine, and if by any chance or good fortune the hero receives a poetic love letter written correctly according to the rules of aesthetics, then the letter-writer turns out to be a man.

Today the scenery is beautiful, the light is beautiful and the breeze is beautiful. Immersed in this sweetness, I feel like writing something or composing a song while humming to myself, or reading a storybook without too much variety or too much analysis—to lean back comfortably upon the
chair
and forget about the world, and, as I read, to have the shore's green line gradually pass by the corner of my eye and for the liquid sound of water to ceaselessly enter my ears. But I don't see any possibility that all these relatively easily attained desires will be satisfied at the moment. Because even as I write the nāẏeb and the maulabī have come in. The nāẏeb has begun to explain the modalities of the traditional account-keeping of our jamidāri to Sri —— babu; as a result, the sort of revolution in jamidāri language that has been unleashed is such that if I extract even a particle of it in one corner of this letter, you will perhaps not forgive me for the rest of this life—so I shall stop now.

Shilaidaha
5 August 1894

It rained very heavily all of last night—this morning when I woke up at dawn it was still raining continuously and it was grey on every side. Coming out of the bathing room just this moment, I saw layer upon layer, stack upon stack of dense, dark, low cloud amassed in the west above the autumn rice fields, and on the south-east side the clouds had separated a little and the sun was trying to come out, as if a temporary truce had been called between sun and rain. The scene on the other side of the Padma, where the morning light was trying to appear from behind torn clouds, was very beautiful—a freshly bathed, spiritual figure of light seemed to be rising from the mysterious depths of the water to stand in quiet beauty, and on the
shore, black clouds that looked like a lion with waving manes were sitting quietly, frowning, paws stretched out over the rice fields, as if conceding victory to the beautiful celestial power, but not yet tamed—sitting in one corner of the horizon with all its anger and pride coiled up. It's going to rain again right now, one can see signs of that, preparations are on for a proper Śrābaṇ shower—the open door before which the just-awakened smiling rays of light had come and stood is closing again very slowly—the muddy waters of the Padma are getting covered in shadow, from one side of the river to the other, the clouds have joined up with other clouds to occupy the entire sky—its entire set-up is very dark and dense….

By now the autumn rice and jute fields should have been almost empty, but this time the gods have ensured that the grain is still swaying on the fields. It's very beautiful to look at—the monsoon sky is tranquil with rain-filled clouds and the entire world is made tender by waving, luscious, green grain—the colour above is deep, and there is a coating of dark colour below as well—the soil is covered everywhere, and the actual colour of the soil can only be seen in the middle of this muddy river water. The river is very muddy. The Padma is carrying along an entire country and many districts; its waters contain so many landowners' estates dissolved in it. The Padma in its terrible mischievousness takes away one raja's kingdom hidden in its deep saffron āncal and deposits it overnight at the door of another—and ultimately, a great fight ensues in the morning between the rajas.

Shilaidaha
8 August 1894

Today the entire day —— babu has been away; today the entire day I have heard the sounds of the river. No unnecessary replies
have had to be made to incoherent questions. If just one person is present in front of you, you immediately cannot hear half of what nature is saying. I've noticed that nothing is more draining than piecemeal conversation. If you need to keep your strength of thought and strength of imagination alive preceding an act of creation, it is necessary to maintain absolute silence for quite some time. Your own talk completely distracts you. None of you have perhaps ever experienced spending day after day without speaking at all. If you had, you would have understood that in that situation one's ability to be receptive towards what is all around you and the power to enjoy it increases exponentially—for then suddenly one realizes that there are conversations happening on every side, and that we can hear that variety of speech only when we stop our own endless blabbering; today every liquid consonant of the gurgling river seems to be showering the softest affection on every part of my body—my mind today is very solitary and completely silent, and within me, a secret silence reigns stilly, so as to be fit to sit respectfully and affectionately face-to-face with this cloudless, light-filled, crop-swayed, gurgling-watered, generous countryside—I know that when in the evening I pull up the easy chair to the roof of the
boat
to sit there alone, that evening star of mine in my sky will appear before me like a member of my family! This evening of mine on the Padma is a very old acquaintance—when I used to come here in the winter and it would get very late returning from the kāchāri and my
boat
would be tied to the sandbank on the other side, I would cross the silent river on a small fisherman's
dinghy
, and this same evening would wait for me with a serious yet pleased expression; the entire sky would be ready, spread out with a particular peace, benevolence and repose; the still silence of the Padma in the evening would seem to me exactly like my own inner quarters at home. I have a certain human domestic relationship with nature here, a certain intimate familial feeling—which no one knows but me. How true that is cannot be felt by anybody even if I try to tell them. The deepest part of life which is always
silent and always secret—that part slowly come out of itself and goes around in the naked evening and naked afternoons here in silence and without fear. Those ancient footsteps seem to leave their mark on the days over here.

We have two lives—one is in the world of men, and the other in the world of thought. Many pages of the life story of that world of thought have I written upon the sky above the Padma. I can see that writing whenever I come here, and whenever I can be alone. When I come here I understand I have not been able to accomplish anything in my poems. I have not been able to express what I have felt. That's because language doesn't belong to me alone—it belongs to everybody, but what I experience with my entire temperament isn't experienced by everybody, so their language therefore cannot express my experience with any clarity.