Nowadays I keep
repeating
the line: "Much
rather would I be an Arab Bedouin!
rather would I be an Arab Bedouin!
Tagore - Creative Unity
True,
the pang lasts but a while, and is perhaps already wearing off both in
those who have gone and those who remain,--pain being temporary, oblivion
permanent. But none the less it is not the forgetting, but the pain which
is true; and every now and then, in separation or in death, we realise how
terribly true.
ON BOARD A CANAL STEAMER GOING TO CUTTACK,
_August_ 1891.
My bag left behind, my clothes daily get more and more intolerably
disreputable,--this thought continually uppermost is not compatible with a
due sense of self-respect. With the bag I could have faced the world of
men head erect and spirits high; without it, I fain would skulk in
corners, away from the glances of the crowd. I go to bed in these clothes
and in them I appear in the morning, and on the top of that the steamer is
full of soot, and the unbearable heat of the day keeps one unpleasantly
moist.
Apart from this, I am having quite a time of it on board the steamer. My
fellow-passengers are of inexhaustible variety. There is one, Aghore Babu,
who cannot allude to anything, animate or inanimate, except in terms of
personal abuse. There is another, a lover of music, who persists in
attempting variations on the Bhairab[1] mode at dead of night, convincing
me of the untimeliness of his performance in more senses than one.
[Footnote: A Raga, or mode of Indian classical music, supposed to be
appropriate to the early dawn. ]
The steamer has been aground in a narrow ditch of a canal ever since last
evening, and it is now past nine in the morning. I spent the night in a
corner of the crowded deck, more dead than alive. I had asked the steward
to fry some _luchis_ for my dinner, and he brought me some
nondescript slabs of fried dough with no vegetable accompaniments to eat
them with. On my expressing a pained surprise, he was all contrition and
offered to make me some hotch-potch at once. But the night being already
far advanced, I declined his offer, managed to swallow a few mouthfuls of
the stuff dry, and then, all lights on and the deck packed with
passengers, laid myself down to sleep.
Mosquitoes hovered above, cockroaches wandered around. There was a
fellow-sleeper stretched crosswise at my feet whose body my soles every
now and then came up against. Four or five noses were engaged in snoring.
Several mosquito-tormented, sleepless wretches were consoling themselves
by pulls at their hubble-bubble pipes; and above all, there rose those
variations on the mode _Bhairab_! Finally, at half-past three in the
morning, some fussy busy-bodies began loudly inciting each other to get
up. In despair, I also left my bed and dropped into my deck-chair to await
the dawn. Thus passed that variegated nightmare of a night.
One of the hands tells me that the steamer has stuck so fast that it may
take the whole day to get her off. I inquire of another whether any
Calcutta-bound steamer will be passing, and get the smiling reply that
this is the only boat on this line, and I may come back in her, if I like,
after she has reached Cuttack! By a stroke of luck, after a great deal of
tugging and hauling, they have just got her afloat at about ten o'clock.
TIRAN.
7_th September_ 1891.
The landing-place at Balia makes a pretty picture with its fine big trees
on either side, and on the whole the canal somehow reminds me of the
little river at Poona. On thinking it over I am sure I should have liked
the canal much better had it really been a river.
Cocoanut palms as well as mangoes and other shady trees line its banks,
which, turfed with beautifully green grass, slope gently down to the
water, and are sprinkled over with sensitive plants in flower. Here and
there are screwpine groves, and through gaps in the border of trees
glimpses can be caught of endless fields, stretching away into the
distance, their crops so soft and velvety after the rains that the eye
seems to sink into their depths. Then again, there are the little villages
under their clusters of cocoanut and date palms, nestling under the moist
cool shade of the low seasonal clouds.
Through all these the canal, with its gentle current, winds gracefully
between its clean, grassy banks, fringed, in its narrower stretches, with
clusters of water-lilies with reeds growing among them. And yet the mind
keeps fretting at the idea that after all it is nothing but an artificial
canal.
The murmur of its waters does not reach back to the beginning of time. It
knows naught of the mysteries of some distant, inaccessible mountain cave.
It has not flowed for ages, graced with an old-world feminine name, giving
the villages on its sides the milk of its breast. Even old artificial
lakes have acquired a greater dignity.
However when, a hundred years hence, the trees on its banks will have
grown statelier; its brand-new milestones been worn down and moss-covered
into mellowness; the date 1871, inscribed on its lock-gates, left behind
at a respectable distance; then, if I am reborn as my great-grandson and
come again to inspect the Cuttack estates along this canal, I may feel
differently towards it.
SHELIDAH,
_October_ 1891.
Boat after boat touches at the landing-place, and after a whole year
exiles are returning home from distant fields of work for the Poojah
vacation, their boxes, baskets, and bundles loaded with presents. I notice
one who, as his boat nears the shore, changes into a freshly folded and
crinkled muslin _dhoti_, dons over his cotton tunic a China silk
coat, carefully adjusts round his neck a neatly twisted scarf, and walks
off towards the village, umbrella held aloft.
Rustling waves pass over the rice-fields. Mango and cocoanut tree-tops
rise into the sky, and beyond them there are fluffy clouds on the horizon.
The fringes of the palm leaves wave in the breeze. The reeds on the
sand-bank are on the point of flowering. It is altogether an exhilarating
scene.
The feelings of the man who has just arrived home, the eager expectancy of
his folk awaiting him, this autumn sky, this world, the gentle morning
breeze, the universal responsive tremor in tree and shrub and in the
wavelets on the river, conspire to overwhelm this lonely youth, gazing
from his window, with unutterable joys and sorrows.
Glimpses of the world received from wayside windows bring new desires, or
rather, make old desires take on new forms. The day before yesterday, as I
was sitting at the window of the boat, a little fisher-dinghy floated
past, the boatman singing a song--not a very tuneful song. But it reminded
me of a night, years ago, when I was a child. We were going along the
Padma in a boat. I awoke one night at about 2 o'clock, and, on raising the
window and putting out my head, I saw the waters without a ripple,
gleaming in the moonlight, and a youth in a little dinghy paddling along
all by himself and singing, oh so sweetly,--such sweet melody I had never
heard before.
A sudden longing came upon me to go back to the day of that song; to be
allowed to make another essay at life, this time not to leave it thus
empty and unsatisfied; but with a poet's song on my lips to float about
the world on the crest of the rising tide, to sing it to men and subdue
their hearts; to see for myself what the world holds and where; to let men
know me, to get to know them; to burst forth through the world in life and
youth like the eager rushing breezes; and then return home to a fulfilled
and fruitful old age to spend it as a poet should.
Not a very lofty ideal, is it? To benefit the world would have been much
higher, no doubt; but being on the whole what I am, that ambition does not
even occur to me. I cannot make up my mind to sacrifice this precious gift
of life in a self-wrought famine, and disappoint the world and the hearts
of men by fasts and meditations and constant argument. I count it enough
to live and die as a man, loving and trusting the world, unable to look on
it either as a delusion of the Creator or a snare of the Devil. It is not
for me to strive to be wafted away into the airiness of an Angel.
SHELIDAH,
2_nd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891.
When I come to the country I cease to view man as separate from the rest.
As the river runs through many a clime, so does the stream of men babble
on, winding through woods and villages and towns. It is not a true
contrast that _men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever_.
Humanity, with all its confluent streams, big and small, flows on and on,
just as does the river, from its source in birth to its sea of death;--two
dark mysteries at either end, and between them various play and work and
chatter unceasing.
Over there the cultivators sing in the fields: here the fishing-boats
float by. The day wears on and the heat of the sun increases. Some bathers
are still in the river, others are finished and are taking home their
filled water-vessels. Thus, past both banks of the river, hundreds of
years have hummed their way, while the refrain rises in a mournful chorus:
_I go on for ever! _
Amid the noonday silence some youthful cowherd is heard calling at the top
of his voice for his companion; some boat splashes its way homewards; the
ripples lap against the empty jar which some village woman rests on the
water before dipping it; and with these mingle several other less definite
sounds,--the twittering of birds, the humming of bees, the plaintive
creaking of the house-boat as it gently swings to and fro,--the whole
making a tender lullaby, as of a mother trying to quiet a suffering child.
"Fret not," she sings, as she soothingly pats its fevered forehead. "Worry
not; weep no more. Let be your strugglings and grabbings and fightings;
forget a while, sleep a while. "
SHELIDAH,
3_rd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891.
It was the _Kojagar_ full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside
conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was
doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The
poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the
power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?
But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but
never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from
away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is
seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this
shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat
in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island
sand-bank.
It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a
random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn
fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,--all the kings and the
princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished,
leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over
which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale
moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this
dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore--the shore
of life--where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold
sway, and tea and cigarettes.
SHELIDAH,
9_th January_ 1892.
For some days the weather here has been wavering between Winter and
Spring. In the morning, perhaps, shivers will run over both land and water
at the touch of the north wind; while the evening will thrill with the
south breeze coming through the moonlight.
There is no doubt that Spring is well on its way. After a long interval
the _papiya_ once more calls out from the groves on the opposite
bank. The hearts of men too are stirred; and after evening falls, sounds
of singing are heard in the village, showing that they are no longer in
such a hurry to close doors and windows and cover themselves up snugly for
the night.
To-night the moon is at its full, and its large, round face peers at me
through the open window on my left, as if trying to make out whether I
have anything to say against it in my letter,--it suspects, maybe, that we
mortals concern ourselves more with its stains than its beams.
A bird is plaintively crying tee-tee on the sand-bank. The river seems not
to move. There are no boats. The motionless groves on the bank cast an
unquivering shadow on the waters. The haze over the sky makes the moon
look like a sleepy eye kept open.
Henceforward the evenings will grow darker and darker; and when,
to-morrow, I come over from the office, this moon, the favourite companion
of my exile, will already have drifted a little farther from me, doubting
whether she had been wise to lay her heart so completely bare last
evening, and so covering it up again little by little.
Nature becomes really and truly intimate in strange and lonely places. I
have been actually worrying myself for days at the thought that after the
moon is past her full I shall daily miss the moonlight more and more;
feeling further and further exiled when the beauty and peace which awaits
my return to the riverside will no longer be there, and I shall have to
come back through darkness.
Anyhow I put it on record that to-day is the full moon--the first full
moon of this year's springtime. In years to come I may perchance be
reminded of this night, with the tee-tee of the bird on the bank, the
glimmer of the distant light on the boat off the other shore, the shining
expanse of river, the blur of shade thrown by the dark fringe of trees
along its edge, and the white sky gleaming overhead in unconcerned
aloofness.
SHELIDAH,
7_th April_ 1892.
The river is getting low, and the water in this arm of it is hardly more
than waist-deep anywhere. So it is not at all extraordinary that the boat
should be anchored in mid-stream. On the bank, to my right, the ryots are
ploughing and cows are now and then brought down to the water's edge for a
drink. To the left there are the mango and cocoanut trees of the old
Shelidah garden above, and on the bathing slope below there are village
women washing clothes, filling water jars, bathing, laughing and gossiping
in their provincial dialect.
The younger girls never seem to get through their sporting in the water;
it is a delight to hear their careless, merry laughter. The men gravely
take their regulation number of dips and go away, but girls are on much
more intimate terms with the water. Both alike babble and chatter and
ripple and sparkle in the same simple and natural manner; both may
languish and fade away under a scorching glare, yet both can take a blow
without hopelessly breaking under it. The hard world, which, but for them,
would be barren, cannot fathom the mystery of the soft embrace of their
arms.
Tennyson has it that woman to man is as water to wine. I feel to-day it
should be as water is to land. Woman is more at home with the water,
laving in it, playing with it, holding her gatherings beside it; and
while, for her, other burdens are not seemly, the carrying of water from
the spring, the well, the bank of river or pool, has ever been held to
become her.
BOLPUR,
2_nd May_ 1892.
There are many paradoxes in the world and one of them is this, that
wherever the landscape is immense, the sky unlimited, clouds intimately
dense, feelings unfathomable--that is to say where infinitude is
manifest--its fit companion is one solitary person; a multitude there
seems so petty, so distracting.
An individual and the infinite are on equal terms, worthy to gaze on one
another, each from his own throne. But where many men are, how small both
humanity and infinitude become, how much they have to knock off each
other, in order to fit in together! Each soul wants so much room to expand
that in a crowd it needs must wait for gaps through which to thrust a
little craning piece of a head from time to time.
So the only result of our endeavour to assemble is that we become unable
to fill our joined hands, our outstretched arms, with this endless,
fathomless expanse.
BOLPUR,
8_th Jaistha_ (_May_) 1892.
Women who try to be witty, but only succeed in being pert, are
insufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful in
women whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated,
and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, the
camel and the giraffe are comic, all overgrowth is comic.
It is rather keenness that is akin to beauty, as the thorn to the flower.
So sarcasm is not unbecoming in woman, though coming from her it hurts.
But ridicule which savours of bulkiness woman had better leave to our
sublime sex. The masculine Falstaff makes our sides split, but a feminine
Falstaff would only rack our nerves.
BOLPUR,
12_th Jaistha_ (_May_) 1892.
I usually pace the roof-terrace, alone, of an evening. Yesterday afternoon
I felt it my duty to show my visitors the beauties of the local scenery,
so I strolled out with them, taking Aghore as a guide.
On the verge of the horizon, where the distant fringe of trees was blue, a
thin line of dark blue cloud had risen over them and was looking
particularly beautiful. I tried to be poetical and said it was like blue
collyrium on the fringe of lashes enhancing a beautiful blue eye. Of my
companions one did not hear the remark, another did not understand, while
the third dismissed it with the reply: "Yes, very pretty. " I did not feel
encouraged to attempt a second poetical flight.
After walking about a mile we came to a dam, and along the pool of water
there was a row of _tal_ (fan palm) trees, under which was a natural
spring. While we stood there looking at this, we found that the line of
cloud which we had seen in the North was making for us, swollen and grown
darker, flashes of lightning gleaming the while.
We unanimously came to the conclusion that viewing the beauties of nature
could be better done from within the shelter of the house, but no sooner
had we turned homewards than a storm, making giant strides over the open
moorland, was on us with an angry roar. I had no idea, while I was
admiring the collyrium on the eyelashes of beauteous dame Nature, that she
would fly at us like an irate housewife, threatening so tremendous a slap!
It became so dark with the dust that we could not see beyond a few paces.
The fury of the storm increased, and flying stony particles of the rubbly
soil stung our bodies like shot, as the wind took us by the scruff of the
neck and thrust us along, to the whipping of drops of rain which had begun
to fall.
Run! Run! But the ground was not level, being deeply scarred with
watercourses, and not easy to cross at any time, much less in a storm. I
managed to get entangled in a thorny shrub, and was nearly thrown on my
face by the force of the wind as I stopped to free myself.
When we had almost reached the house, a host of servants came hurrying
towards us, shouting and gesticulating, and fell upon us like another
storm. Some took us by the arms, some bewailed our plight, some were eager
to show the way, others hung on our backs as if fearing that the storm
might carry us off altogether. We evaded their attentions with some
difficulty and managed at length to get into the house, panting, with wet
clothes, dusty bodies, and tumbled hair.
One thing I had learnt; and will never again write in novel or story the
lie that the hero with the picture of his lady-love in his mind can pass
unruffled through wind and rain. No one could keep any face in mind,
however lovely, in such a storm,--he has enough to do to keep the sand out
of his eyes! . . .
The Vaishnava-poets have sung ravishingly of Radha going to her tryst with
Krishna through a stormy night. Did they ever pause to consider, I wonder,
in what condition she must have reached him? The kind of tangle her hair
got into is easily imaginable, and also the state of the rest of her
toilet. When she arrived in her bower with the dust on her body soaked by
the rain into a coating of mud, she must have been a sight!
But when we read the Vaishnava poems, these thoughts do not occur. We only
see on the canvas of our mind the picture of a beautiful woman, passing
under the shelter of the flowering kadambas in the darkness of a stormy
_Shravan_[1] night, towards the bank of the Jumna, forgetful of wind
or rain, as in a dream, drawn by her surpassing love. She has tied up her
anklets lest they should tinkle; she is clad in dark blue raiment lest she
be discovered; but she holds no umbrella lest she get wet, carries no
lantern lest she fall!
[Footnote 1: July-August, the rainy season. ]
Alas for useful things--how necessary in practical life, how neglected in
poetry! But poetry strives in vain to free us from their bondage--they
will be with us always; so much so, we are told, that with the march of
civilisation it is poetry that will become extinct, but patent after
patent will continue to be taken out for the improvement of shoes and
umbrellas.
BOLPUR,
16_th Jaistha (May)_ 1892.
No church tower clock chimes here, and there being no other human
habitation near by, complete silence falls with the evening, as soon as
the birds have ceased their song. There is not much difference between
early night and midnight. A sleepless night in Calcutta flows like a huge,
slow river of darkness; one can count the varied sounds of its passing,
lying on one's back in bed. But here the night is like a vast, still lake,
placidly reposing, with no sign of movement. And as I tossed from side to
side last night I felt enveloped within a dense stagnation.
This morning I left my bed a little later than usual and, coming
downstairs to my room, leant back on a bolster, one leg resting over the
other knee. There, with a slate on my chest, I began to write a poem to
the accompaniment of the morning breeze and the singing birds. I was
getting along splendidly--a smile playing over my lips, my eyes half
closed, my head swaying to the rhythm, the thing I hummed gradually taking
shape--when the post arrived.
There was a letter, the last number of the _Sadhana Magazine_, one of
the _Monist_, and some proof-sheets. I read the letter, raced my eyes
over the uncut pages of the _Sadhana_, and then again fell to nodding
and humming through my poem. I did not do another thing till I had
finished it.
I wonder why the writing of pages of prose does not give one anything like
the joy of completing a single poem. One's emotions take on such
perfection of form in a poem; they can, as it were, be taken up by the
fingers. But prose is like a sackful of loose material, heavy and
unwieldy, incapable of being lifted as you please.
If I could finish writing one poem a day, my life would pass in a kind of
joy; but though I have been busy tending poetry for many a year it has not
been tamed yet, and is not the kind of winged steed to allow me to bridle
it whenever I like! The joy of art is in freedom to take a distant flight
as fancy will; then, even after return within the prison-world, an echo
lingers in the ear, an exaltation in the mind.
Short poems keep coming to me unsought, and so prevent my getting on with
the play. Had it not been for these, I could have let in ideas for two or
three plays which have been knocking at the door. I am afraid I must wait
for the cold weather. All my plays except "Chitra" were written in the
winter. In that season lyrical fervour is apt to grow cold, and one gets
the leisure to write drama.
BOLPUR,
_31st May 1892. _
It is not yet five o'clock, but the light has dawned, there is a
delightful breeze, and all the birds in the garden are awake and have
started singing. The _koel_ seems beside itself. It is difficult to
understand why it should keep on cooing so untiringly. Certainly not to
entertain us, nor to distract the pining lover[1]--it must have some
personal purpose of its own. But, sadly enough, that purpose never seems
to get fulfilled. Yet it is not down-hearted, and its Coo-oo! Coo-oo!
keeps going, with now and then an ultra-fervent trill. What can it mean?
[Footnote 1: A favourite conceit of the old Sanskrit poets. ]
And then in the distance there is some other bird with only a faint
chuck-chuck that has no energy or enthusiasm, as if all hope were lost;
none the less, from within some shady nook it cannot resist uttering this
little plaint: chuck, chuck, chuck.
How little we really know of the household affairs of these innocent
winged creatures, with their soft, breasts and necks and their
many-coloured feathers! Why on earth do they find it necessary to sing so
persistently?
SHELIDAH,
_31st Jaistha (June)1892. _
I hate these polite formalities.
Nowadays I keep repeating the line: "Much
rather would I be an Arab Bedouin! " A fine, healthy, strong, and free
barbarity.
I feel I want to quit this constant ageing of mind and body, with
incessant argument and nicety concerning ancient decaying things, and to
feel the joy of a free and vigorous life; to have,--be they good or
bad,--broad, unhesitating, unfettered ideas and aspirations, free from
everlasting friction between custom and sense, sense and desire, desire
and action.
If only I could set utterly and boundlessly free this hampered life of
mine, I would storm the four quarters and raise wave upon wave of tumult
all round; I would career away madly, like a wild horse, for very joy of
my own speed! But I am a Bengali, not a Bedouin! I go on sitting in my
corner, and mope and worry and argue. I turn my mind now this way up, now
the other--as a fish is fried--and the boiling oil blisters first this
side, then that.
Let it pass. Since I cannot be thoroughly wild, it is but proper that I
should make an endeavour to be thoroughly civil. Why foment a quarrel
between the two?
SHELIDAH,
_16th June 1892. _
The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearer
it becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform the
ordinary duties of one's daily life simply and naturally. From the grasses
in the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; and
there is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because none
of these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations.
Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has to
put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its
rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to
become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green.
And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the
societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to
big doings and fine talk.
Perhaps because the whole of our life is not vividly present at each
moment, some imaginary hope may lure, some glowing picture of a future,
untrammelled with everyday burdens, may tempt us; but these are illusory.
SHELIDAH,
_2nd Asarh (June) 1892. _
Yesterday, the first day of _Asarh_,[1] the enthronement of the rainy
season was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance. It was very hot the
whole day, but in the afternoon dense clouds rolled up in stupendous
masses.
[Footnote 1: June-July, the commencement of the rainy season. ]
I thought to myself, this first day of the rains, I would rather risk
getting wet than remain confined in my dungeon of a cabin.
The year 1293 [1] will not come again in my life, and,
for the matter of that, how many more even of these first days
of _Asarh_ will come? My life would be sufficiently long could it
number thirty of these first days of _Asarh_ to which the poet of the
_Meghaduta_[2] has, for me at least, given special distinction.
[Footnote 1: Of the Bengal era. ]
[Footnote 2: In the _Meghaduta_ (Cloud Messenger) of Kalidas a famous
description of the burst of the Monsoon begins with the words: _On the
first day of Asarh_. ]
It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should
take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting
sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white
flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!
A thousand years ago Kalidas welcomed that first day of _Asarh_; and
once in every year of my life that same day of _Asarh_ dawns in all
its glory--that self-same day of the poet of old Ujjain, which has brought
to countless men and women their joys of union, their pangs of separation.
Every year one such great, time-hallowed day drops out of my life; and the
time will come when this day of Kalidas, this day of the _Meghaduta_,
this eternal first day of the Rains in Hindustan, shall come no more for
me. When I realise this I feel I want to take a good look at nature, to
offer a conscious welcome to each day's sunrise, to say farewell to each
day's setting sun, as to an intimate friend.
What a grand festival, what a vast theatre of festivity! And we cannot
even fully respond to it, so far away do we live from the world! The light
of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot
reach our hearts--so many millions of miles further off are we!
The world into which I have tumbled is peopled with strange beings. They
are always busy erecting walls and rules round themselves, and how careful
they are with their curtains lest they should see! It is a wonder to me
they have not made drab covers for flowering plants and put up a canopy to
ward off the moon. If the next life is determined by the desires of this,
then I should be reborn from our enshrouded planet into some free and open
realm of joy.
Only those who cannot steep themselves in beauty to the full, despise it
as an object of the senses. But those who have tasted of its
inexpressibility know how far it is beyond the highest powers of mere eye
or ear--nay, even the heart is powerless to attain the end of its
yearning.
_P. S. _--I have left out the very thing I started to tell of. Don't be
afraid, it won't take four more sheets. It is this, that on the evening of
the first day of _Asarh_ it came on to rain very heavily, in great
lance-like showers. That is all.
ON THE WAY TO GOALUNDA,
_21st June 1892. _
Pictures in an endless variety, of sand-banks, fields and their crops, and
villages, glide into view on either hand--of clouds floating in the sky,
of colours blossoming when day meets night. Boats steal by, fishermen
catch fish; the waters make liquid, caressing sounds throughout the
livelong day; their broad expanse calms down in the evening stillness,
like a child lulled to sleep, over whom all the stars in the boundless sky
keep watch--then, as I sit up on wakeful nights, with sleeping banks on
either side, the silence is broken only by an occasional cry of a jackal
in the woods near some village, or by fragments undermined by the keen
current of the Padma, that tumble from the high cliff-like bank into the
water.
Not that the prospect is always of particular interest--a yellowish
sandbank, innocent of grass or tree, stretches away; an empty boat is tied
to its edge; the bluish water, of the same shade as the hazy sky, flows
past; yet I cannot tell how it moves me. I suspect that the old desires
and longings of my servant-ridden childhood--when in the solitary
imprisonment of my room I pored over the _Arabian Nights_, and shared
with Sinbad the Sailor his adventures in many a strange land--are not yet
dead within me, but are roused at the sight of any empty boat tied to a
sand-bank.
If I had not heard fairy tales and read the _Arabian Nights_ and
_Robinson Crusoe_ in childhood, I am sure views of distant banks, or
the farther side of wide fields, would not have stirred me so--the whole
world, in fact, would have had for me a different appeal.
What a maze of fancy and fact becomes tangled up within the mind of man!
The different strands--petty and great--of story and event and picture,
how they get knotted together!
SHELIDAH,
_22nd June 1892. _
Early this morning, while still lying in bed, I heard the women at the
bathing-place sending forth joyous peals of _Ulu! Ulu! _[1] The sound
moved me curiously, though it is difficult to say why.
[Footnote 1: A peculiar shrill cheer given by women on auspicious or
festive occasions. ]
Perhaps such joyful outbursts put one in mind of the great stream of
festive activity which goes on in this world, with most of which the
individual man has no connection. The world is so immense, the concourse
of men so vast, yet with how few has one any tie! Distant sounds of life,
wafted near, bearing tidings from unknown homes, make the individual
realise that the greater part of the world of men does not, cannot own or
know him; then he feels deserted, loosely attached to the world, and a
vague sadness creeps over him.
Thus these cries of _Ulu! Ulu! _ made my life, past and future, seem
like a long, long road, from the very ends of which they come to me. And
this feeling colours for me the beginning of my day.
As soon as the manager with his staff, and the ryots seeking audience,
come upon the scene, this faint vista of past and future will be promptly
elbowed out, and a very robust present will salute and stand before me.
SHAZADPUR,
_25th June 1892. _
In to-day's letters there was a touch about A---'s singing which made my
heart yearn with a nameless longing. Each of the little joys of life,
which remain unappreciated amid the hubbub of the town, send in their
claims to the heart when far from home. I love music, and there is no
dearth of voices and instruments in Calcutta, yet I turn a deaf ear to
them. But, though I may fail to realise it at the time, this needs must
leave the heart athirst.
As I read to-day's letters, I felt such a poignant desire to hear A---'s
sweet song, I was at once sure that one of the many suppressed longings of
creation which cry after fulfilment is for neglected joys within reach;
while we are busy pursuing chimerical impossibilities we famish our
lives. . . .
The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. And
the day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, I
would strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full these
little, unsought, everyday joys which life offers.
SHAZADPUR,
_27th June 1892. _
Yesterday, in the afternoon, it clouded over so threateningly, I felt a
sense of dread. I do not remember ever to have seen before such
angry-looking clouds.
Swollen masses of the deepest indigo blue were piled, one on top of the
other, just above the horizon, looking like the puffed-out moustaches of
some raging demon.
Under the jagged lower edges of the clouds there shone forth a blood-red
glare, as through the eyes of a monstrous, sky-filling bison, with tossing
mane and with head lowered to strike the earth in fury.
The crops in the fields and the leaves of the trees trembled with fear of
the impending disaster; shudder after shudder ran across the waters; the
crows flew wildly about, distractedly cawing.
SHAZADPUR,
_29th June 1892. _
I wrote yesterday that I had an engagement with Kalidas, the poet, for
this evening. As I lit a candle, drew my chair up to the table, and made
ready, not Kalidas, but the postmaster, walked in. A live postmaster
cannot but claim precedence over a dead poet, so I could not very well
tell him to make way for Kalidas, who was due by appointment,--he would
not have understood me! Therefore I offered him a chair and gave old
Kalidas the go-by.
There is a kind of bond between this postmaster and me. When the post
office was in a part of this estate building, I used to meet him every
day. I wrote my story of "The Postmaster" one afternoon in this very room.
And when the story was out in the _Hitabadi_ he came to me with a
succession of bashful smiles, as he deprecatingly touched on the subject.
Anyhow, I like the man. He has a fund of anecdote which I enjoy listening
to. He has also a sense of humour.
Though it was late when the postmaster left, I started at once on the
_Raghuvansa_[1], and read all about the _swayamuara_[2] of
Indumati.
[Footnote 1: Book of poems by Kalidas, who is perhaps best known to
European readers as the author of _Sakuntala_. ]
[Footnote 2: An old Indian custom, according to which a princess chooses
among assembled rival suitors for her hand by placing a garland round the
neck of the one whose love she returns. ]
The handsome, gaily adorned princes are seated on rows of thrones in the
assembly hall. Suddenly a blast of conch-shell and trumpet resounds, as
Indumati, in bridal robes, supported by Sunanda, is ushered in and stands
in the walk left between them. It was delightful to dwell on the picture.
Then as Sunanda introduces to her each one of the suitors, Indumati bows
low in loveless salutation, and passes on. How beautiful is this humble
courtesy! They are all princes. They are all her seniors. For she is a
mere girl. Had she not atoned for the inevitable rudeness of her rejection
by the grace of her humility, the scene would have lost its beauty.
SHELIDAH,
_20th August 1892. _
"If only I could live there! " is often thought when looking at a beautiful
landscape painting. That is the kind of longing which is satisfied here,
where one feels alive in a brilliantly coloured picture, with none of the
hardness of reality. When I was a child, illustrations of woodland and
sea, in _Paul and Virginia_, or _Robinson Crusoe_, would waft me
away from the everyday world; and the sunshine here brings back to my mind
the feeling with which I used to gaze on those pictures.
I cannot account for this exactly, or explain definitely what kind of
longing it is which is roused within me. It seems like the throb of some
current flowing through the artery connecting me with the larger world. I
feel as if dim, distant memories come to me of the time when I was one
with the rest of the earth; when on me grew the green grass, and on me
fell the autumn light; when a warm scent of youth would rise from every
pore of my vast, soft, green body at the touch of the rays of the mellow
sun, and a fresh life, a sweet joy, would be half-consciously secreted and
inarticulately poured forth from all the immensity of my being, as it lay
dumbly stretched, with its varied countries and seas and mountains, under
the bright blue sky.
My feelings seem to be those of our ancient earth in the daily ecstasy of
its sun-kissed life; my own consciousness seems to stream through each
blade of grass, each sucking root, to rise with the sap through the trees,
to break out with joyous thrills in the waving fields of corn, in the
rustling palm leaves.
I feel impelled to give expression to my blood-tie with the earth, my
kinsman's love for her; but I am afraid I shall not be understood.
BOALIA,
_18th November 1892. _
I am wondering where your train has got to by now. This is the time for
the sun to rise over the ups and downs of the treeless, rocky region near
Nawadih station. The scene around there must be brightened by the fresh
sunlight, through which distant, blue hills are beginning to be faintly
visible.
Cultivated fields are scarcely to be seen, except where the primitive
tribesmen have done a little ploughing with their buffaloes; on each side
of the railway cutting there are the heaped-up black rocks--the
boulder-marked footprints of dried-up streams--and the fidgety, black
wagtails, perched along the telegraph wires. A wild, seamed, and scarred
nature lies there in the sun, as though tamed at the touch of some soft,
bright, cherubic hand.
Do you know the picture which this calls up for me? In the _Sakuntala_ of
Kalidas there is a scene where Bharat, the infant son of King Dushyanta,
is playing with a lion cub. The child is lovingly passing his delicate,
rosy fingers through the rough mane of the great beast, which lies quietly
stretched in trustful repose, now and then casting affectionate glances
out of the corner of its eyes at its little human friend.
And shall I tell you what those dry, boulder-strewn watercourses put me in
mind of? We read in the English fairy tale of the Babes in the Wood, how
the little brother and sister left a trace of their wanderings, through
the unknown forest into which their stepmother had turned them out, by
dropping pebbles as they went. These streamlets are like lost babes in the
great world into which they are sent adrift, and that is why they leave
stones, as they go forth, to mark their course, so as not to lose their
way when they may be returning. But for them there is no return journey!
NATORE,
_2nd December_ 1892.
There is a depth of feeling and breadth of peace in a Bengal sunset behind
the trees which fringe the endless solitary fields, spreading away to the
horizon.
Lovingly, yet sadly withal, does our evening sky bend over and meet the
earth in the distance. It casts a mournful light on the earth it leaves
behind--a light which gives us a taste of the divine grief of the Eternal
Separation[1] and eloquent is the silence which then broods over earth,
sky, and waters.
[Footnote 1: _I. e. _ between Purusha and Prakriti--God and Creation. ]
As I gaze on in rapt motionlessness, I fall to wondering--If ever this
silence should fail to contain itself, if the expression for which this
hour has been seeking from the beginning of time should break forth, would
a profoundly solemn, poignantly moving music rise from earth to starland?
With a little steadfast concentration of effort we can, for ourselves,
translate the grand harmony of light and colour which permeates the
universe into music. We have only to close our eyes and receive with the
ear of the mind the vibration of this ever-flowing panorama.
But how often shall I write of these sunsets and sunrises? I feel their
renewed freshness every time; yet how am I to attain such renewed
freshness in my attempts at expression?
SHELIDAH,
_9th December_ 1892.
I am feeling weak and relaxed after my painful illness, and in this state
the ministrations of nature are sweet indeed. I feel as if, like the rest,
I too am lazily glittering out my delight at the rays of the sun, and my
letter-writing progresses but absent-mindedly.
The world is ever new to me; like an old friend loved through this and
former lives, the acquaintance between us is both long and deep.
I can well realise how, in ages past, when the earth in her first youth
came forth from her sea-bath and saluted the sun in prayer, I must have
been one of the trees sprung from her new-formed soil, spreading my
foliage in all the freshness of a primal impulse.
The great sea was rocking and swaying and smothering, like a foolishly
fond mother, its first-born land with repeated caresses; while I was
drinking in the sunlight with the whole of my being, quivering under the
blue sky with the unreasoning rapture of the new-born, holding fast and
sucking away at my mother earth with all my roots. In blind joy my leaves
burst forth and my flowers bloomed; and when the dark clouds gathered,
their grateful shade would comfort me with a tender touch.
From age to age, thereafter, have I been diversely reborn on this earth.
So whenever we now sit face to face, alone together, various ancient
memories, gradually, one after another, come back to me.
My mother earth sits to-day in the cornfields by the river-side, in her
raiment of sunlit gold; and near her feet, her knees, her lap, I roll
about and play. Mother of a multitude of children, she attends but
absently to their constant calls on her, with an immense patience, but
also with a certain aloofness. She is seated there, with her far-away look
fastened on the verge of the afternoon sky, while I keep chattering on
untiringly.
BALJA,
_Tuesday, February 1893_.
I do not want to wander about any more. I am pining for a corner in which
to nestle down snugly, away from the crowd.
India has two aspects--in one she is a householder, in the other a
wandering ascetic. The former refuses to budge from the home corner, the
latter has no home at all. I find both these within me. I want to roam
about and see all the wide world, yet I also yearn for a little sheltered
nook; like a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast sky for
flight.
I hanker after a corner because it serves to bring calmness to my mind. My
mind really wants to be busy, but in making the attempt it knocks so
repeatedly against the crowd as to become utterly frenzied and to keep
buffeting me, its cage, from within. If only it is allowed a little
leisurely solitude, and can look about and think to its heart's content,
it will express its feelings to its own satisfaction.
This freedom of solitude is what my mind is fretting for; it would be
alone with its imaginings, as the Creator broods over His own creation.
CUTTACK,
_February 1893_.
Till we can achieve something, let us live incognito, say I. So long as we
are only fit to be looked down upon, on what shall we base our claim to
respect? When we have acquired a foothold of our own in the world, when we
have had some share in shaping its course, then we can meet others
smilingly. Till then let us keep in the background, attending to our own
affairs.
But our countrymen seem to hold the opposite opinion. They set no store by
our more modest, intimate wants which have to be met behind the
scenes,--the whole of their attention is directed to momentary
attitudinising and display.
Ours is truly a God-forsaken country. Difficult, indeed, is it for us to
maintain the strength of will to _do_. We get no help in any real
sense. There is no one, within miles of us, in converse with whom we might
gain an accession of vitality. No one near seems to be thinking, or
feeling, or working. Not a soul has any experience of big striving, or of
really and truly living. They all eat and drink, do their office work,
smoke and sleep, and chatter nonsensically. When they touch upon emotion
they grow sentimental, when they reason they are childish. One yearns for
a full-blooded, sturdy, and capable personality; these are all so many
shadows, flitting about, out of touch with the world.
CUTTACK,
_10th February_ 1893.
He was a fully developed John Bull of the outrageous type--with a huge
beak of a nose, cunning eyes, and a yard-long chin. The curtailment of our
right to be tried by jury is now under consideration by the Government.
The fellow dragged in the subject by the ears and insisted on arguing it
out with our host, poor B---- Babu. He said the moral standard of the
people of this country was low; that they had no real belief in the
sacredness of life; so that they were unfit to serve on juries.
The utter contempt with which we are regarded by these people was brought
home to me when I saw how they can accept a Bengali's hospitality and talk
thus, seated at his table, without a quiver of compunction.
As I sat in a corner of the drawing-room after dinner, everything round me
looked blurred to my eyes. I seemed to be seated by the head of my great,
insulted Motherland, who lay there in the dust before me, disconsolate,
shorn of her glory. I cannot tell what a profound distress overpowered my
heart.
How incongruous seemed the _mem-sahibs_ there, in their
evening-dresses, the hum of English conversation, and the ripples of
laughter! How richly true for us is our India of the ages; how cheap and
false the hollow courtesies of an English dinner-party!
CUTTACK,
_March_ 1893.
If we begin to attach too much importance to the applause of Englishmen,
we shall have to be rid of much in us that is good, and to accept from
them much that is bad.
We shall grow ashamed of going about without socks, and cease to feel
shame at the sight of their ball dresses. We shall have no compunction in
throwing overboard our ancient manners, nor any in emulating their lack of
courtesy.
We shall leave off wearing our _achgans_ because they are susceptible of
improvement, but think nothing of surrendering our heads to their hats,
though no headgear could well be uglier.
In short, consciously or unconsciously, we shall have to cut our lives
down according as they clap their hands or not.
Wherefore I apostrophise myself and say: "O Earthen Pot! For goodness sake
keep away from that Metal Pot!
the pang lasts but a while, and is perhaps already wearing off both in
those who have gone and those who remain,--pain being temporary, oblivion
permanent. But none the less it is not the forgetting, but the pain which
is true; and every now and then, in separation or in death, we realise how
terribly true.
ON BOARD A CANAL STEAMER GOING TO CUTTACK,
_August_ 1891.
My bag left behind, my clothes daily get more and more intolerably
disreputable,--this thought continually uppermost is not compatible with a
due sense of self-respect. With the bag I could have faced the world of
men head erect and spirits high; without it, I fain would skulk in
corners, away from the glances of the crowd. I go to bed in these clothes
and in them I appear in the morning, and on the top of that the steamer is
full of soot, and the unbearable heat of the day keeps one unpleasantly
moist.
Apart from this, I am having quite a time of it on board the steamer. My
fellow-passengers are of inexhaustible variety. There is one, Aghore Babu,
who cannot allude to anything, animate or inanimate, except in terms of
personal abuse. There is another, a lover of music, who persists in
attempting variations on the Bhairab[1] mode at dead of night, convincing
me of the untimeliness of his performance in more senses than one.
[Footnote: A Raga, or mode of Indian classical music, supposed to be
appropriate to the early dawn. ]
The steamer has been aground in a narrow ditch of a canal ever since last
evening, and it is now past nine in the morning. I spent the night in a
corner of the crowded deck, more dead than alive. I had asked the steward
to fry some _luchis_ for my dinner, and he brought me some
nondescript slabs of fried dough with no vegetable accompaniments to eat
them with. On my expressing a pained surprise, he was all contrition and
offered to make me some hotch-potch at once. But the night being already
far advanced, I declined his offer, managed to swallow a few mouthfuls of
the stuff dry, and then, all lights on and the deck packed with
passengers, laid myself down to sleep.
Mosquitoes hovered above, cockroaches wandered around. There was a
fellow-sleeper stretched crosswise at my feet whose body my soles every
now and then came up against. Four or five noses were engaged in snoring.
Several mosquito-tormented, sleepless wretches were consoling themselves
by pulls at their hubble-bubble pipes; and above all, there rose those
variations on the mode _Bhairab_! Finally, at half-past three in the
morning, some fussy busy-bodies began loudly inciting each other to get
up. In despair, I also left my bed and dropped into my deck-chair to await
the dawn. Thus passed that variegated nightmare of a night.
One of the hands tells me that the steamer has stuck so fast that it may
take the whole day to get her off. I inquire of another whether any
Calcutta-bound steamer will be passing, and get the smiling reply that
this is the only boat on this line, and I may come back in her, if I like,
after she has reached Cuttack! By a stroke of luck, after a great deal of
tugging and hauling, they have just got her afloat at about ten o'clock.
TIRAN.
7_th September_ 1891.
The landing-place at Balia makes a pretty picture with its fine big trees
on either side, and on the whole the canal somehow reminds me of the
little river at Poona. On thinking it over I am sure I should have liked
the canal much better had it really been a river.
Cocoanut palms as well as mangoes and other shady trees line its banks,
which, turfed with beautifully green grass, slope gently down to the
water, and are sprinkled over with sensitive plants in flower. Here and
there are screwpine groves, and through gaps in the border of trees
glimpses can be caught of endless fields, stretching away into the
distance, their crops so soft and velvety after the rains that the eye
seems to sink into their depths. Then again, there are the little villages
under their clusters of cocoanut and date palms, nestling under the moist
cool shade of the low seasonal clouds.
Through all these the canal, with its gentle current, winds gracefully
between its clean, grassy banks, fringed, in its narrower stretches, with
clusters of water-lilies with reeds growing among them. And yet the mind
keeps fretting at the idea that after all it is nothing but an artificial
canal.
The murmur of its waters does not reach back to the beginning of time. It
knows naught of the mysteries of some distant, inaccessible mountain cave.
It has not flowed for ages, graced with an old-world feminine name, giving
the villages on its sides the milk of its breast. Even old artificial
lakes have acquired a greater dignity.
However when, a hundred years hence, the trees on its banks will have
grown statelier; its brand-new milestones been worn down and moss-covered
into mellowness; the date 1871, inscribed on its lock-gates, left behind
at a respectable distance; then, if I am reborn as my great-grandson and
come again to inspect the Cuttack estates along this canal, I may feel
differently towards it.
SHELIDAH,
_October_ 1891.
Boat after boat touches at the landing-place, and after a whole year
exiles are returning home from distant fields of work for the Poojah
vacation, their boxes, baskets, and bundles loaded with presents. I notice
one who, as his boat nears the shore, changes into a freshly folded and
crinkled muslin _dhoti_, dons over his cotton tunic a China silk
coat, carefully adjusts round his neck a neatly twisted scarf, and walks
off towards the village, umbrella held aloft.
Rustling waves pass over the rice-fields. Mango and cocoanut tree-tops
rise into the sky, and beyond them there are fluffy clouds on the horizon.
The fringes of the palm leaves wave in the breeze. The reeds on the
sand-bank are on the point of flowering. It is altogether an exhilarating
scene.
The feelings of the man who has just arrived home, the eager expectancy of
his folk awaiting him, this autumn sky, this world, the gentle morning
breeze, the universal responsive tremor in tree and shrub and in the
wavelets on the river, conspire to overwhelm this lonely youth, gazing
from his window, with unutterable joys and sorrows.
Glimpses of the world received from wayside windows bring new desires, or
rather, make old desires take on new forms. The day before yesterday, as I
was sitting at the window of the boat, a little fisher-dinghy floated
past, the boatman singing a song--not a very tuneful song. But it reminded
me of a night, years ago, when I was a child. We were going along the
Padma in a boat. I awoke one night at about 2 o'clock, and, on raising the
window and putting out my head, I saw the waters without a ripple,
gleaming in the moonlight, and a youth in a little dinghy paddling along
all by himself and singing, oh so sweetly,--such sweet melody I had never
heard before.
A sudden longing came upon me to go back to the day of that song; to be
allowed to make another essay at life, this time not to leave it thus
empty and unsatisfied; but with a poet's song on my lips to float about
the world on the crest of the rising tide, to sing it to men and subdue
their hearts; to see for myself what the world holds and where; to let men
know me, to get to know them; to burst forth through the world in life and
youth like the eager rushing breezes; and then return home to a fulfilled
and fruitful old age to spend it as a poet should.
Not a very lofty ideal, is it? To benefit the world would have been much
higher, no doubt; but being on the whole what I am, that ambition does not
even occur to me. I cannot make up my mind to sacrifice this precious gift
of life in a self-wrought famine, and disappoint the world and the hearts
of men by fasts and meditations and constant argument. I count it enough
to live and die as a man, loving and trusting the world, unable to look on
it either as a delusion of the Creator or a snare of the Devil. It is not
for me to strive to be wafted away into the airiness of an Angel.
SHELIDAH,
2_nd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891.
When I come to the country I cease to view man as separate from the rest.
As the river runs through many a clime, so does the stream of men babble
on, winding through woods and villages and towns. It is not a true
contrast that _men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever_.
Humanity, with all its confluent streams, big and small, flows on and on,
just as does the river, from its source in birth to its sea of death;--two
dark mysteries at either end, and between them various play and work and
chatter unceasing.
Over there the cultivators sing in the fields: here the fishing-boats
float by. The day wears on and the heat of the sun increases. Some bathers
are still in the river, others are finished and are taking home their
filled water-vessels. Thus, past both banks of the river, hundreds of
years have hummed their way, while the refrain rises in a mournful chorus:
_I go on for ever! _
Amid the noonday silence some youthful cowherd is heard calling at the top
of his voice for his companion; some boat splashes its way homewards; the
ripples lap against the empty jar which some village woman rests on the
water before dipping it; and with these mingle several other less definite
sounds,--the twittering of birds, the humming of bees, the plaintive
creaking of the house-boat as it gently swings to and fro,--the whole
making a tender lullaby, as of a mother trying to quiet a suffering child.
"Fret not," she sings, as she soothingly pats its fevered forehead. "Worry
not; weep no more. Let be your strugglings and grabbings and fightings;
forget a while, sleep a while. "
SHELIDAH,
3_rd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891.
It was the _Kojagar_ full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside
conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was
doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The
poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the
power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?
But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but
never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from
away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is
seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this
shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat
in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island
sand-bank.
It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a
random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn
fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,--all the kings and the
princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished,
leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over
which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale
moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this
dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore--the shore
of life--where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold
sway, and tea and cigarettes.
SHELIDAH,
9_th January_ 1892.
For some days the weather here has been wavering between Winter and
Spring. In the morning, perhaps, shivers will run over both land and water
at the touch of the north wind; while the evening will thrill with the
south breeze coming through the moonlight.
There is no doubt that Spring is well on its way. After a long interval
the _papiya_ once more calls out from the groves on the opposite
bank. The hearts of men too are stirred; and after evening falls, sounds
of singing are heard in the village, showing that they are no longer in
such a hurry to close doors and windows and cover themselves up snugly for
the night.
To-night the moon is at its full, and its large, round face peers at me
through the open window on my left, as if trying to make out whether I
have anything to say against it in my letter,--it suspects, maybe, that we
mortals concern ourselves more with its stains than its beams.
A bird is plaintively crying tee-tee on the sand-bank. The river seems not
to move. There are no boats. The motionless groves on the bank cast an
unquivering shadow on the waters. The haze over the sky makes the moon
look like a sleepy eye kept open.
Henceforward the evenings will grow darker and darker; and when,
to-morrow, I come over from the office, this moon, the favourite companion
of my exile, will already have drifted a little farther from me, doubting
whether she had been wise to lay her heart so completely bare last
evening, and so covering it up again little by little.
Nature becomes really and truly intimate in strange and lonely places. I
have been actually worrying myself for days at the thought that after the
moon is past her full I shall daily miss the moonlight more and more;
feeling further and further exiled when the beauty and peace which awaits
my return to the riverside will no longer be there, and I shall have to
come back through darkness.
Anyhow I put it on record that to-day is the full moon--the first full
moon of this year's springtime. In years to come I may perchance be
reminded of this night, with the tee-tee of the bird on the bank, the
glimmer of the distant light on the boat off the other shore, the shining
expanse of river, the blur of shade thrown by the dark fringe of trees
along its edge, and the white sky gleaming overhead in unconcerned
aloofness.
SHELIDAH,
7_th April_ 1892.
The river is getting low, and the water in this arm of it is hardly more
than waist-deep anywhere. So it is not at all extraordinary that the boat
should be anchored in mid-stream. On the bank, to my right, the ryots are
ploughing and cows are now and then brought down to the water's edge for a
drink. To the left there are the mango and cocoanut trees of the old
Shelidah garden above, and on the bathing slope below there are village
women washing clothes, filling water jars, bathing, laughing and gossiping
in their provincial dialect.
The younger girls never seem to get through their sporting in the water;
it is a delight to hear their careless, merry laughter. The men gravely
take their regulation number of dips and go away, but girls are on much
more intimate terms with the water. Both alike babble and chatter and
ripple and sparkle in the same simple and natural manner; both may
languish and fade away under a scorching glare, yet both can take a blow
without hopelessly breaking under it. The hard world, which, but for them,
would be barren, cannot fathom the mystery of the soft embrace of their
arms.
Tennyson has it that woman to man is as water to wine. I feel to-day it
should be as water is to land. Woman is more at home with the water,
laving in it, playing with it, holding her gatherings beside it; and
while, for her, other burdens are not seemly, the carrying of water from
the spring, the well, the bank of river or pool, has ever been held to
become her.
BOLPUR,
2_nd May_ 1892.
There are many paradoxes in the world and one of them is this, that
wherever the landscape is immense, the sky unlimited, clouds intimately
dense, feelings unfathomable--that is to say where infinitude is
manifest--its fit companion is one solitary person; a multitude there
seems so petty, so distracting.
An individual and the infinite are on equal terms, worthy to gaze on one
another, each from his own throne. But where many men are, how small both
humanity and infinitude become, how much they have to knock off each
other, in order to fit in together! Each soul wants so much room to expand
that in a crowd it needs must wait for gaps through which to thrust a
little craning piece of a head from time to time.
So the only result of our endeavour to assemble is that we become unable
to fill our joined hands, our outstretched arms, with this endless,
fathomless expanse.
BOLPUR,
8_th Jaistha_ (_May_) 1892.
Women who try to be witty, but only succeed in being pert, are
insufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful in
women whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated,
and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, the
camel and the giraffe are comic, all overgrowth is comic.
It is rather keenness that is akin to beauty, as the thorn to the flower.
So sarcasm is not unbecoming in woman, though coming from her it hurts.
But ridicule which savours of bulkiness woman had better leave to our
sublime sex. The masculine Falstaff makes our sides split, but a feminine
Falstaff would only rack our nerves.
BOLPUR,
12_th Jaistha_ (_May_) 1892.
I usually pace the roof-terrace, alone, of an evening. Yesterday afternoon
I felt it my duty to show my visitors the beauties of the local scenery,
so I strolled out with them, taking Aghore as a guide.
On the verge of the horizon, where the distant fringe of trees was blue, a
thin line of dark blue cloud had risen over them and was looking
particularly beautiful. I tried to be poetical and said it was like blue
collyrium on the fringe of lashes enhancing a beautiful blue eye. Of my
companions one did not hear the remark, another did not understand, while
the third dismissed it with the reply: "Yes, very pretty. " I did not feel
encouraged to attempt a second poetical flight.
After walking about a mile we came to a dam, and along the pool of water
there was a row of _tal_ (fan palm) trees, under which was a natural
spring. While we stood there looking at this, we found that the line of
cloud which we had seen in the North was making for us, swollen and grown
darker, flashes of lightning gleaming the while.
We unanimously came to the conclusion that viewing the beauties of nature
could be better done from within the shelter of the house, but no sooner
had we turned homewards than a storm, making giant strides over the open
moorland, was on us with an angry roar. I had no idea, while I was
admiring the collyrium on the eyelashes of beauteous dame Nature, that she
would fly at us like an irate housewife, threatening so tremendous a slap!
It became so dark with the dust that we could not see beyond a few paces.
The fury of the storm increased, and flying stony particles of the rubbly
soil stung our bodies like shot, as the wind took us by the scruff of the
neck and thrust us along, to the whipping of drops of rain which had begun
to fall.
Run! Run! But the ground was not level, being deeply scarred with
watercourses, and not easy to cross at any time, much less in a storm. I
managed to get entangled in a thorny shrub, and was nearly thrown on my
face by the force of the wind as I stopped to free myself.
When we had almost reached the house, a host of servants came hurrying
towards us, shouting and gesticulating, and fell upon us like another
storm. Some took us by the arms, some bewailed our plight, some were eager
to show the way, others hung on our backs as if fearing that the storm
might carry us off altogether. We evaded their attentions with some
difficulty and managed at length to get into the house, panting, with wet
clothes, dusty bodies, and tumbled hair.
One thing I had learnt; and will never again write in novel or story the
lie that the hero with the picture of his lady-love in his mind can pass
unruffled through wind and rain. No one could keep any face in mind,
however lovely, in such a storm,--he has enough to do to keep the sand out
of his eyes! . . .
The Vaishnava-poets have sung ravishingly of Radha going to her tryst with
Krishna through a stormy night. Did they ever pause to consider, I wonder,
in what condition she must have reached him? The kind of tangle her hair
got into is easily imaginable, and also the state of the rest of her
toilet. When she arrived in her bower with the dust on her body soaked by
the rain into a coating of mud, she must have been a sight!
But when we read the Vaishnava poems, these thoughts do not occur. We only
see on the canvas of our mind the picture of a beautiful woman, passing
under the shelter of the flowering kadambas in the darkness of a stormy
_Shravan_[1] night, towards the bank of the Jumna, forgetful of wind
or rain, as in a dream, drawn by her surpassing love. She has tied up her
anklets lest they should tinkle; she is clad in dark blue raiment lest she
be discovered; but she holds no umbrella lest she get wet, carries no
lantern lest she fall!
[Footnote 1: July-August, the rainy season. ]
Alas for useful things--how necessary in practical life, how neglected in
poetry! But poetry strives in vain to free us from their bondage--they
will be with us always; so much so, we are told, that with the march of
civilisation it is poetry that will become extinct, but patent after
patent will continue to be taken out for the improvement of shoes and
umbrellas.
BOLPUR,
16_th Jaistha (May)_ 1892.
No church tower clock chimes here, and there being no other human
habitation near by, complete silence falls with the evening, as soon as
the birds have ceased their song. There is not much difference between
early night and midnight. A sleepless night in Calcutta flows like a huge,
slow river of darkness; one can count the varied sounds of its passing,
lying on one's back in bed. But here the night is like a vast, still lake,
placidly reposing, with no sign of movement. And as I tossed from side to
side last night I felt enveloped within a dense stagnation.
This morning I left my bed a little later than usual and, coming
downstairs to my room, leant back on a bolster, one leg resting over the
other knee. There, with a slate on my chest, I began to write a poem to
the accompaniment of the morning breeze and the singing birds. I was
getting along splendidly--a smile playing over my lips, my eyes half
closed, my head swaying to the rhythm, the thing I hummed gradually taking
shape--when the post arrived.
There was a letter, the last number of the _Sadhana Magazine_, one of
the _Monist_, and some proof-sheets. I read the letter, raced my eyes
over the uncut pages of the _Sadhana_, and then again fell to nodding
and humming through my poem. I did not do another thing till I had
finished it.
I wonder why the writing of pages of prose does not give one anything like
the joy of completing a single poem. One's emotions take on such
perfection of form in a poem; they can, as it were, be taken up by the
fingers. But prose is like a sackful of loose material, heavy and
unwieldy, incapable of being lifted as you please.
If I could finish writing one poem a day, my life would pass in a kind of
joy; but though I have been busy tending poetry for many a year it has not
been tamed yet, and is not the kind of winged steed to allow me to bridle
it whenever I like! The joy of art is in freedom to take a distant flight
as fancy will; then, even after return within the prison-world, an echo
lingers in the ear, an exaltation in the mind.
Short poems keep coming to me unsought, and so prevent my getting on with
the play. Had it not been for these, I could have let in ideas for two or
three plays which have been knocking at the door. I am afraid I must wait
for the cold weather. All my plays except "Chitra" were written in the
winter. In that season lyrical fervour is apt to grow cold, and one gets
the leisure to write drama.
BOLPUR,
_31st May 1892. _
It is not yet five o'clock, but the light has dawned, there is a
delightful breeze, and all the birds in the garden are awake and have
started singing. The _koel_ seems beside itself. It is difficult to
understand why it should keep on cooing so untiringly. Certainly not to
entertain us, nor to distract the pining lover[1]--it must have some
personal purpose of its own. But, sadly enough, that purpose never seems
to get fulfilled. Yet it is not down-hearted, and its Coo-oo! Coo-oo!
keeps going, with now and then an ultra-fervent trill. What can it mean?
[Footnote 1: A favourite conceit of the old Sanskrit poets. ]
And then in the distance there is some other bird with only a faint
chuck-chuck that has no energy or enthusiasm, as if all hope were lost;
none the less, from within some shady nook it cannot resist uttering this
little plaint: chuck, chuck, chuck.
How little we really know of the household affairs of these innocent
winged creatures, with their soft, breasts and necks and their
many-coloured feathers! Why on earth do they find it necessary to sing so
persistently?
SHELIDAH,
_31st Jaistha (June)1892. _
I hate these polite formalities.
Nowadays I keep repeating the line: "Much
rather would I be an Arab Bedouin! " A fine, healthy, strong, and free
barbarity.
I feel I want to quit this constant ageing of mind and body, with
incessant argument and nicety concerning ancient decaying things, and to
feel the joy of a free and vigorous life; to have,--be they good or
bad,--broad, unhesitating, unfettered ideas and aspirations, free from
everlasting friction between custom and sense, sense and desire, desire
and action.
If only I could set utterly and boundlessly free this hampered life of
mine, I would storm the four quarters and raise wave upon wave of tumult
all round; I would career away madly, like a wild horse, for very joy of
my own speed! But I am a Bengali, not a Bedouin! I go on sitting in my
corner, and mope and worry and argue. I turn my mind now this way up, now
the other--as a fish is fried--and the boiling oil blisters first this
side, then that.
Let it pass. Since I cannot be thoroughly wild, it is but proper that I
should make an endeavour to be thoroughly civil. Why foment a quarrel
between the two?
SHELIDAH,
_16th June 1892. _
The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearer
it becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform the
ordinary duties of one's daily life simply and naturally. From the grasses
in the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; and
there is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because none
of these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations.
Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has to
put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its
rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to
become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green.
And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the
societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to
big doings and fine talk.
Perhaps because the whole of our life is not vividly present at each
moment, some imaginary hope may lure, some glowing picture of a future,
untrammelled with everyday burdens, may tempt us; but these are illusory.
SHELIDAH,
_2nd Asarh (June) 1892. _
Yesterday, the first day of _Asarh_,[1] the enthronement of the rainy
season was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance. It was very hot the
whole day, but in the afternoon dense clouds rolled up in stupendous
masses.
[Footnote 1: June-July, the commencement of the rainy season. ]
I thought to myself, this first day of the rains, I would rather risk
getting wet than remain confined in my dungeon of a cabin.
The year 1293 [1] will not come again in my life, and,
for the matter of that, how many more even of these first days
of _Asarh_ will come? My life would be sufficiently long could it
number thirty of these first days of _Asarh_ to which the poet of the
_Meghaduta_[2] has, for me at least, given special distinction.
[Footnote 1: Of the Bengal era. ]
[Footnote 2: In the _Meghaduta_ (Cloud Messenger) of Kalidas a famous
description of the burst of the Monsoon begins with the words: _On the
first day of Asarh_. ]
It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should
take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting
sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white
flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!
A thousand years ago Kalidas welcomed that first day of _Asarh_; and
once in every year of my life that same day of _Asarh_ dawns in all
its glory--that self-same day of the poet of old Ujjain, which has brought
to countless men and women their joys of union, their pangs of separation.
Every year one such great, time-hallowed day drops out of my life; and the
time will come when this day of Kalidas, this day of the _Meghaduta_,
this eternal first day of the Rains in Hindustan, shall come no more for
me. When I realise this I feel I want to take a good look at nature, to
offer a conscious welcome to each day's sunrise, to say farewell to each
day's setting sun, as to an intimate friend.
What a grand festival, what a vast theatre of festivity! And we cannot
even fully respond to it, so far away do we live from the world! The light
of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot
reach our hearts--so many millions of miles further off are we!
The world into which I have tumbled is peopled with strange beings. They
are always busy erecting walls and rules round themselves, and how careful
they are with their curtains lest they should see! It is a wonder to me
they have not made drab covers for flowering plants and put up a canopy to
ward off the moon. If the next life is determined by the desires of this,
then I should be reborn from our enshrouded planet into some free and open
realm of joy.
Only those who cannot steep themselves in beauty to the full, despise it
as an object of the senses. But those who have tasted of its
inexpressibility know how far it is beyond the highest powers of mere eye
or ear--nay, even the heart is powerless to attain the end of its
yearning.
_P. S. _--I have left out the very thing I started to tell of. Don't be
afraid, it won't take four more sheets. It is this, that on the evening of
the first day of _Asarh_ it came on to rain very heavily, in great
lance-like showers. That is all.
ON THE WAY TO GOALUNDA,
_21st June 1892. _
Pictures in an endless variety, of sand-banks, fields and their crops, and
villages, glide into view on either hand--of clouds floating in the sky,
of colours blossoming when day meets night. Boats steal by, fishermen
catch fish; the waters make liquid, caressing sounds throughout the
livelong day; their broad expanse calms down in the evening stillness,
like a child lulled to sleep, over whom all the stars in the boundless sky
keep watch--then, as I sit up on wakeful nights, with sleeping banks on
either side, the silence is broken only by an occasional cry of a jackal
in the woods near some village, or by fragments undermined by the keen
current of the Padma, that tumble from the high cliff-like bank into the
water.
Not that the prospect is always of particular interest--a yellowish
sandbank, innocent of grass or tree, stretches away; an empty boat is tied
to its edge; the bluish water, of the same shade as the hazy sky, flows
past; yet I cannot tell how it moves me. I suspect that the old desires
and longings of my servant-ridden childhood--when in the solitary
imprisonment of my room I pored over the _Arabian Nights_, and shared
with Sinbad the Sailor his adventures in many a strange land--are not yet
dead within me, but are roused at the sight of any empty boat tied to a
sand-bank.
If I had not heard fairy tales and read the _Arabian Nights_ and
_Robinson Crusoe_ in childhood, I am sure views of distant banks, or
the farther side of wide fields, would not have stirred me so--the whole
world, in fact, would have had for me a different appeal.
What a maze of fancy and fact becomes tangled up within the mind of man!
The different strands--petty and great--of story and event and picture,
how they get knotted together!
SHELIDAH,
_22nd June 1892. _
Early this morning, while still lying in bed, I heard the women at the
bathing-place sending forth joyous peals of _Ulu! Ulu! _[1] The sound
moved me curiously, though it is difficult to say why.
[Footnote 1: A peculiar shrill cheer given by women on auspicious or
festive occasions. ]
Perhaps such joyful outbursts put one in mind of the great stream of
festive activity which goes on in this world, with most of which the
individual man has no connection. The world is so immense, the concourse
of men so vast, yet with how few has one any tie! Distant sounds of life,
wafted near, bearing tidings from unknown homes, make the individual
realise that the greater part of the world of men does not, cannot own or
know him; then he feels deserted, loosely attached to the world, and a
vague sadness creeps over him.
Thus these cries of _Ulu! Ulu! _ made my life, past and future, seem
like a long, long road, from the very ends of which they come to me. And
this feeling colours for me the beginning of my day.
As soon as the manager with his staff, and the ryots seeking audience,
come upon the scene, this faint vista of past and future will be promptly
elbowed out, and a very robust present will salute and stand before me.
SHAZADPUR,
_25th June 1892. _
In to-day's letters there was a touch about A---'s singing which made my
heart yearn with a nameless longing. Each of the little joys of life,
which remain unappreciated amid the hubbub of the town, send in their
claims to the heart when far from home. I love music, and there is no
dearth of voices and instruments in Calcutta, yet I turn a deaf ear to
them. But, though I may fail to realise it at the time, this needs must
leave the heart athirst.
As I read to-day's letters, I felt such a poignant desire to hear A---'s
sweet song, I was at once sure that one of the many suppressed longings of
creation which cry after fulfilment is for neglected joys within reach;
while we are busy pursuing chimerical impossibilities we famish our
lives. . . .
The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. And
the day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, I
would strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full these
little, unsought, everyday joys which life offers.
SHAZADPUR,
_27th June 1892. _
Yesterday, in the afternoon, it clouded over so threateningly, I felt a
sense of dread. I do not remember ever to have seen before such
angry-looking clouds.
Swollen masses of the deepest indigo blue were piled, one on top of the
other, just above the horizon, looking like the puffed-out moustaches of
some raging demon.
Under the jagged lower edges of the clouds there shone forth a blood-red
glare, as through the eyes of a monstrous, sky-filling bison, with tossing
mane and with head lowered to strike the earth in fury.
The crops in the fields and the leaves of the trees trembled with fear of
the impending disaster; shudder after shudder ran across the waters; the
crows flew wildly about, distractedly cawing.
SHAZADPUR,
_29th June 1892. _
I wrote yesterday that I had an engagement with Kalidas, the poet, for
this evening. As I lit a candle, drew my chair up to the table, and made
ready, not Kalidas, but the postmaster, walked in. A live postmaster
cannot but claim precedence over a dead poet, so I could not very well
tell him to make way for Kalidas, who was due by appointment,--he would
not have understood me! Therefore I offered him a chair and gave old
Kalidas the go-by.
There is a kind of bond between this postmaster and me. When the post
office was in a part of this estate building, I used to meet him every
day. I wrote my story of "The Postmaster" one afternoon in this very room.
And when the story was out in the _Hitabadi_ he came to me with a
succession of bashful smiles, as he deprecatingly touched on the subject.
Anyhow, I like the man. He has a fund of anecdote which I enjoy listening
to. He has also a sense of humour.
Though it was late when the postmaster left, I started at once on the
_Raghuvansa_[1], and read all about the _swayamuara_[2] of
Indumati.
[Footnote 1: Book of poems by Kalidas, who is perhaps best known to
European readers as the author of _Sakuntala_. ]
[Footnote 2: An old Indian custom, according to which a princess chooses
among assembled rival suitors for her hand by placing a garland round the
neck of the one whose love she returns. ]
The handsome, gaily adorned princes are seated on rows of thrones in the
assembly hall. Suddenly a blast of conch-shell and trumpet resounds, as
Indumati, in bridal robes, supported by Sunanda, is ushered in and stands
in the walk left between them. It was delightful to dwell on the picture.
Then as Sunanda introduces to her each one of the suitors, Indumati bows
low in loveless salutation, and passes on. How beautiful is this humble
courtesy! They are all princes. They are all her seniors. For she is a
mere girl. Had she not atoned for the inevitable rudeness of her rejection
by the grace of her humility, the scene would have lost its beauty.
SHELIDAH,
_20th August 1892. _
"If only I could live there! " is often thought when looking at a beautiful
landscape painting. That is the kind of longing which is satisfied here,
where one feels alive in a brilliantly coloured picture, with none of the
hardness of reality. When I was a child, illustrations of woodland and
sea, in _Paul and Virginia_, or _Robinson Crusoe_, would waft me
away from the everyday world; and the sunshine here brings back to my mind
the feeling with which I used to gaze on those pictures.
I cannot account for this exactly, or explain definitely what kind of
longing it is which is roused within me. It seems like the throb of some
current flowing through the artery connecting me with the larger world. I
feel as if dim, distant memories come to me of the time when I was one
with the rest of the earth; when on me grew the green grass, and on me
fell the autumn light; when a warm scent of youth would rise from every
pore of my vast, soft, green body at the touch of the rays of the mellow
sun, and a fresh life, a sweet joy, would be half-consciously secreted and
inarticulately poured forth from all the immensity of my being, as it lay
dumbly stretched, with its varied countries and seas and mountains, under
the bright blue sky.
My feelings seem to be those of our ancient earth in the daily ecstasy of
its sun-kissed life; my own consciousness seems to stream through each
blade of grass, each sucking root, to rise with the sap through the trees,
to break out with joyous thrills in the waving fields of corn, in the
rustling palm leaves.
I feel impelled to give expression to my blood-tie with the earth, my
kinsman's love for her; but I am afraid I shall not be understood.
BOALIA,
_18th November 1892. _
I am wondering where your train has got to by now. This is the time for
the sun to rise over the ups and downs of the treeless, rocky region near
Nawadih station. The scene around there must be brightened by the fresh
sunlight, through which distant, blue hills are beginning to be faintly
visible.
Cultivated fields are scarcely to be seen, except where the primitive
tribesmen have done a little ploughing with their buffaloes; on each side
of the railway cutting there are the heaped-up black rocks--the
boulder-marked footprints of dried-up streams--and the fidgety, black
wagtails, perched along the telegraph wires. A wild, seamed, and scarred
nature lies there in the sun, as though tamed at the touch of some soft,
bright, cherubic hand.
Do you know the picture which this calls up for me? In the _Sakuntala_ of
Kalidas there is a scene where Bharat, the infant son of King Dushyanta,
is playing with a lion cub. The child is lovingly passing his delicate,
rosy fingers through the rough mane of the great beast, which lies quietly
stretched in trustful repose, now and then casting affectionate glances
out of the corner of its eyes at its little human friend.
And shall I tell you what those dry, boulder-strewn watercourses put me in
mind of? We read in the English fairy tale of the Babes in the Wood, how
the little brother and sister left a trace of their wanderings, through
the unknown forest into which their stepmother had turned them out, by
dropping pebbles as they went. These streamlets are like lost babes in the
great world into which they are sent adrift, and that is why they leave
stones, as they go forth, to mark their course, so as not to lose their
way when they may be returning. But for them there is no return journey!
NATORE,
_2nd December_ 1892.
There is a depth of feeling and breadth of peace in a Bengal sunset behind
the trees which fringe the endless solitary fields, spreading away to the
horizon.
Lovingly, yet sadly withal, does our evening sky bend over and meet the
earth in the distance. It casts a mournful light on the earth it leaves
behind--a light which gives us a taste of the divine grief of the Eternal
Separation[1] and eloquent is the silence which then broods over earth,
sky, and waters.
[Footnote 1: _I. e. _ between Purusha and Prakriti--God and Creation. ]
As I gaze on in rapt motionlessness, I fall to wondering--If ever this
silence should fail to contain itself, if the expression for which this
hour has been seeking from the beginning of time should break forth, would
a profoundly solemn, poignantly moving music rise from earth to starland?
With a little steadfast concentration of effort we can, for ourselves,
translate the grand harmony of light and colour which permeates the
universe into music. We have only to close our eyes and receive with the
ear of the mind the vibration of this ever-flowing panorama.
But how often shall I write of these sunsets and sunrises? I feel their
renewed freshness every time; yet how am I to attain such renewed
freshness in my attempts at expression?
SHELIDAH,
_9th December_ 1892.
I am feeling weak and relaxed after my painful illness, and in this state
the ministrations of nature are sweet indeed. I feel as if, like the rest,
I too am lazily glittering out my delight at the rays of the sun, and my
letter-writing progresses but absent-mindedly.
The world is ever new to me; like an old friend loved through this and
former lives, the acquaintance between us is both long and deep.
I can well realise how, in ages past, when the earth in her first youth
came forth from her sea-bath and saluted the sun in prayer, I must have
been one of the trees sprung from her new-formed soil, spreading my
foliage in all the freshness of a primal impulse.
The great sea was rocking and swaying and smothering, like a foolishly
fond mother, its first-born land with repeated caresses; while I was
drinking in the sunlight with the whole of my being, quivering under the
blue sky with the unreasoning rapture of the new-born, holding fast and
sucking away at my mother earth with all my roots. In blind joy my leaves
burst forth and my flowers bloomed; and when the dark clouds gathered,
their grateful shade would comfort me with a tender touch.
From age to age, thereafter, have I been diversely reborn on this earth.
So whenever we now sit face to face, alone together, various ancient
memories, gradually, one after another, come back to me.
My mother earth sits to-day in the cornfields by the river-side, in her
raiment of sunlit gold; and near her feet, her knees, her lap, I roll
about and play. Mother of a multitude of children, she attends but
absently to their constant calls on her, with an immense patience, but
also with a certain aloofness. She is seated there, with her far-away look
fastened on the verge of the afternoon sky, while I keep chattering on
untiringly.
BALJA,
_Tuesday, February 1893_.
I do not want to wander about any more. I am pining for a corner in which
to nestle down snugly, away from the crowd.
India has two aspects--in one she is a householder, in the other a
wandering ascetic. The former refuses to budge from the home corner, the
latter has no home at all. I find both these within me. I want to roam
about and see all the wide world, yet I also yearn for a little sheltered
nook; like a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast sky for
flight.
I hanker after a corner because it serves to bring calmness to my mind. My
mind really wants to be busy, but in making the attempt it knocks so
repeatedly against the crowd as to become utterly frenzied and to keep
buffeting me, its cage, from within. If only it is allowed a little
leisurely solitude, and can look about and think to its heart's content,
it will express its feelings to its own satisfaction.
This freedom of solitude is what my mind is fretting for; it would be
alone with its imaginings, as the Creator broods over His own creation.
CUTTACK,
_February 1893_.
Till we can achieve something, let us live incognito, say I. So long as we
are only fit to be looked down upon, on what shall we base our claim to
respect? When we have acquired a foothold of our own in the world, when we
have had some share in shaping its course, then we can meet others
smilingly. Till then let us keep in the background, attending to our own
affairs.
But our countrymen seem to hold the opposite opinion. They set no store by
our more modest, intimate wants which have to be met behind the
scenes,--the whole of their attention is directed to momentary
attitudinising and display.
Ours is truly a God-forsaken country. Difficult, indeed, is it for us to
maintain the strength of will to _do_. We get no help in any real
sense. There is no one, within miles of us, in converse with whom we might
gain an accession of vitality. No one near seems to be thinking, or
feeling, or working. Not a soul has any experience of big striving, or of
really and truly living. They all eat and drink, do their office work,
smoke and sleep, and chatter nonsensically. When they touch upon emotion
they grow sentimental, when they reason they are childish. One yearns for
a full-blooded, sturdy, and capable personality; these are all so many
shadows, flitting about, out of touch with the world.
CUTTACK,
_10th February_ 1893.
He was a fully developed John Bull of the outrageous type--with a huge
beak of a nose, cunning eyes, and a yard-long chin. The curtailment of our
right to be tried by jury is now under consideration by the Government.
The fellow dragged in the subject by the ears and insisted on arguing it
out with our host, poor B---- Babu. He said the moral standard of the
people of this country was low; that they had no real belief in the
sacredness of life; so that they were unfit to serve on juries.
The utter contempt with which we are regarded by these people was brought
home to me when I saw how they can accept a Bengali's hospitality and talk
thus, seated at his table, without a quiver of compunction.
As I sat in a corner of the drawing-room after dinner, everything round me
looked blurred to my eyes. I seemed to be seated by the head of my great,
insulted Motherland, who lay there in the dust before me, disconsolate,
shorn of her glory. I cannot tell what a profound distress overpowered my
heart.
How incongruous seemed the _mem-sahibs_ there, in their
evening-dresses, the hum of English conversation, and the ripples of
laughter! How richly true for us is our India of the ages; how cheap and
false the hollow courtesies of an English dinner-party!
CUTTACK,
_March_ 1893.
If we begin to attach too much importance to the applause of Englishmen,
we shall have to be rid of much in us that is good, and to accept from
them much that is bad.
We shall grow ashamed of going about without socks, and cease to feel
shame at the sight of their ball dresses. We shall have no compunction in
throwing overboard our ancient manners, nor any in emulating their lack of
courtesy.
We shall leave off wearing our _achgans_ because they are susceptible of
improvement, but think nothing of surrendering our heads to their hats,
though no headgear could well be uglier.
In short, consciously or unconsciously, we shall have to cut our lives
down according as they clap their hands or not.
Wherefore I apostrophise myself and say: "O Earthen Pot! For goodness sake
keep away from that Metal Pot!
