Read I Won't Let You Go Online
Authors: Rabindranath Tagore Ketaki Kushari Dyson
In olden days, I’ve heard, gods in love
with mortal women used to descend from heaven.
Those days are gone. It’s Baishakh, the dry season,
a day of burnt out fields and shrunken streams.
A peasant’s daughter, piteously suppliant,
begs again and again, ‘Come, rain, come!’
Her eyes grieving, restless, and expectant,
from time to time she casts a look at the sky.
But no rain falls. The wind, deaf to her cries,
rushes past, dispersing all the clouds,
and the sun has licked all moisture from the sky
with its tongue of fire. Alas, these degenerate days
the gods are senile. And women can only appeal
to mortal men.
[Shahjadpur? 13 April 1896]
‘Mother! Mother!’ I call to you in terror
in order that my wretched cries might make you
behave like a mother.
Perchance you will, as tigresses are known to do,
abjure all violence and lick this human child.
Well might you hide your claws and press to my mouth
your swollen teats, allow me to doze and rest,
nestled against your striped-as-a-picture breast.
Such is my hope! Ah, greater than great,
you are above, showing your billions of stars,
your moons, planets! Should you suddenly frown
hideously, and lift your thunder-fist,
where would I be, so puny, such a weakling?
So, she-devil, let me decoy you to be a mother!
[Shahjadpur? 13 April 1896]
Said the wasp to the bee, ‘This is such a tiny hive!
and you are so proud of such a small achievement!’
‘Why, then, brother,’ was the bee’s reply,
‘let’s see you make a smaller hive for a change!’
Said the beggar’s bowl to the rich man’s money-bag,
‘We’re related by marriage; let’s not forget that.’
The bag said, ‘Should what I have be transferred to you,
all relationship you would forget too.’
Said the paraffin lantern to the earthen lamp,
‘Call me brother, and I shall have you flanned.’
Up rose the moon in the sky soon thereafter.
Quickly the lantern said, ‘Hallo, Big Brother!’
Good-Enough said to Even-Better,
‘In which heaven do you show your lustre?’
‘Alas,’ cried Even-Better, ‘I live in the impotent
jealousy of the insolent and incompetent.’
Thunder says, ‘As long as I’m far away,
they refer to my roar as the rumble of clouds,
and my brilliance is attributed to lightning,
but when I fall on heads, they say: thunder indeed!’
(Adapted from a Buddhist story)
‘Theft from the royal treasury! Catch the thief!
Or else, Police Chief, you’ll come to grief—
there won’t be a head on your body!’ Terrified
of royal wrath, policemen scoured streets
and houses in search of the thief. Outside the city
in a ruined temple lay Bajrasen,
a foreigner there, a merchant from Taxila,
who had come to Benares to sell horses,
and having been robbed of all, made destitute,
was sadly returning to his native land.
On him they pounced, arresting him as the thief,
binding his hands and feet in iron chains,
dragging him to prison.
At that very instant
Shyama, queen of the city beauties, sat
at her window in a mood of indolent fun,
spending her time watching the flow of the street,
the dreamlike procession of people. Suddenly
she shivered and cried, ‘Alas! Who’s this?
So tall, handsomer than great Indra himself,
being dragged to prison like a common thief
in harsh chains! Quick, my friend!
Go to the Police Chief, mention my name
and say I would speak to him. Could he come
just once with the prisoner to my humble home? –
It would be a favour.’ Such was the attraction
of Shyama’s name that the Police Chief, impatient,
thrilled to be invited, quickly came,
behind him, in chains, Bajrasen, head bowed,
cheeks shame-red. Said the Chief with a smile,
‘Untimely comes such an unsolicited favour
toward this undeserving person. I’m on my way
to do the king’s business. So, my Lovely, permit me.’
Suddenly Bajrasen lifted his head and said,
‘Beauty, what sport, what perverse humour is this
that makes you call me from the street into your house
to humiliate this innocent foreigner’s hurt
of humiliation?’ But Shyama said, ‘Alas,
foreign traveller, this is no sport at all!
All the jewels I carry on my person
I could give up to take your chains on myself,
and this insult to you, believe me, insults
me to my inmost core.’ As she said so,
her eyes, their lashes wet, seemed to want
to wipe off all the insult from the limbs
of the foreigner. And she begged the Chief,
‘Take all I have and in return set free
the prisoner.’ But the Chief replied,
‘Beauty, it’s a request I may not grant.
To satisfy you there’s beyond my power.
The royal treasury’s robbed, and royal wrath
won’t be appeased till blood-price is paid.’
Holding the policeman’s hands, poor Shyama pleaded
pathetically, ‘Keep the prisoner alive
just for two days – this is my humble plea.’
‘All right, then, I’ll do just that,’ said he.
At the end of the second night, a lamp in her hand,
the woman opened the prison doors and entered
the cell where Bajrasen lay in iron chains,
waiting for death’s dawn, silently repeating
to himself his God’s name. At her eyes’ signal
a guard came quickly, freed him from his chains.
The prisoner, his eyes surprise-whelmed,
gazed at that fair face, soft, open as a lotus,
amazingly lovely, and in a choked voice said,
‘After the horrors of a grotesque nightmare-night
who are you, appearing in my prison-cell
like the white dawn, the morning star in your hand,
life to the dying, liberation incarnate,
merciful Lakshmi in this merciless city!’
‘Me merciful!’ The woman laughed so loudly
that the grim prison woke again with shudders
of renewed terror. She laughed and laughed
till her bizarre lunatic laughter burst
into a hundred mournful tear-streams, and she said,
‘Many are the stones that pave the city’s streets,
but none as hard as Shyama, who’s hard indeed!’
So saying, she firmly grasped his hand
and took Bajrasen outside the prison gates.
Day was breaking then on Baruna’s banks
above the east woods. A boat was ghat-tied.
‘Come, foreigner, come,’ said the belle,
standing on the boat, ‘listen, my love,
only remember what I’m saying now –
that I’m floating with you on the same stream,
bursting all bonds, o lord of my life and death,
my heart’s sovereign!’ She untied the boat.
On either side in the woodlands the birds
merrily sang their festive songs. Uplifting
his lady-love’s face with both hands, filling his breast,
Bajrasen begged, ‘Love, tell me, please,
with what riches you have set me free.
Foreign woman, let me know in full
how big a debt this poor miserable man
owes to you.’ Tightening her embrace,
the beauty said, ‘We won’t talk of that now.’
A brisk breeze and a fierce current made
the boat sail away. Above, a blazing sun
ascended to the zenith. Village wives
went home in wet drapery after their bathes,
carrying bell-metal pitchers of Ganga-water.
The morning market closed; the hubbub stopped
on either side of the river; village paths
emptied. Below a banyan was a stone ghat;
to it the boat was tied so bath and lunch
could be had. On the drowsy banyan branches
shade-immersed birds’ nests were songless.
Only the indolent insects buzzed and buzzed.
When the noon wind, stealer of ripe-corn-odours,
blew off Shyama’s drapery from her head,
suddenly then, tormented, oppressed
by the fullness of his passion, voice near-muffled,
Bajrasen whispered thus in her ears,
‘In eternal chains you’ve bound me, freeing me from
transient chains. But you must inform me
how such a feat, so difficult, was achieved.
Love, if I but knew what you did for me,
with my life, I vow, I would repay you.’
Drawing the end of her drapery over her face,
the beauty said, ‘Let’s not talk of that yet.’
Far away, folding its golden sails,
daylight’s boat went quietly to the ghat
of the sunset-mountain, and by a grove on the bank
Shyama’s boat was moored in the evening breeze.
The moon – fourth day of waxing – had nearly set;
a faint light glimmered in long lines upon
the calm unruffled waters; the darkness massed
at tree-bases vibrated with crickets
like vina-strings. Blowing off the lamp,
below the boat’s window in the southern breeze
Shyama sat, her face deep-sigh-tense,
and leaned on the young man’s shoulder. Her tresses
unbound, fragrant, fell without restraint,
covering the foreigner’s breast with soft cascades
of darkness, like a net of the deepest sleep.
‘Dearest,’ murmured Shyama in whispered tones,
‘what I did for you was hard enough,
hard indeed, but even harder it is
to tell you about it now. I must be brief.
Listen to it once and then wipe the story
off your mind. –
A young teenager,
his name Uttiya, was nearly driven mad
by his hopeless passion for me. At my request
he pleaded guilty to the charge held against you
and gave his own life. And this is my pride –
that the greatest sin of my life I have committed
for your sake, o most-excellent of all!’
The slim moon set. The speechless woodland,
the sleep of hundreds of birds upon its head,
stood still. Slowly, ever so slowly
the lover’s arms around the lady’s waist
slackened, and a harsh distance settled
silently between the two. Bajrasen
stared before him, mute, stiff, as rigid
as a stone image, and her head on his feet,
Shyama, released from the embrace, collapsed
like a torn climber. The massed riparian darkness
slowly thickened on the ink-black river-waters.
Suddenly, clasping the young man’s knees with force
within her arms, the tormented woman cried
in a dry voice, free from tears, ‘Liege, forgive!
May that scourge, the punishment for my sin,
be that fiercer at the Creator’s hand,
but may you forgive what I have done for your sake!’
Looking at her, but moving his legs away,
Bajrasen burst out, ‘Why? What need had you
to save this life of mine? Now until death
bought at your sin-price, a sharer in a great sin,
this life’s a disgrace, thanks to you, shameful woman!
Fie on my breath that stands indebted to you!
Fie on my eyes that blink in each moment that passes!’
So saying, he rose with assertive force,
left the boat, went ashore, wandered aimlessly
in the sylvan darkness. There his feet
trampled the dry leaves, each step startling the forest.
In the stuffy airless underwood, thickly packed
with strong vegetal odours, trunks of trees
raised their twisted branches everywhere,
assuming so many grotesque, frightening shapes
in the darkness. All exits were blocked.
The creeper-manacled forest spread its hands
like mute forbiddings. Utterly exhausted,
the wanderer slumped to the ground. Like a ghost
someone stood behind him. She had come
on his heels in the darkness a long way,
following him without words, with bleeding feet.
Clenching both his fists, the wanderer shrieked,
‘Won’t you leave me yet?’ At that the woman
rushed with lightning-speed and fell upon him,
covering all his body with the flood-waves
of her embraces, tresses, dishevelled drapes,
sniffs, kisses, caresses, deep breaths,
her voice emotion-choked, almost muffled,
repeating, ‘I won’t leave you! No, I won’t!’
‘Liege,’ she begged, ‘for your sake I sinned.
Punish me yourself, hurt my inmost being.
Pass it on me – your sentence, my reward.’
The sylvan gloom, bereft of planets and stars,
blindly experienced something – a nightmare.
Hundreds of thousands of tree-roots all around
shuddered with terror, buried underground.
One last pitiful plea could once be heard,
in a choked, strangled voice; the next minute
a body fell on the ground with a heavy thud.
When Bajrasen came away from the forest,
the temple’s trident-peak on Ganga’s bank
was the colour of lightning in the dawn’s first rays.
On deserted sandy beaches along the river
heedless of all things, he spent the livelong day
like a madman. The fiery midday sun
lashed him all over with its burning thong.
Pitcher-on-waist village wives, seeing his state,
said with compassion, ‘Who are you, homeless waif?
Come to us.’ But he did not respond.
Thirst split his chest, yet he did not touch
a drop of water from the river before him.
At the day’s end, with his body, fevered, burnt,
he ran and went aboard the empty boat,
even as an insect, seeing fire, runs
with ardent zeal. And there upon the bed
he saw an anklet lying. A hundred times
he pressed it to his breast. Its tinkling sound
pierced his heart like an arrow with a hundred tips.
In a corner lay
her blue drape, which he gathered to a heap,
then pressed his face against it, lying down,
drinking in with insatiable passion
the delicate odour of her body with his breath.
The moon – fifth day of waxing – about to set,
had slipped to the crown of the saptaparna tree,
dipping into branches. With his arms outstretched,
Bajrasen, looking at the forest, began to call,
‘Come, come, my love!’ Whereupon
on the sandy beach, against the deep-black woods,
appeared a shadowy figure, like a ghost.
‘Come, come, love!’ ‘My love, I’m here!’
Shyama fell at his feet. ‘Forgive me, please!
Alas, from my body my tough life couldn’t be released
by your merciful hands.’ For just a minute
Bajrasen set his eyes upon her face,
stretched out his arms, as if for an embrace,
then, startled, pushed her away from himself,
roaring, ‘Why, why did you come back?’
He took the anklet, flung it from his breast,
and from his feet kicked the blue drape off
as if it was live coal. Even the bed
was like a bed of fire beneath his feet
and burned him. He then closed his eyes,
averted his face, said, ‘Go, go back.
Leave me, go away!’ The woman, for a minute,
stayed quiet, her head bowed, then kneeled
upon the ground and saluted his feet.
She then got off the boat, stepped on the bank,
softly walked towards the dark woodland,
as when sleep is sundered, a moment’s miraculous dream
merges into night’s obscurity.
[Shilaidaha? 9 October 1899]