Letters from a Young Poet (10 page)

Kaligram 17
January 1891

This sort of morning is for laziness. Apart from the fact that there is nobody here to tell you to hurry up, a crowd of peasants and
responsibilities have not smothered one yet. As a result I'm feeling sort of loose and slack and lonesome. As if there's no work in the world that's really necessary, to the extent that one could have a bath or perhaps not have a bath, and the habit of eating one's meals at the right time seems to be an ancient superstition prevalent among the people of Calcutta. The atmosphere around here too is like that. There's a small river here all right, but it's bankrupt of any flow. It seems to have become stupefied by its own moss and watercress, and spreading out its body it lies there and thinks: if it's quite okay to go on without moving, then why move? The long grass and water plants that have grown in many places in the water would not have moved at all the entire day unless the fishermen came to throw their nets. Six or seven large boats are tied in a row; on the roof of one of them, a boatman has wrapped himself in a sheet from head to foot and sleeps in the sun—on another, someone sits and twines cord while sunning himself; near its oars, a middle-aged man sits bare-chested and stares at our boat for no reason at all. On the shore, many different sorts of people come and go in the most slow and sedate manner; why they come, why they go, why one sits hunched with his arms wrapped around his knees pulled up to his chest, why they stare surprised at nothing in particular—one cannot be sure what any of this means. Only a few ducks display an air of being busy in the midst of this—they make a lot of noise, frequently, excitedly dunking their heads in the water and immediately raising them again with a vigorous shake. Exactly as if they were sticking out their necks each time to investigate the deep mysteries under the water, then forcefully shaking their heads to say, ‘No, nothing, nothing at all!' The days over here keep lying there, sunning themselves in this way for twelve hours, and in the remaining twelve hours they wrap themselves up in the deepest darkness and go silently to sleep. Here one feels like looking outside all the time in order to sit and be rocked by the feelings in one's own mind; at the same time, one could hum a little tune; sometimes your eyelids droop with
sleepiness. Just like a mother who sits with her son and rocks him on her lap with her back to the afternoon sun in the winter, in the same way …

Patisahr Katchari
[Patishar Kachari]
via Atrai
Sunday, 18 January 1891

I have brought my boat quite a distance away from the kāchāri and tied it at an isolated spot. There's no commotion anywhere in the vicinity; you won't get it even if you want it, unless perhaps on sale along with a variety of other goods in the market. You can't see too many human faces in the place I've come to now. All around, the fields stretch for miles—the crops have been cut and taken away, only the yellow stubble of the cut rice covers the expanse of the fields. Yesterday, at the end of a long day, I went for a walk in those fields at sunset … The sun slowly grew redder until it disappeared behind the absolutely last line of the earth's horizon. How can I describe how beautiful everything all around became! Very far away, at the absolute end of the horizon, there was a border of trees, that place turned so magical—the blues and the reds mixed together and became shadowy—it seemed as if the evening had its home there; it spreads out its bright ā
ncal
^*
once it goes there, carefully lights its evening star, dresses its hair with sindoor in the privacy of solitude like a bride sitting and waiting for someone, and while waiting it stretches out its legs and weaves a garland of stars and composes dreams while humming a melody. A shadow has fallen over the entire never-ending field—a tender melancholy—not exactly tears—like a deep trembling
under the long eyelashes of an unblinking eye. One could imagine that mother earth lives with her own children and clamour and household work in the midst of society—but where there's a little space, a little silence, a little bit of open sky, that's where her vast heart's hidden sadness and melancholy can appear; there, one can hear her deepest sigh. It is doubtful whether you'll find the sort of unobstructed clear sky and flat land spread out over such distances as we have in India anywhere in Europe. That is perhaps why our race has been able to discover the limitless melancholy of this vast world. That is why our Pūrbі and Tori ragas seem to express the inner lament of the entire vast world, not someone's domestic story. One part of this world is efficient, affectionate, limited—that part hasn't found the time to influence us a great deal. But that part of the world which is unpeopled, empty and endless, that part has made us melancholy. That is why, when the sitar strings are pulled to sound the
miṛ
, our Indian hearts experience a pull too.
^*
Yesterday in the evening Pūrbі could be heard playing in the empty field; I was the only living thing walking there within ten or twelve miles, while one other living creature with a turban tied on his head was standing in a disciplined way by the boat with a staff in hand. The small river on my left wound its way through the high banks on both sides to disappear from sight not very far away; the water had not a trace of a wave on it, only the colours of the evening stayed upon it for a little while like an extremely wan smile. The silence was as tremendous as the field itself. There was only a sort of bird that builds its nest on the ground—that bird, watching me constantly come and go near its isolated nest, began to call out with a
tee-tee
of anxious suspicion. Gradually, the rays of the current Kṛshnapaksha moon
^†
became a bit brighter—
there is a narrow path going all along the riverbank at the edge of the field—I was walking along there with my head bowed, thinking.

Patisahr Katchari
[Patishar Kachari]
via Atrai
Monday, 19 January 1891

This small river has curved a little and created a little bit of a corner, a little like a lap, over here—I stay quite hidden away in this corner, shielded by the high banks on either side, so we cannot be seen from even a little distance away—the boat-wallahs approach us from the north, drawing out their measure, when they are suddenly surprised by the sight of a large boat tied unnecessarily by the side of these deserted fields. ‘Hey there, whose houseboat?' ‘The jamidār-bābu's.' ‘Why here? Why not in front of the kāchāri?' ‘He's here to take the air.'—I have come for something much harder to find than air. Anyway, such questions and answers are frequently to be heard. I've just had lunch and sat down—it is now one-thirty in the afternoon. The boat has been untied; it proceeds slowly towards the kāchāri. There is quite a stiff breeze. It's not too cold—the afternoon sun's rays have made it a bit warmer. Occasionally there's a
khas-khas
sound as the boat goes through the dense watercress. On that watercress are many small turtles sunning themselves with their necks fully stretched towards the sun. At a great distance from each other, occasional small villages appear. A few straw huts, some mud walls bereft of a roof, one or two bundles of hay,
kul
trees, mango trees, banyan trees and bamboo clumps, two or three goats grazing, a handful of naked boys and girls—an unstructured ghat
extending till the river where a few are washing clothes, a few are bathing, a few washing utensils; a shy young wife looks curiously through the two-inch gap of her veil at the jamidār-bābu, her pitcher at her waist; by her side, holding her āncal, a small, naked, just-bathed infant, gleaming with oil, stares unblinkingly at the present letter-writer to quench his curiosity—a number of boats are tied to the shore and one half-submerged, ancient, abandoned dinghy awaits resurrection. This is followed again by an expanse of fields empty of crops—from time to time one sees a few cowherd boys, and one or two cows that have come to the banks of the river for the succulent grass there. The solitude and silence of the afternoons here are not to be found anywhere else.

Kaligram
January 1891

At the time when I began writing this letter to you, an office clerk of this place was going on and on about his limited means, prospects of a pay rise, and necessity of getting married—he went on chattering and I went on writing, until at one point I explained to him briefly that when a sensible man grants a wish, he does so because the cause is a good one, and not because the same thing has been reiterated five times over. I thought such a wonderful piece of wisdom would absolutely silence the man, but the result turned out to be quite the opposite. Turning the tables, he asked, if a son cannot go to his mother and father and tell them everything on his mind, whom should he go to? I was unable to find an adequate reply immediately at hand. Following which he continued to jabber and I continued to write. Out of the blue, suddenly the tremendous obligation to turn into
somebody's parents!—Yesterday at the kāchāri around five or six boys suddenly came and stood in front of me in the most disciplined way, and the moment I asked some question or the other, one began, in the most exquisite Bengali, ‘O Father, it is by the great good fortune of these unfortunate children of yours, and by the blessings of the Lord, that your lordship's auspicious arrival in this country has been accomplished.' He continued in this vein for about half an hour, occasionally forgetting his lines, looking up at the sky, and correcting himself before resuming. The subject was that their school needed stools and benches, and faced a lack of these wooden seats—‘Where do we accommodate ourselves, where do we accommodate our revered teacher, and when the inspector arrives, what seat are we to grant him either?' To suddenly hear this speech rattled off by such a small boy really made me feel like laughing! Particularly in this jamidār's kāchāri, where the illiterate peasants express their very real sorrows of scarcity in the most rural of dialects—where one hears of stomachs remaining empty in famines caused by excessive rain even after selling off cows, calves, ploughs, where they use the word ‘
raharaha
' when they mean ‘
aharaha
', and ‘
atikraẏ'
in place of ‘
atikram
'—in such a place, to hear of the absence of stools and benches in a Sanskrit speech sounded so odd to the ear. All the other office clerks and peasants were amazed at the boy's grasp of the language and must have been ruminating to themselves—‘If only our parents had taken greater care with our education, we too could have stood in front of the jamidār and pleaded our case in such chaste language.' I heard one person nudge the other and say, with some scorn, ‘Who has taught him?' The moment his speech came to an end I stopped him and said, ‘All right, I will arrange for stools and benches for your school.' But even that didn't impede the urchin; he began his speech again from the point at which he had broken off—although it was completely unnecessary, he continued till he had delivered the last word
and touched my feet, and then returned home. The poor thing had taken a lot of trouble to learn it by heart and come here; he might not have minded if I had not granted him his stools and benches, but if I had snatched away his speech, it would perhaps have been intolerable. That's why, although I had a lot of vital jobs to get done, I sat and listened to him very seriously from beginning to end. If there had been one other appreciative person around, perhaps I would have run into another room to have a good laugh, but the jamidāri is no place to express a love of laughter—here all is gravity and wisdom.

Kaligram
January 1891

This enormous world that is lying quietly over there—I love it so much—I feel like clutching its trees, rivers, meadows, noise, silence, dawn, dusk, all of it to me with both hands. I think: the treasures of this world that the world has given us—could any heaven have given us this? I don't know what else heaven might have given us, but from where would it have given us such a wealth of affection as is there in these tender, anxious, immature human beings, so full of gentleness and frailty, so full of pitiful anxiety? It has brought in its lap all the poor mortal heart's tearful treasures—this clay mother of ours, this earth that is our own, its fields of golden crops by the side of these affection-giving rivers, its localities full of a love that is sometimes happy and sometimes sad. We wretched people cannot keep these, we cannot save them, many invisible forceful powers come and tear these away from near our hearts, but the poor earth, she has done as much as she could. I really love this world so much. Her face has a very
beautiful melancholy spread over it—as if she thinks to herself, ‘I am the daughter of a god, but I do not have the power of a god. I love, but I cannot protect. I start things, but I cannot complete them. I give birth, but I cannot save from death!' That is why I quarrel with paradise and love my poor mother's home even more—because she is so helpless, ineffective, incomplete, always beset by the thousand anxieties of love….

Not too far from Shahjadpur
Saturday, 24 January 1891

I'm still on the way. We've been continuously afloat from dawn till about seven or eight in the evening. Motion, by itself, has an attraction of its own—the shore on both sides continuously keeps sliding away from in front of one's eyes; that's why I've been looking the whole day, I can't turn my eyes from it—I don't feel like reading, don't feel like writing, there's no work, I just sit silently here and look. It's not for the variety of scenery alone—there may be nothing on either side, only the bare line of the treeless shore—it's the continuity of motion that's the chief attraction. I'm not putting in any effort or work, yet the tireless motion outside envelops the mind in quite a slow, pleasant sort of way. It's the sort of feeling when the mind has no work, but no rest either. It's like sitting on a chair and absent-mindedly swinging one's legs; on the whole the body is at rest, yet its extra energy, which never wants to sit still for a moment, has been given some monotonous work and kept unmindful…. We left behind Kaligram's slow-moving river, which flows like a faint pulse, very long ago yesterday. I used to think that that river has absolutely no current at all, but dependable sources have told me
that it does have a bit of very faint current, which only those who have always lived by its banks can know. From that river, we came gradually on to a fast-flowing river. Crossing it, we came to a place where the land and the water had become one. The difference between the character and appearance of the river and its banks had been erased, like two young siblings, brother and sister. The bank and the water were at exactly the same height—there was no border. Gradually, the river loses its slim-and-trim shape and divides and spreads out everywhere in many different directions and in many different ways. Here you have some green grass, there you have some clear water, everywhere, as far as you can see, there's some land and some water. It makes one think of the earth's childhood—when the land had just raised its head above the limitless waters—when the rights of water and land had not been fixed as yet. On every side, fishermen have planted their bamboo poles—the kites fly overhead to snatch fish from the fishermen's nets, the harmless crane stands in the mud, many waterbirds, moss floating on the water releasing a particular sort of smell, sometimes in the middle of the muddy fields untidily sprung rice plants, hordes of mosquitoes flying over the still water … The boat set off at dawn and we arrived at the
kāňcikāṭhā
.
^*
The kāňcikāṭhā is like a twelve- or thirteen-foot-wide narrow canal, continuously winding this way and that, through which all the marsh's waters are being expelled at a tremendous rate—in the middle of this our huge
boat
is a real problem—the force of the water pulls the
boat
along at lightning speed, while the oarsmen try to manage things with their punt-poles in case the
boat
is flung on to the land and broken. On the other hand, a showery wind is blowing furiously—there are heavy clouds, it's raining occasionally, we're all shivering with the cold—once
or twice, in spite of all efforts, the boat hits land with a tearing sound, preparing to turn completely on its side—in this way, shouting ‘We're finished', ‘It's all over' all the while, we reach the open river. Cloudy, wet days feel awful in the winter. That's why I was feeling particularly listless in the morning. The sun appeared around two in the afternoon. After that, everything was marvellous. Very high banks—all along on either side trees, people, localities—so peaceful, so beautiful, so secluded—the river distributing affection and beauty on both sides as it goes winding along—an unknown, unseen river of our Bengal. Full of only love and softness and sweetness. No restlessness, yet it has no rest. The village woman who comes to it to draw water every day and sits by it to clean her body with a piece of cloth with so much care—it seems to have a daily conversation with her about what's on her mind and about her domestic duties….

This evening they have moored the boat in a lovely isolated spot at the turn of the river. The full moon is up, there's no other boat here—the moonlight is glittering on the water—it's a clear night—lonely shore—surrounded by dense woods, a village sleeps in the far distance—only the cricket's sound—no other sound to be heard.