Letters from a Young Poet (11 page)

Shahjadpur
Sunday, 1 February 1891

This morning I was sitting around for ages dilly-dallying and writing that diary—I'd written about a page and a half in a couple of hours—when suddenly at about ten my royal duties became manifest—the chief minister came and said in a low voice that I was needed at the royal court. What to do—hearing Lakshmi's
summons I had to leave Saraswati and quickly get up and go. I've only just returned after having dealt with abstruse royal work there for about an hour. Inwardly, I feel like laughing when I think of my own endless solemnity and deeply intelligent appearance—the whole thing feels like a farce. When the peasants present their case so respectfully and sorrowfully, and the clerks stand humbly with folded hands, looking at them I wonder how I'm a greater man than any of them, such that at my slightest hint their lives may be saved or at my slightest aversion, destroyed. What could be stranger than that I sit on this chair and pretend that I am somehow different from all these people, that I am their lord and master! Within myself I too am just like them, a poor man, affected by joy and sorrow; I too have so many small demands from the world, so many heartfelt tears for the smallest of reasons, so dependent in my life upon the grace of so many people! How mistaken they are in me, these simple-hearted peasants, with their children–cows–ploughs–households! They don't realize that I'm one of their own kind. And to keep this misrecognition alive, we deploy so much ceremony and use so much paraphernalia. I had suggested I walk from the boat to the kāchāri, but the nāẏeb shook his head wisely and said—better not! What if the image suffers a blow?
Prestige
means one man misunderstanding another! In the fear that the peasants here might recognize me for what I am, and see that I am actually one of them, I need to wear a mask at all times. I don't use my legs to walk upon this low earth like the common low people: an armed footman walks in front of me with his rifle upon his shoulder shooing everybody from my path with his stentorian voice—as if it's a great offence for anyone to walk ahead of me. But in spite of the disguise, I'm quite convinced that I don't look like anybody but myself—and that just as I am acting, they, too, are merely acting. They're saying, ‘Oh, what's the point of objecting! Let him dress up as a king.' But it's only me who keeps saying to myself, ‘
I
know the extent of your achievements!'—

Shahjadpur
February 1891

There are a variety of village scenes in front of me that I quite enjoy observing. Right in front of my window, on the other side of the pond, a group of
bede
[gypsies] have hung up some bamboo and cloth sheeting on some poles and taken shelter there. Two or three really small awnings—nobody could even stand inside one of them. Their domestic life is undertaken entirely in the outdoor—only at night they all somehow bundle up in that small space and go to sleep. The bede race is like that. A bit like the
gypsies
. No homes anywhere, no taxes paid to any jamidār. They roam around, here and there, with a herd of pigs, a couple of dogs and some children. The police keep a strict eye on them. I often stand at my window and observe the goings-on of the ones who are here. They aren't bad-looking; the Hindustani type. Dark, yes, but graceful; they have strong, well-formed bodies. The women too are quite good-looking. Quite slim and tall—compact bodies, with free movements like English girls. That is, their actions are unconstrained, there is a simple, easy flow in their quick movements—I do think they are just like dark English girls. The man has put a pot to cook on the fire and sits and makes rattan baskets, wicker baskets and winnowing platters by splitting bamboo into strips—the woman sits with a small mirror on her lap and parts her hair and combs it with utmost care. After the hairstyling is done, she wets a piece of cloth and wipes her face very carefully two or three times with special care, then hesitantly tugs and pulls at her āncal, etc., to rearrange her clothes, and, thus smartened up, she goes and sits on her haunches near the man; then she puts her hand to some bit of work or the other. I'm very entertained when I see this. These people, who are completely the sons of the soil, who are so absolutely attached to the body of this earth—even they are attracted to beauty and
make an effort to please each other. They are born at any which place, reared on the streets, and die anywhere—I really feel like knowing their exact situation, their exact feelings. Days and nights under the open sky, in the free wind, on the unclothed earth—this is a sort of new way of life; yet, in the midst of this, there is work and love and children and domesticity, everything. I don't see anybody standing around for a moment being lazy; there is always some work or the other. The moment they finish what they were doing, one woman sits down behind another and deftly unwinds her hair and begins to carefully sort out lice while jabbering on—no doubt about domestic affairs—under those three bamboo awnings—I cannot say for sure, but it certainly seems like it from a distance. This morning, tremendous trouble arrived uninvited in this peaceful bede family. It must have been about eight-thirty or nine in the morning—they had brought out the old sheets and torn rags they sleep on at night and hung these out on the bamboo-sheet roof to sun them. The pigs and piglets, all stuck together, had immersed themselves in a sort of hole they had made in the ground, lying there like an enormous mound of mud—after the winter night, they must have been feeling quite relaxed in the morning sun—when a couple of dogs belonging to one of their families began barking, rousing them. Expressing their irritation audibly, they went off in various directions in search of a colonial breakfast [
choá¹­
ā
h
ā
jri
]. I was sitting and writing my diary, occasionally looking out unmindfully at the road outside, when suddenly an enormous commotion could be heard. I went to the window and saw that a crowd had collected in front of the bede ashram, in the middle of which an educated type was brandishing a staff and handing out terrific abuse—the head bede was shivering with fear and trying his best to answer him. I surmised that something must have aroused suspicion, and the police
d
ā
rog
ā had decided to create a ruckus. The woman was sitting by herself and stripping a bamboo pole as though she were quite alone and there was no commotion anywhere at all. Suddenly she stood up and, waving
her arms around, began to fearlessly deliver a lecture at the top of her voice right in the dārogā's face. In a trice his forcefulness declined to almost a quarter of what it had been—he tried mildly to get in a word or two, but didn't stand a chance. He began to slowly retreat, changing the attitude with which he had come quite substantially—after reaching a fair distance he shouted to them, ‘I'm telling you now, the lot of you will have to get out of here.' I thought my bede neighbours would now perhaps begin to pick up their bamboo sheeting and poles, tie up their bundles, gather their kids, chase up their pigs and make their exit from here. But there's no sign of that—they're still sitting around, quite relaxed, splitting their bamboo, cooking, serving, picking lice.

In my durbar too, I've seen that when a woman comes with a complaint, she may be hidden behind her veil, but the voice like bell metal that emerges from under it has no trace of fear or anxiety or a pleading tone at all. Just total insistence and pure argument. Quite plainly she says, ‘The nāẏeb
maśāi
is not fair in his dealings with me!' It's impossible to get her to understand what's fair or unfair, just or unjust; she just keeps saying, ‘I'm a widow, I have small children.' There's no answer to that. How should I argue with her! I feel like laughing. She too turns her face halfway towards me and keeps a covert eye on my expression from behind her veil. The day a woman arrives at the durbar, everything becomes quite lively: the bailiff becomes less ostentatious; other men who have come with requests do not find time to present their case.

Anyway, I get to see all sorts of scenes from my open window. Taken all together, I quite like it. But sometimes you see something that's really upsetting. When they pile the cart high with an impossible load and keep hitting or thrusting a pointed wooden stick into the cows, I find it absolutely unbearable. This morning I was watching a woman who had brought her small boy—thin, dark, naked—to bathe in the canal water. It's very cold today—when she was pouring water over his body, he was crying miserably and
shivering, his throat racked by the most violent coughing. The woman suddenly gave him such a slap across his face that I could hear its sound from my room…. The boy bent over and, putting his hands upon his knees, began to whimper and cry, his tears getting caught in his cough. Then she caught hold of that naked, still-wet, shivering boy by the arm and dragged him homeward. This incident seemed so monstrously cruel! The boy was really young, about my son's age. When you see something like this, man's
ideal
suddenly suffers a blow, like stumbling awfully in the middle of a confident stride. How helpless small boys are! If you behave unfairly with them, they cry helplessly and manage only to irritate a hard heart even more; they cannot even express their complaint properly. The woman was well wrapped-up against the cold, and the boy had not a stitch on him—on top of that he had a dreadful cough, and then a beating at the hands of this witch!

Shahjadpur
February 1891

On some days, the postmaster of this place comes over in the evenings and begins to chat with me, telling me many stories about the letters that come and go in the mail. The post office is on the ground floor of this bungalow of ours—it's very convenient, we get our letters the moment they arrive. I really enjoy the postmaster's stories. He tells a huge number of the most impossible tales with complete seriousness. Yesterday he was saying that the people in this part of the country have such an extreme faith in the Ganga that when a relative dies, they grind the bones and keep them, and when they meet someone who has drunk Ganga water, they feed him those ground bones mixed in a paan, and think that some part of their relative has at last found the Ganga. I began to laugh, and
said, ‘That's a story, surely?' He thought over it very gravely and admitted, ‘Sir, perhaps it is.'

Shilaidaha
February 1891

The maulabī and the clerks having left, and with the boat moored to a secluded sandbank at the other shore of the kāchāri, I'm feeling quite relaxed. I can't tell you how beautiful the day and everything all around seem to me. It's as if one is renewing one's acquaintance with this vast world again after a long time. It too said, ‘Hey there!' I too replied, ‘Hey there!' And then we've both been sitting next to each other—no further conversation, the water lapping and the sunlight aglitter on it, the sandbank stretching on and on with small wild
jh
ā
u
trees growing along it. The sound of water, the hum of the afternoon silence all around, and from the jhāu bushes the
cik-cik
sound of one or two birds—taken all together it's a dreamlike feeling…. I feel like writing on—but of nothing else, this sound of water, this sunny day, this bank of sand. It seems I'll have to come back to writing of these same things to you every day—because when I get intoxicated I keep going on about the same thing…. Our boat has crossed the bigger rivers and entered the mouth of a smaller river now. On either side women bathe, wash clothes, and walk home with their water pitchers in their wet clothes, their heads veiled, the left hand swinging free—the boys, smeared with mud, splash water at each other wildly, and one boy sings tunelessly, ‘Call me brother once, O Lakkhan!' Above the high banks one can see the straw roofs and the tips of the bamboo groves of the village nearby. Today the clouds have gone and the sun is out. The clouds that are still left in one corner of the sky look like a heap of cotton wool. The breeze is slightly warmer.
The small river doesn't have too many boats—one or two small
dinghies
loaded with dry branches and sticks ply tiredly by, their oars making a slapping sound—on the shore, fishermen's nets dry on bamboo poles—the world's work this morning has been temporarily suspended—

Chuhali. On the waterway.
16 June 1891

We have now unfurled our sails and are coursing over the Yamuna. On my left are cows grazing on a field, to the south we cannot see the bank at all. The fierce river current makes the soil from the bank fall continuously into the water with a plopping sound. The astonishing thing is that there is no other boat to be seen on this enormous river save ours—all around, the moving water makes a slapping, slipping sound, and one can hear the wind whistling…. Last evening we had moored our boat to a sandbank—the river was a small one, a tributary of the Yamuna; on one side, the white empty sands stretched far into the distance—no relationship with men or mankind—and on the other, green fields of crops and in the far distance, a village. How many more times shall I tell you—the evening as it falls on this river, these fields, this village, is so incredible, so vast, so peaceful, so immeasurable that it can only be felt silently; the moment you try to express it, you become restless. Slowly, as everything began to become indistinct in the dark, only the line of the water and the line of the land could be demarcated any differently, and the trees and bushes and huts had all merged into one another, spread out in front of one's eyes like an obscure world, it felt exactly as though all of this was the fairy-tale world of childhood—when this scientific world had not yet completely come into being, when creation had only just
begun, when the whole world was enveloped in the darkness of evening and in a thrilling silence full of fear and wonder—when the beautiful princess was still asleep for ever in a fairyland across the seven seas and thirteen rivers, when the prince and the courtier's son were wandering around in the wilderness on some impossible mission—this seemed to be a certain silent riverside in that half-conscious, forgotten, enchanted and tender world of long ago and far away—and perhaps one could even imagine that I was that prince, roaming that evening world in search of some impossible expectation—that this small river was one among those thirteen mythical rivers, and the seven seas were still to come—that far distances, many events and much searching was yet to happen—so many nights lit by the faintest moonlight yet to come, waiting for me by unknown riverbanks or unacquainted seashores—followed perhaps by many journeys, many tears, much pain, until at last suddenly one day the story ends—‘
āmār kathāṭi phurolo, naṭe
śā
kṭi muṛolo
'
^*
—suddenly it will seem as if there was a story happening all this while, that I was laughing and crying in turn at the fairy tale's joys and sorrows, that now the story has ended, now it is late night, now it is time for small boys to go to sleep.