Letters from a Young Poet (24 page)

Calcutta
30 April 1893

That's why I was able to keep lying on the terrace till ten at night yesterday.

A Caturda moon
^*
had risen in the sky—there was a wonderful
breeze—there was no one else on the terrace. I was lying there on my own and thinking about my entire life. This second-floor terrace, this moonlight, this south wind is mixed up in my life's memories in so many ways. The leaves of the
śisu
trees in the south garden were making a shivering sound, and I was trying to bring my childhood feelings to mind with my eyes half shut. Old memories are like wine—the longer they stay stored in your heart, the sweeter their colour and taste and intoxication. These bottles of our memories should be kept cooled for our old age ‘
in deep delved earth
'—to be tasted then a drop at a time on moonlit nights on the terrace—I'm sure we'd like that. When we're young we aren't satisfied with only imagination and memory; because then our blood is strong, our bodies energetic—we want to engage in some sort of work. But in old age, when we are naturally unable to work and the excessive energy of our youth is not bearing down upon us, then perhaps only memories are enough—our past memories then fall upon our calm minds like moonlight upon still waters with such clarity that they are difficult to distinguish from present affairs.

Shilaidaha
Tuesday, 2 May 1893

I'm on the
boat
now. This seems like my own home. Here I alone am master—no one else has any authority over me or my time. This
boat
is like my old
dressing gown
—entering it one can enter a time of looseness and leisure—I think as I please, imagine what I please, read as much as I want, write as much as I want, and I can put both my legs up on the
table
and stare absent-mindedly out at
the river and immerse myself as much as I wish in these days full of sky and light and laziness …

The first few days now will be spent getting past the hesitant feeling of being reacquainted with someone you knew before. Then, as I routinely read and write and stroll on the riverbank, our old friendship will become quite easy once again. Really, I do love the Padma a great deal. Just as Indra had his Airabat [winged elephant] I have my Padma—my ideal mount—not too tame, somewhat wild—but I feel like stroking her back and shoulders and petting her. The waters of the Padma have receded quite a bit now—they've become quite transparent and thin—like a pale-complexioned, slender girl, her soft sari clinging to her body. She's going along in a graceful way, and her sari bends with her movement as she goes. When I live on my boat in Shilaidaha, the Padma is like a real separate human being for me. So if I write about her a bit excessively, don't think that what I say is unfit to be written in a letter. Over here, that's like
personal
news.

How differently one feels from Calcutta in the space of only one day! Last evening I was sitting there on the terrace—that was one thing, and this afternoon I'm sitting on the boat—this is another. What is
sentimental
or
poetical
in Calcutta—how real and true that is over here! One no longer feels like dancing upon a
gas
-lit
stage
called the
public
—one feels like hiding away in the transparent daylight and secluded leisure of this place and doing one's work privately. The mind's tiredness does not go away unless one can retire offstage and wash and wipe away all the make-up. Then it seems quite unnecessary to run
S
ā
dhan
ā, to help
S
ā
dhan
ā, and die huffing and puffing—there are many things in it that are not real gold but base metal—and, if I can continue working single-mindedly under this endless sky and within this vast peace, doing my own work immersed in my own deep joy, only then will any real work be done.

Shilaidaha
8 May 1893

Poetry is an old love of mine. She was engaged to me perhaps from the time I was Rathi's age—from that time onward our pond's banks, the space under the banyan tree, the garden within the house, the undiscovered ground-floor rooms inside our house, and the entire outside world and all the stories and rhymes heard from the maidservants were creating an intense wonderland within my mind—it's very difficult to express the shadowy, wonderful state of mind of that time—but this much I can say quite clearly—that I had exchanged wedding garlands with
kalpan
ā [the imagination] at that time itself. But one has to admit that that girl does not bring good luck—whatever else she brings, she does not bring good fortune. I wouldn't say she doesn't give happiness, but she has no relation with contentment. To those whom she welcomes, she gives intense pleasure, but at times her hard embrace wrings the heart and draws blood. The wretched man she chooses finds it completely impossible to be a householder and sit still and enjoy himself at leisure after establishing himself in the social world. But it is to her that I have pledged my true life. Whether I'm writing for
S
ā
dhan
ā or looking after the jamidāri estates, the moment I begin to write poetry, I immediately enter my own eternal, genuine self—and I can quite understand that this is my place. In life, one may consciously or unconsciously lie or dissimulate, but I have never lied in my poetry—that space is the only shelter of all the deepest truths of my life….

The whole morning passed looking at Ravi Varma's paintings. I really like them. Whatever else, we realize from looking at these pictures how much our indigenous subject matter and our indigenous forms and feelings mean to us. The proportions of
the bodies and the hands and legs are a bit awry in some of the paintings, but taken altogether they do make an impression on you. The main reason for that is that our mind keeps cooperating with the painter all the time. We understand in advance what he is trying to say—when we see what he's trying to do we can complete the rest of it ourselves. It's easy to nitpick, one doesn't need any special talent to do that, but when you think about it you realize how difficult it is to imagine any subject very clearly—the pictures that arise in our imagination are almost always half-baked, somewhat made-up—but once you embark upon painting a picture, every line counts, the important and the unimportant—everything has to be thought out carefully, you have to pour an ever-changing substance like the imagination into the hard, fixed mould of the tangible—that's not a small thing!

Shilaidaha
10 May 1893

Meanwhile, I can see that a number of big, swollen clouds have come crowding around from all sides and congealed—like a thick
blotting pad
they have soaked up the raw golden sunlight completely from the scenery all around me. After this if it begins to rain now, then shame on the god Indra! The clouds don't have an empty or impoverished look about them any more … instead, like the babus they're nicely luscious and dark, with a rotund, roly-poly-boy look. It's going to rain any moment now—the breeze too seems to feel teary and wet. Sitting on your towering mountain top, you can't quite imagine how important this business of sunshine and cloud is over here, or how many people sit and gape open-mouthed at the sky. I feel very sorry when I see my poor peasant subjects—they are
like the children of the gods—helpless—unless He puts food into their mouth with His own hands, they have no way out. They can only cry when the earth's breast milk runs dry; the moment they manage to satiate their hunger, they forget everything. I don't know whether it is possible or impossible to divide up the earth's wealth as the
socialists
do—but if it is completely impossible, then fate is very cruel and man is very wretched! There may be unhappiness in the world, and that's all right, but there should be the smallest gap, the smallest possibility always, so that man's higher instincts can work without rest to put an end to that sorrow, and he is able to nurture hope. Those who say that it is an absolutely impossible unfounded dream to think that in some future age all the people of the world will be provided with at least the basic necessities of life, that most of the world's people will always remain malnourished, that there's no way out—it is a very hard thing they say. But social issues such as these are so difficult! God has given us such a small, worn-out and poor garment to wear that when one part of the world is covered the other side is exposed—if you want to do away with poverty you lose your wealth and if you lose your wealth then so much of society's loveliness and beauty and reasons for progress also disappear that there's no end to it.

But the sun is reappearing from time to time, while quite a few clouds are also amassed in the west. It will certainly rain if there are clouds in the west—that's what the proverb says.

Shilaidaha
11 May 1893

The clouds amassed darkly last evening, and then it rained for a while, after which everything cleared up again. Today a few
clouds, scattered and separated from the group and made white by the sunlight, are wandering around in the most innocent and harmless way on the margins of the sky, looking as if they have not the slightest intention of rain in them—but Chanakya, in his famous śloka where he warns us against trusting in a number of things, should have included the gods in that list. Yet the morning today has become quite beautiful—the sky is a clear blue, there are no lines on the water at all, and the drops from yesterday's rain on the grass which has grown on the rolling slope near the shore are shining. Taken all together in the sunlight, nature today has taken on the appearance of the glorious goddess Mahevarī dressed completely in white. The morning is so completely quiet—I don't know why there is not a single boat on the river; nobody has come to the ghat near our
boat
to bathe or draw water; the nāẏeb has completed his work and left early—if you listen carefully for a while you can hear a sort of buzz, and this sunlight and sky slowly enter your head and absolutely fill it up, colouring all the thoughts and feelings there with a blue and golden hue. I've brought a curved
couch
up to one side of the
boat
; on mornings like these, one feels like spreading out one's entire body on it and forgetting all about work to lie there quietly; one thinks—

‘I have no before or after

As if I have blossomed forth in one day

Like an orphaned flower of the forest.'

It is as if I am of this sky, this river, this old, green earth. This is how my time passes on the
boat
. I lie here and keep looking at the countless changing moods of this familiar landscape. There's another pleasure that I have here. Occasionally some simple, old, devoted subject will come to see me whose devotion is so genuine that my eyes fill with tears. Just a moment ago an old peasant and his son had come from Kaligram to see me—it was as if he wiped
both my feet with all of his simple, brimming heart and left. In the Bhāgabat Krishna has said, ‘My devotee is greater than me'—one understands the meaning of that a little bit. Truly, this man is so much greater than me in his beautiful simplicity and sincere devotion! I am the one who seems unworthy of this devotion, but this devotion is no small thing, after all. Their peasant dialect, their affectionate greeting, all of it is so sweet! It is like the love one feels for small boys—the affection one feels for these old boys—but there are some differences. These men are even younger than the boys. Because small boys will grow up one day, but these men will never grow up—there is such a simple, soft and pure mind in their worn, emaciated, wrinkled, creased old bodies! Children have only simplicity, but they don't have such a fixed, trustful and single-minded devotion. And am I worthy of being this old man's raja! If there really is a spiritual connection between one man and another, then my inner good wishes for him may perhaps be useful to him one day—besides which, of course, I shall do everything I can as his landlord. But not all one's subjects are this sort, and one shouldn't expect them to be. The best is always the most rare—but in god's world that shouldn't have been the case.

Shilaidaha
Saturday, 13 May 1893

Today I received a
telegram
from you which said:
Missing gown lying Post Office
. This can mean two things. One: that a lost garment is lying down in the post office. Another—that the
gown
is
missing
and the
post office
is
lying
. Both meanings may be possible, but until I hear anyone protest, I'll take it to be the first. But the fun is in the fact that the letter accompanying the telegram clearly states that there's no doubt a
gown
could not be found….

Poor letter! All it possesses are a few words that have been shoved into an envelope which it carries on its shoulders all the long way as it staggers along—in the meanwhile it has no knowledge of all the things that have happened in the world, and neither can it contradict the short and rude summary that its younger brother has presented by jumping over him in one big leap; it says, like a simple-hearted person, ‘I really don't know anything, you know, I've only brought what I've been told to you.' And really, that's what it has brought. Not a single word has been displaced this way or that—walking the entire way, it has come at the correct time with so many signs of the road stamped upon its front and back. Well then, let its news be wrong, I still love it. And the
telegraph
arrives riding on the cable in the blink of an eye—no sign of the weariness of the road, the envelope absolutely fresh and red—saying the two things it had to say in a great hurry, with at least eight or ten words missing in between—it has no grammar, no manners, nothing—not a single word of greeting, nor the politeness of a leave-taking—as if it has not the slightest friendliness towards me, as if all it wants is to hurriedly deliver its message in any which way possible and leave as quickly as it can. Anyway, although it took a long time to know that the
gown
has spent so many winter days in the
post office
, it would have taken even longer if there were no
telegraph
, so thanks are due to it.