Letters from a Young Poet (38 page)

Santiniketan
Wednesday, 24 October 1894

Truth be told, when you concentrate properly on managing an estate, its intoxication slowly takes over. One then gets completely absorbed in many different sorts of inquiries, instructions and planning for the future. I would perhaps have been ashamed to admit to such an unpoetic fact at the time when I used to sit in the coconut groves with my torn
Letts' Diary
, writing ‘Pṛthvīrājer parājaẏ'. But the expression of emotion and the work of business have a certain unity, and that's where they give pleasure. There's a great happiness in turning the incipient into the realized, the incomplete into the complete, in creating order and design from
chaos
. If, despite all the obstacles, you can express your thoughts in a well-rounded way, you experience the pleasure of creation; and in a large jamidāri estate, if you can exercise certain rules and impose some sort of order, that too gives you a similar feeling of pleasure. There's a certain satisfaction, of course, in the increase in revenues, but the greater pleasure is in the fact that the job is being done well.

I firmly believe that if I had come back as a
barrister
or a
civilian
, I would have been immersed in my designated work, and wouldn't have felt it necessary to pay any attention to literary writing. My entire attention would have been constantly occupied with the nitty-gritty of the finer points of the law, with cutting through the arguments of the opposing side, with constructing an organized history and opinion from disorganized witness statements, and I would have derived a particular pleasure and self-forgetfulness from these things. Thank god I didn't come back as a
barrister
!

Bolpur
25 October 1894

There has been intense rain since last night. There was fierce wind and pounding rain all night—this morning the wind has abated, but the skies are clouded over and it's raining. As it is Bolpur is deserted, but on top of that a dark curtain of cloud has been drawn across the stage of the sky, making it seem even more deeply solitary. You can hear the running sound of rain upon the leaves of the trees. On such a day as this, does one feel like writing a
political
essay on the Hindu–Muslim riots! I've been sitting here since early morning with a restless, absent air, turning over the leaves of the
Padaratnābalī
, and in an imagined kingdom of separation and togetherness called Bṛndāban I can see—

Daylight has been submerged in the sky

One cannot tell if it is day or night

The trees sway in the wind on every side

Fine drops of rain fly clamouring through the air everywhere

The fair maid walks on the city path

In temple after temple, the doors close.

On a rainy day, every house has shut its doors as Gauri walks on an empty, cloud-covered road through Bṛndāban—the trees and plants sway in the restless breeze, and drops of rain scatter and fly in the air across the universe—there is no sign of where the sun has sunk to, and day and night are as one. I've been wanting to write an essay explaining exactly where the attraction of Vaishnava poetry lies, but let it be today—today I have to finish a half-completed
political
essay…. God alone knows of what use writing it will be. The Bhāgabat Gītā says that we have a right only to action, not to the fruits of action—that is, we must work without thinking about the results we may or may not obtain from it. In our country we must work knowing we'll never get any results.

The rain is pressing down harder with the passage of morning—in the darkness of the cloud and rain it's difficult to tell whether the morning is moving on or not, it's as if time has taken the entire day off today. In my childhood when I used to study at the Normal School the teacher would stop teaching on rainy days such as this when the room would become too dark—though we couldn't leave the classroom, still, we'd shut our books and joyfully take pleasure in the sound of the rain and the clouded darkness. Perhaps it's because of that old habit that even today on a rainy day such as this I feel like taking leave from the hard
schoolmaster
named duty and shutting all the manuscripts and books to be free to follow my own whims in my own way. But the publishing deadline for
S
ā
dhan
ā looms, and I simply must try and finish the
political essay
today as best I can.

Bolpur
Friday, 26 October 1894

You're completely wrong if you think from far away that nowadays by mingling freely with people, conversing and socializing, I've
become quite the swaggering
public man
. Ducks and fish are two different species altogether, although the duck may occasionally dive into the water and the fish may leap up to gulp down a mouthful of air. From a distance I sometimes think that this time I'm going to really mix with people and go around participating in all their work and political agitation, but all of that stays only in the imagination. Just like imagining that one is cutting across a choppy sea with sails aloft and breeze behind—yet of course all one's nerves go for a toss in an instant when you are on choppy seas—similarly, my soul is afflicted the moment I spend time in the agitations of a sea of people, and then I have to return to my own solitary space with twice as much eagerness as before…. You've written that if I mix with people I could achieve some good by virtue of my
personal influence
. But
personal influence
is disseminated differently by different people—some may take people along the desired path by being present, by speaking to people and by dint of character, others may capture people's hearts by staying out of sight and by expressing the best part of their nature as beautifully as they can. Those minds that are sensitive to all sorts of impressions, those whose nerves vibrate and resound with every blow, big or small, are people who can never be influential by living in the midst of people—in fact they do more harm than good, and so destroy their power to influence—they need to run away from society and conceal their own joys and sorrows and pain within themselves completely so that they can spend their lives working safely in solitude and calm—only then will the glory of their work be safeguarded. Otherwise, why should anybody be bothered with trying to understand their real nature after dealing with all the hundreds of problems and obstacles in their lives! It is those who can be aloof and unresponsive to a great extent when in the midst of people who can be influential. That song from ‘
Māẏār khelā
' [The Play of Maya] works in this context as well—

tāre kemane dharibe, sakhi, yadi dharā dile!

(How shall you catch him, friend, if you are caught yourself?)

Bolpur
Saturday, 27 October 1894

As it is we're Indian Hindus, and then on top of that if you become fat I suppose you've accomplished a corporeal nirvana! I've observed that one has to constantly try and snub thoughts of renunciation and indifference in one's mind. Quite often, a meditative state will come and ruin whatever enthusiasm for work one has. But again, the problem lies in the fact that renunciation is a very logical thing in this world. It is true that everything is transient, that death mocks every effort of life with a calm smile—it's doubtful whether a race, going against the tradition of its ancestors, can fight against nature and manage to make a success of a very large and ambitious enterprise. All this
philosophy
comes up in the mind on its own.

Bolpur
28 October 1894

It isn't eight o'clock yet, but it feels like midnight—everything is very silent and deep asleep—only the sound of the crickets can be heard. I don't know what all of you are doing now and I can't guess either. All those whom we know in the world we know like a dotted line; that is, there are gaps in the middle which we need to fill in as best we can. Even those we feel we know best have to be made complete by our own imaginative powers. There are so many breaks in between, the footsteps on the road are lost, things remain uncertain, unclear and obscure, but still the creative mind wants to put together all the broken pieces and make a whole of it so that it can be kept within one's possession. If even the most familiar people
remain as fragmented pieces sown together by our imagination, then with whom or what may we say we are fully acquainted—and, on the other hand, who can say that they know me wholly? Every man is known completely only to his god and disconnected from everybody else. But perhaps because they're at a remove there is space to add our own imagination to them—and that's exactly why in some respects they are even closer to us, perhaps that is why we manage to come together with each other to a great extent. Otherwise, as impure individuals, we are perhaps impermeable to everybody except god. Our own selves too we know only partially, we merely turn ourselves into the heroes of a self-composed story in our imagination—god has kept these gaps so we can use these fragmented materials to construct ourselves by ourselves.

Bolpur
30 October 1894

The sort of deep peace and quiet I get at Bolpur would not have been possible anywhere else. Darjeeling's
sanatorium
s are paradoxically crowded, the districts too have work and people arriving all the time, while in Bolpur, there are no duties and there's no disturbance—no sound except the unceasing song of the birds and no visitors on my first floor except for the squirrels. In the afternoons I can hear a drone like the buzzing of bees, and it seems to me as if all the happiest memories of my life have travelled to me from a great distance, borne upon a curious, mixed rustle of sound. The afternoons are so deep and silent and secluded and full that they overwhelm all my heart in whatever I do—writing, reading, thinking—this extensive, vast and piteous afternoon encircles me silently and affectionately. Nowadays, with winter here, the moment my hands and legs feel a little cold I go and sit
in the south veranda and nature embraces me like the warm touch of a mother's lap; the sun comes and falls near my feet, the green fields can be seen till the remote edge of the blue horizon, an unceasing humming sound keeps coming from the insects in the trees all around, and it seems as if everybody's affection and care surround me from every side to infuse life into my body.

Bolpur
Wednesday, 31 October 1894

The north wind that blows the whole day when winter first starts has begun this morning—the wind comes whistling and the yellow leaves on the rows of āmlakī trees fall trembling to the ground, completely covering the ground beneath its feet—the wind dries the skin of your face and the skin on the palm of my hands is peeling. It is as if the jamidār's bailiff is visiting the woods—everything trembles and falls and sighs anxiously. The afternoon sun feels good, it drowns one in a sort of restful melancholy, and the endless cooing of the pigeons from within the dense mango orchards turns the entire field and sky and wind and dreamlike long hours of the dappled afternoon into a song of separation's sorrow—even the sound of the clock on my table seems to have merged with the tender melancholy of the afternoon's rustle of sound. Inside my room, the squirrels run around all through the afternoon. It has become a part of my daily routine to sit lazily for a long time after lunch observing the various ways of these animals. Fluffy tails, a soft, furry body drawn with black and grey lines, two restless eyes like small little dots, and a completely harmless yet extremely busy air—one feels very affectionate towards them. There is a steel-meshed cupboard in the corner of this room in which dal and rice and bread and other eatables are hidden away
from these sort of greedy, speedy creatures—they spend the entire day circling around it with their curious noses, searching for an opening. The few grains of dal and rice that remain scattered outside the cupboard are picked up and nibbled at with their small, sharp front teeth and eaten with the utmost satisfaction—sometimes they sit up straight on their haunches and, joining their two small hands together, arrange the tiny bits of grain tidily and conveniently in their mouths—if I move even the slightest bit they immediately raise their tails up on their backs and run off, quick as a flash—on the way out, they might suddenly stop halfway on the doormat and give their ear a quick scratch and then turn back again—in this way the entire afternoon passes with nibbling and racing and the clatter and tinkle of plates, forks and spoons….

I don't feel like leaving this place—when I return to Calcutta, these pleasant mornings and lonely afternoons will constantly come to mind—the peace and beauty of this place will seem so attractive! But what to do! Let's go happily to the workplace, suppressing all selfish desires. The beauty of this place seems to grow even more appealing when it is time to leave; the day today has been flooded by just such a tender rāginī.

Calcutta
19 November 1894

I've observed from my childhood onward that those cries of the
pheri
-wallah [itinerant hawkers] have always affected me—the sharp call of the kite in the desolate, silent afternoons too had a great impact; I haven't heard that call for a long time now. I don't think that's because the kite doesn't call any more nowadays, but because I have a lot of work and a lot of thinking to do now—I don't have that same intimate connection with nature any more.
There was a time when I would spend entire afternoons alone on the second floor near the south entrance lying on a
couch
—I would drink in every sound, every shiver of the long afternoons and their inner tender essence to the dregs. Now it's impossible to waste that much time; I think, let me read something or write. Even if I don't feel like harnessing the mind to any particular work, still, one has to try and get some work done, so it becomes necessary then to at least try and read a book, however absent-mindedly. But this is in Calcutta. When you're in the mofussil, just sitting quietly and looking fills your heart with satisfaction, you're not a blind slave to work. There's one sort of work which is tied to one's duties, there's nothing to be said against that, but when there's no immediate work at hand or when for some reason one is unable to do one's work properly, and then if one tries to root around looking for some work merely to pass the time out of sheer habit—and if one cannot be at peace with just oneself, draw companionship from one's surroundings—then one must concede that the situation is quite bad. Work is merely a means to an end. Man is not just an instrument of work. The ability to be at rest in a fulfilled and satisfied way should not be lost—because there is much in it that belongs to a higher humanity. No doubt work is a very good thing, but work has a narrowness about it which conceals man. Day and night are the correct metaphors for work and leisure. During the day, there is nothing for us but the world; it is at night that we establish a connection with the endless universe through the planets and constellations of stars. When we work, we belong to this world, when we are at rest, we are of this universe. When we work we need to see the world clearly in the light of logic, argumentation and science; when we rest, the world's grip must be loosened—then we must see the everlasting connection that we have with eternity as the most important one. Then we should keep all our effort at work at a great distance and feel the intimations of eternity in the ever-present beauty of all the smells, colours and sensations of the world with our bodies and minds.
One shouldn't leave out either of these two modes of being. In the morning when we wake up we should know that we are a person of the world, and when the day comes to a close, we must feel that we inhabit the universe. The vast universe remains forever hidden to those who are too busy with work.