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Title: Glimpses of Bengal

Author: Rabindranath Tagore

Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7951]
                Most recently updated: May 7, 2013

Language: English

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Produced by S.R.Ellison, Eric Eldred, and the Distributed
Proofreading Team








GLIMPSES OF BENGAL

SELECTED FROM THE LETTERS OF SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE

1885 TO 1895

By Sir Rabindranath Tagore




INTRODUCTION


The letters translated in this book span the most productive period of my
literary life, when, owing to great good fortune, I was young and less
known.

Youth being exuberant and leisure ample, I felt the writing of letters
other than business ones to be a delightful necessity. This is a form of
literary extravagance only possible when a surplus of thought and emotion
accumulates. Other forms of literature remain the author's and are made
public for his good; letters that have been given to private individuals
once for all, are therefore characterised by the more generous
abandonment.

It so happened that selected extracts from a large number of such letters
found their way back to me years after they had been written. It had been
rightly conjectured that they would delight me by bringing to mind the
memory of days when, under the shelter of obscurity, I enjoyed the
greatest freedom my life has ever known.

Since these letters synchronise with a considerable part of my published
writings, I thought their parallel course would broaden my readers'
understanding of my poems as a track is widened by retreading the same
ground. Such was my justification for publishing them in a book for my
countrymen. Hoping that the descriptions of village scenes in Bengal
contained in these letters would also be of interest to English readers,
the translation of a selection of that selection has been entrusted to one
who, among all those whom I know, was best fitted to carry it out.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

_20th June 1920._




BANDORA, BY THE SEA,

_October_ 1885.


The unsheltered sea heaves and heaves and blanches into foam. It sets me
thinking of some tied-up monster straining at its bonds, in front of whose
gaping jaws we build our homes on the shore and watch it lashing its tail.
What immense strength, with waves swelling like the muscles of a giant!

From the beginning of creation there has been this feud between land and
water: the dry earth slowly and silently adding to its domain and
spreading a broader and broader lap for its children; the ocean receding
step by step, heaving and sobbing and beating its breast in despair.
Remember the sea was once sole monarch, utterly free.

Land rose from its womb, usurped its throne, and ever since the maddened
old creature, with hoary crest of foam, wails and laments continually,
like King Lear exposed to the fury of the elements.


_July 1887._

I am in my twenty-seventh year. This event keeps thrusting itself before
my mind--nothing else seems to have happened of late.

But to reach twenty-seven--is that a trifling thing?--to pass the meridian
of the twenties on one's progress towards thirty?--thirty--that is to say
maturity--the age at which people expect fruit rather than fresh foliage.
But, alas, where is the promise of fruit? As I shake my head, it still
feels brimful of luscious frivolity, with not a trace of philosophy.

Folk are beginning to complain: "Where is that which we expected of
you--that in hope of which we admired the soft green of the shoot? Are we
to put up with immaturity for ever? It is high time for us to know what we
shall gain from you. We want an estimate of the proportion of oil which
the blindfold, mill-turning, unbiased critic can squeeze out of you."

It has ceased to be possible to delude these people into waiting
expectantly any longer. While I was under age they trustfully gave me
credit; it is sad to disappoint them now that I am on the verge of thirty.
But what am I to do? Words of wisdom will not come! I am utterly
incompetent to provide things that may profit the multitude. Beyond a
snatch of song, some tittle-tattle, a little merry fooling, I have been
unable to advance. And as the result, those who held high hopes will turn
their wrath on me; but did any one ever beg them to nurse these
expectations?

Such are the thoughts which assail me since one fine _Bysakh_ morning
I awoke amidst fresh breeze and light, new leaf and flower, to find that I
had stepped into my twenty-seventh year.




SHELIDAH, 1888.


Our house-boat is moored to a sandbank on the farther side of the river. A
vast expanse of sand stretches away out of sight on every side, with here
and there a streak, as of water, running across, though sometimes what
gleams like water is only sand.

Not a village, not a human being, not a tree, not a blade of grass--the
only breaks in the monotonous whiteness are gaping cracks which in places
show the layer of moist, black clay underneath.

Looking towards the East, there is endless blue above, endless white
beneath. Sky empty, earth empty too--the emptiness below hard and barren,
that overhead arched and ethereal--one could hardly find elsewhere such a
picture of stark desolation.

But on turning to the West, there is water, the currentless bend of the
river, fringed with its high bank, up to which spread the village groves
with cottages peeping through--all like an enchanting dream in the evening
light. I say "the evening light," because in the evening we wander out,
and so that aspect is impressed on my mind.




SHAZADPUR, 1890.


The magistrate was sitting in the verandah of his tent dispensing justice
to the crowd awaiting their turns under the shade of a tree. They set my
palanquin down right under his nose, and the young Englishman received me
courteously. He had very light hair, with darker patches here and there,
and a moustache just beginning to show. One might have taken him for a
white-haired old man but for his extremely youthful face. I asked him over
to dinner, but he said he was due elsewhere to arrange for a pig-sticking
party.

As I returned home, great black clouds came up and there was a terrific
storm with torrents of rain. I could not touch a book, it was impossible
to write, so in the I-know-not-what mood I wandered about from room to
room. It had become quite dark, the thunder was continually pealing, the
lightning gleaming flash after flash, and every now and then sudden gusts
of wind would get hold of the big _lichi_ tree by the neck and give
its shaggy top a thorough shaking. The hollow in front of the house soon
filled with water, and as I paced about, it suddenly struck me that I
ought to offer the shelter of the house to the magistrate.

I sent off an invitation; then after investigation I found the only spare
room encumbered with a platform of planks hanging from the beams, piled
with dirty old quilts and bolsters. Servants' belongings, an excessively
grimy mat, hubble-bubble pipes, tobacco, tinder, and two wooden chests
littered the floor, besides sundry packing-cases full of useless odds and
ends, such as a rusty kettle lid, a bottomless iron stove, a discoloured
old nickel teapot, a soup-plate full of treacle blackened with dust. In a
corner was a tub for washing dishes, and from nails in the wall hung moist
dish-clouts and the cook's livery and skull-cap. The only piece of
furniture was a rickety dressing-table with water stains, oil stains, milk
stains, black, brown, and white stains, and all kinds of mixed stains. The
mirror, detached from it, rested against another wall, and the drawers
were receptacles for a miscellaneous assortment of articles from soiled
napkins down to bottle wires and dust.

For a moment I was overwhelmed with dismay; then it was a case of--send
for the manager, send for the storekeeper, call up all the servants, get
hold of extra men, fetch water, put up ladders, unfasten ropes, pull down
planks, take away bedding, pick up broken glass bit by bit, wrench nails
from the wall one by one.--The chandelier falls and its pieces strew the
floor; pick them up again piece by piece.--I myself whisk the dirty mat
off the floor and out of the window, dislodging a horde of cockroaches,
messmates, who dine off my bread, my treacle, and the polish on my shoes.

The magistrate's reply is brought back; his tent is in an awful state and
he is coming at once. Hurry up! Hurry up! Presently comes the shout: "The
sahib has arrived." All in a flurry I brush the dust off hair, beard, and
the rest of myself, and as I go to receive him in the drawing-room, I try
to look as respectable as if I had been reposing there comfortably all the
afternoon.

I went through the shaking of hands and conversed with the magistrate
outwardly serene; still, misgivings about his accommodation would now and
then well up within. When at length I had to show my guest to his room, I
found it passable, and if the homeless cockroaches do not tickle the soles
of his feet, he may manage to get a night's rest.




KALIGRAM, 1891.


I am feeling listlessly comfortable and delightfully irresponsible.

This is the prevailing mood all round here. There is a river but it has no
current to speak of, and, lying snugly tucked up in its coverlet of
floating weeds, seems to think--"Since it is possible to get on without
getting along, why should I bestir myself to stir?" So the sedge which
lines the banks knows hardly any disturbance until the fishermen come with
their nets.

Four or five large-sized boats are moored near by, alongside each other.
On the upper deck of one the boatman is fast asleep, rolled up in a sheet
from head to foot. On another, the boatman--also basking in the
sun--leisurely twists some yarn into rope. On the lower deck in a third,
an oldish-looking, bare-bodied fellow is leaning over an oar, staring
vacantly at our boat.

Along the bank there are various other people, but why they come or go,
with the slowest of idle steps, or remain seated on their haunches
embracing their knees, or keep on gazing at nothing in particular, no one
can guess.

The only signs of activity are to be seen amongst the ducks, who, quacking
clamorously, thrust their heads under and bob up again to shake off the
water with equal energy, as if they repeatedly tried to explore the
mysteries below the surface, and every time, shaking their heads, had to
report, "Nothing there! Nothing there!"

The days here drowse all their twelve hours in the sun, and silently sleep
away the other twelve, wrapped in the mantle of darkness. The only thing
you want to do in a place like this is to gaze and gaze on the landscape,
swinging your fancies to and fro, alternately humming a tune and nodding
dreamily, as the mother on a winter's noonday, her back to the sun, rocks
and croons her baby to sleep.




KALIGRAM, 1891.


Yesterday, while I was giving audience to my tenants, five or six boys
made their appearance and stood in a primly proper row before me. Before I
could put any question their spokesman, in the choicest of high-flown
language, started: "Sire! the grace of the Almighty and the good fortune
of your benighted children have once more brought about your lordship's
auspicious arrival into this locality." He went on in this strain for
nearly half an hour. Here and there he would get his lesson wrong, pause,
look up at the sky, correct himself, and then go on again. I gathered that
their school was short of benches and stools. "For want of these
wood-built seats," as he put it, "we know not where to sit ourselves,
where to seat our revered teachers, or what to offer our most respected
inspector when he comes on a visit."

I could hardly repress a smile at this torrent of eloquence gushing from
such a bit of a fellow, which sounded specially out of place here, where
the ryots are given to stating their profoundly vital wants in plain and
direct vernacular, of which even the more unusual words get sadly twisted
out of shape. The clerks and ryots, however, seemed duly impressed, and
likewise envious, as though deploring their parents' omission to endow
them with so splendid a means of appealing to the _Zamindar_.

I interrupted the young orator before he had done, promising to arrange
for the necessary number of benches and stools. Nothing daunted, he
allowed me to have my say, then took up his discourse where he had left
it, finished it to the last word, saluted me profoundly, and marched off
his contingent. He probably would not have minded had I refused to supply
the seats, but after all his trouble in getting it by heart he would have
resented bitterly being robbed of any part of his speech. So, though it
kept more important business waiting, I had to hear him out.




NEARING SHAZADPUR,

_January_ 1891.


We left the little river of Kaligram, sluggish as the circulation in a
dying man, and dropped down the current of a briskly flowing stream which
led to a region where land and water seemed to merge in each other, river
and bank without distinction of garb, like brother and sister in infancy.

The river lost its coating of sliminess, scattered its current in many
directions, and spread out, finally, into a _beel_ (marsh), with here
a patch of grassy land and there a stretch of transparent water, reminding
me of the youth of this globe when through the limitless waters land had
just begun to raise its head, the separate provinces of solid and fluid as
yet undefined.

Round about where we have moored, the bamboo poles of fishermen are
planted. Kites hover ready to snatch up fish from the nets. On the ooze at
the water's edge stand the saintly-looking paddy birds in meditation. All
kinds of waterfowl abound. Patches of weeds float on the water. Here and
there rice-fields, untilled, untended,[1] rise from the moist, clay soil.
Mosquitoes swarm over the still waters....

[Footnote 1: On the rich river-side silt, rice seed is simply scattered
and the harvest reaped when ripe; nothing else has to be done.]

We start again at dawn this morning and pass through Kachikata, where the
waters of the _beel_ find an outlet in a winding channel only six or
seven yards wide, through which they rush swiftly. To get our unwieldy
house-boat through is indeed an adventure. The current hurries it along at
lightning speed, keeping the crew busy using their oars as poles to
prevent the boat being dashed against the banks. We thus come out again
into the open river.

The sky had been heavily clouded, a damp wind blowing, with occasional
showers of rain. The crew were all shivering with cold. Such wet and
gloomy days in the cold weather are eminently disagreeable, and I have
spent a wretched lifeless morning. At two in the afternoon the sun came
out, and since then it has been delightful. The banks are now high and
covered with peaceful groves and the dwellings of men, secluded and full
of beauty.

The river winds in and out, an unknown little stream in the inmost
_zenana_ of Bengal, neither lazy nor fussy; lavishing the wealth of
her affection on both sides, she prattles about common joys and sorrows
and the household news of the village girls, who come for water, and sit
by her side, assiduously rubbing their bodies to a glowing freshness with
their moistened towels.

This evening we have moored our boat in a lonely bend. The sky is clear.
The moon is at its full. Not another boat is to be seen. The moonlight
glimmers on the ripples. Solitude reigns on the banks. The distant village
sleeps, nestling within a thick fringe of trees. The shrill, sustained
chirp of the cicadas is the only sound.




SHAZADPUR,

_February_ 1891.


Just in front of my window, on the other side of the stream, a band of
gypsies have ensconced themselves, putting up bamboo frameworks covered
over with split-bamboo mats and pieces of cloth. There are only three of
these little structures, so low that you cannot stand upright inside.
Their life is lived in the open, and they only creep under these shelters
at night, to sleep huddled together.

That is always the gypsies' way: no home anywhere, no landlord to pay rent
to, wandering about as it pleases them with their children, their pigs,
and a dog or two; and on them the police keep a vigilant eye.

I frequently watch the doings of the family nearest me. They are dark but
good-looking, with fine, strongly-built bodies, like north-west country
folk. Their women are handsome, and have tall, slim, well-knit figures;
and with their free and easy movements, and natural independent airs, they
look to me like swarthy Englishwomen.

The man has just put the cooking-pot on the fire, and is now splitting
bamboos and weaving baskets. The woman first holds up a little mirror to
her face, then puts a deal of pains into wiping and rubbing it, over and
over again, with a moist piece of cloth; and then, the folds of her upper
garment adjusted and tidied, she goes, all spick and span, up to her man
and sits beside him, helping him now and then in his work.

These are truly children of the soil, born on it somewhere, bred by the
wayside, here, there, and everywhere, dying anywhere. Night and day under
the open sky, in the open air, on the bare ground, they lead a unique kind
of life; and yet work, love, children, and household duties--everything is
there.

They are not idle for a moment, but always doing something. Her own
particular task over, one woman plumps herself down behind another, unties
the knot of her hair and cleans and arranges it for her; and whether at
the same time they fall to talking over the domestic affairs of the three
little mat-covered households I cannot say for certain from this distance,
but shrewdly suspect it.

This morning a great disturbance invaded the peaceful gypsy settlement. It
was about half-past eight or nine. They were spreading out over the mat
roofs tattered quilts and sundry other rags, which serve them for beds, in
order to sun and air them. The pigs with their litters, lying in a hollow
all of a heap and looking like a dab of mud, had been routed out by the
two canine members of the family, who fell upon them and sent them roaming
in search of their breakfasts, squealing their annoyance at being
interrupted in enjoyment of the sun after the cold night. I was writing my
letter and absently looking out now and then when the hubbub suddenly
commenced.

I rose and went to the window, and found a crowd gathered round the gypsy
hermitage. A superior-looking personage was flourishing a stick and
indulging in the strongest language. The headman of the gypsies, cowed and
nervous, was apparently trying to offer explanations. I gathered that some
suspicious happenings in the locality had led to this visitation by a
police officer.

The woman, so far, had remained sitting, busily scraping lengths of split
bamboo as serenely as if she had been alone and no sort of row going on.
Suddenly, however, she sprang to her feet, advanced on the police officer,
gesticulated violently with her arms right in his face, and gave him, in
strident tones, a piece of her mind. In the twinkling of an eye
three-quarters of the officer's excitement had subsided; he tried to put
in a word or two of mild protest but did not get a chance, and so departed
crestfallen, a different man.

After he had retreated to a safe distance, he turned and shouted back:
"All I say is, you'll have to clear out from here!"

I thought my neighbours opposite would forthwith pack up their mats and
bamboos and move away with their bundles, pigs, and children. But there is
no sign of it yet. They are still nonchalantly engaged in splitting
bamboos, cooking food, or completing a toilet.




SHAZADPUR,

_February_ 1891.


The post office is in a part of our estate office building,--this is very
convenient, for we get our letters as soon as they arrive. Some evenings
the postmaster comes up to have a chat with me. I enjoy listening to his
yarns.

He talks of the most impossible things in the gravest possible manner.

Yesterday he was telling me in what great reverence people of this
locality hold the sacred river Ganges. If one of their relatives dies, he
said, and they have not the means of taking the ashes to the Ganges, they
powder a piece of bone from his funeral pyre and keep it till they come
across some one who, some time or other, has drunk of the Ganges. To him
they administer some of this powder, hidden in the usual offering of
_pán_[1], and thus are content to imagine that a portion of the
remains of their deceased relative has gained purifying contact with the
sacred water.

[Footnote 1: Spices wrapped in betel leaf.]

I smiled as I remarked: "This surely must be an invention."

He pondered deeply before he admitted after a pause: "Yes, it may be."




ON THE WAY.

_February_ 1891.


We have got past the big rivers and just turned into a little one.

The village women are standing in the water, bathing or washing clothes;
and some, in their dripping _saris_, with veils pulled well over
their faces, move homeward with their water vessels filled and clasped
against the left flank, the right arm swinging free. Children, covered all
over with clay, are sporting boisterously, splashing water on each other,
while one of them shouts a song, regardless of the tune.

Over the high banks, the cottage roofs and the tops of the bamboo clumps
are visible. The sky has cleared and the sun is shining. Remnants of
clouds cling to the horizon like fluffs of cotton wool. The breeze is
warmer.

There are not many boats in this little river; only a few dinghies, laden
with dry branches and twigs, are moving leisurely along to the tired
plash! plash! of their oars. At the river's edge the fishermen's nets are
hung out to dry between bamboo poles. And work everywhere seems to be over
for the day.




CHUHALI.

_June_ 1891.


I had been sitting out on the deck for more than a quarter of an hour when
heavy clouds rose in the west. They came up, black, tumbled, and tattered,
with streaks of lurid light showing through here and there. The little
boats scurried off into the smaller arm of the river and clung with their
anchors safely to its banks. The reapers took up the cut sheaves on their
heads and hied homewards; the cows followed, and behind them frisked the
calves waving their tails.

Then came an angry roar. Torn-off scraps of cloud hurried up from the
west, like panting messengers of evil tidings. Finally, lightning and
thunder, rain and storm, came on altogether and executed a mad dervish
dance. The bamboo clumps seemed to howl as the raging wind swept the
ground with them, now to the east, now to the west. Over all, the storm
droned like a giant snake-charmer's pipe, and to its rhythm swayed
hundreds and thousands of crested waves, like so many hooded snakes. The
thunder was incessant, as though a whole world was being pounded to pieces
away there behind the clouds.

With my chin resting on the ledge of an open window facing away from the
wind, I allowed my thoughts to take part in this terrible revelry; they
leapt into the open like a pack of schoolboys suddenly set free. When,
however, I got a thorough drenching from the spray of the rain, I had to
shut up the window and my poetising, and retire quietly into the darkness
inside, like a caged bird.




SHAZADPUR.

_June_ 1891.


From the bank to which the boat is tied a kind of scent rises out of the
grass, and the heat of the ground, given off in gasps, actually touches my
body. I feel that the warm, living Earth is breathing upon me, and that
she, also, must feel my breath.

The young shoots of rice are waving in the breeze, and the ducks are in
turn thrusting their heads beneath the water and preening their feathers.
There is no sound save the faint, mournful creaking of the gangway against
the boat, as she imperceptibly swings to and fro in the current.

Not far off there is a ferry. A motley crowd has assembled under the
banyan tree awaiting the boat's return; and as soon as it arrives, they
eagerly scramble in. I enjoy watching this for hours together. It is
market-day in the village on the other bank; that is why the ferry is so
busy. Some carry bundles of hay, some baskets, some sacks; some are going
to the market, others coming from it. Thus, in this silent noonday, the
stream of human activity slowly flows across the river between two
villages.

I sat wondering: Why is there always this deep shade of melancholy over
the fields arid river banks, the sky and the sunshine of our country? And
I came to the conclusion that it is because with us Nature is obviously
the more important thing. The sky is free, the fields limitless; and the
sun merges them into one blazing whole. In the midst of this, man seems so
trivial. He comes and goes, like the ferry-boat, from this shore to the
other; the babbling hum of his talk, the fitful echo of his song, is
heard; the slight movement of his pursuit of his own petty desires is seen
in the world's market-places: but how feeble, how temporary, how
tragically meaningless it all seems amidst the immense aloofness of the
Universe!

The contrast between the beautiful, broad, unalloyed peace of
Nature--calm, passive, silent, unfathomable,--and our own everyday
worries--paltry, sorrow-laden, strife-tormented, puts me beside myself as
I keep staring at the hazy, distant, blue line of trees which fringe the
fields across the river.

Where Nature is ever hidden, and cowers under mist and cloud, snow and
darkness, there man feels himself master; he regards his desires, his
works, as permanent; he wants to perpetuate them, he looks towards
posterity, he raises monuments, he writes biographies; he even goes the
length of erecting tombstones over the dead. So busy is he that he has not
time to consider how many monuments crumble, how often names are
forgotten!




SHAZADPUR.

_June_ 1891.


There was a great, big mast lying on the river bank, and some little
village urchins, with never a scrap of clothing, decided, after a long
consultation, that if it could be rolled along to the accompaniment of a
sufficient amount of vociferous clamour, it would be a new and altogether
satisfactory kind of game. The decision was no sooner come to than acted
upon, with a "_Shabash_, brothers! All together! Heave ho!" And at
every turn it rolled, there was uproarious laughter.

The demeanour of one girl in the party was very different. She was playing
with the boys for want of other companions, but she clearly viewed with
disfavour these loud and strenuous games. At last she stepped up to the
mast and, without a word, deliberately sat on it.

So rare a game to come to so abrupt a stop! Some of the players seemed to
resign themselves to giving it up as a bad job; and retiring a little way
off, they sulkily glared at the girl in her impassive gravity. One made as
if he would push her off, but even this did not disturb the careless ease
of her pose. The eldest lad came up to her and pointed to other equally
suitable places for taking a rest; at which she energetically shook her
head, and putting her hands in her lap, steadied herself down still more
firmly on her seat. Then at last they had recourse to physical argument
and were completely successful.

Once again joyful shouts rent the skies, and the mast rolled along so
gloriously that even the girl had to cast aside her pride and her
dignified exclusiveness and make a pretence of joining in the unmeaning
excitement. But one could see all the time that she was sure boys never
know how to play properly, and are always so childish! If only she had the
regulation yellow earthen doll handy, with its big, black top-knot, would
she ever have deigned to join in this silly game with these foolish boys?

All of a sudden the idea of another splendid pastime occurred to the boys.
Two of them got hold of a third by the arms and legs and began to swing
him. This must have been great fun, for they all waxed enthusiastic over
it. But it was more than the girl could stand, so she disdainfully left
the playground and marched off home.

Then there was an accident. The boy who was being swung was let fall. He
left his companions in a pet, and went and lay down on the grass with his
arms crossed under his head, desiring to convey thereby that never again
would he have anything to do with this bad, hard world, but would forever
lie, alone by himself, with his arms under his head, and count the stars
and watch the play of the clouds.

The eldest boy, unable to bear the idea of such untimely
world-renunciation, ran up to the disconsolate one and taking his head on
his own knees repentantly coaxed him. "Come, my little brother! Do get up,
little brother! Have we hurt you, little brother?" And before long I found
them playing, like two pups, at catching and snatching away each other's
hands! Two minutes had hardly passed before the little fellow was swinging
again.




SHAZADPUR,

_June_ 1891.


I had a most extraordinary dream last night. The whole of Calcutta seemed
enveloped in some awful mystery, the houses being only dimly visible
through a dense, dark mist, within the veil of which there were strange
doings.

I was going along Park Street in a hackney carriage, and as I passed St.
Xavier's College I found it had started growing rapidly and was fast
getting impossibly high within its enveloping haze. Then it was borne in
on me that a band of magicians had come to Calcutta who, if they were paid
for it, could bring about many such wonders.

When I arrived at our Jorasanko house, I found these magicians had turned
up there too. They were ugly-looking, of a Mongolian type, with scanty
moustaches and a few long hairs sticking out of their chins. They could
make men grow. Some of the girls wanted to be made taller, and the
magician sprinkled some powder over their heads and they promptly shot up.
To every one I met I kept repeating: "This is most extraordinary,--just
like a dream!"

Then some one proposed that our house should be made to grow. The
magicians agreed, and as a preliminary began to take down some portions.
The dismantling over, they demanded money, or else they would not go on.
The cashier strongly objected. How could payment be made before the work
was completed? At this the magicians got wild and twisted up the building
most fearsomely, so that men and brickwork got mixed together, bodies
inside walls and only head and shoulders showing.

It had altogether the look of a thoroughly devilish business, as I told my
eldest brother. "You see," said I, "the kind of thing it is. We had better
call upon God to help us!" But try as I might to anathematise them in the
name of God, my heart felt like breaking and no words would come. Then I
awoke.

A curious dream, was it not? Calcutta in the hands of Satan and growing
diabolically, within the darkness of an unholy mist!




SHAZADPUR,

_June_ 1891.


The schoolmasters of this place paid me a visit yesterday.

They stayed on and on, while for the life of me I could not find a word to
say. I managed a question or so every five minutes, to which they offered
the briefest replies; and then I sat vacantly, twirling my pen, and
scratching my head.

At last I ventured on a question about the crops, but being schoolmasters
they knew nothing whatever about crops.

About their pupils I had already asked them everything I could think of,
so I had to start over again: How many boys had they in the school? One
said eighty, another said a hundred and seventy-five. I hoped that this
might lead to an argument, but no, they made up their difference.

Why, after an hour and a half, they should have thought of taking leave, I
cannot tell. They might have done so with as good a reason an hour
earlier, or, for the matter of that, twelve hours later! Their decision
was clearly arrived at empirically, entirely without method.




SHAZADPUR,

_July_ 1891.


There is another boat at this landing-place, and on the shore in front of
it a crowd of village women. Some are evidently embarking on a journey and
the others seeing them off; infants, veils, and grey hairs are all mixed
up in the gathering.

One girl in particular attracts my attention. She must be about eleven or
twelve; but, buxom and sturdy, she might pass for fourteen or fifteen. She
has a winsome face--very dark, but very pretty. Her hair is cut short like
a boy's, which well becomes her simple, frank, and alert expression. She
has a child in her arms and is staring at me with unabashed curiosity, and
certainly no lack of straightforwardness or intelligence in her glance.
Her half-boyish, half-girlish manner is singularly attractive--a novel
blend of masculine nonchalance and feminine charm. I had no idea there
were such types among our village women in Bengal.

None of this family, apparently, is troubled with too much bashfulness.
One of them has unfastened her hair in the sun and is combing it out with
her fingers, while conversing about their domestic affairs at the top of
her voice with another, on board. I gather she has no other children
except a girl, a foolish creature who knows neither how to behave or talk,
nor even the difference between kin and stranger. I also learn that
Gopal's son-in-law has turned out a ne'er-do-well, and that his daughter
refuses to go to her husband.

When, at length, it was time to start, they escorted my short-haired
damsel, with plump shapely arms, her gold bangles and her guileless,
radiant face, into the boat. I could divine that she was returning from
her father's to her husband's home. They all stood there, following the
boat with their gaze as it cast off, one or two wiping their eyes with the
loose end of their _saris_. A little girl, with her hair tightly tied
into a knot, clung to the neck of an older woman and silently wept on her
shoulder. Perhaps she was losing a darling Didimani [1] who joined in her
doll games and also slapped her when she was naughty....

[Footnote 1: An elder sister is often called sister-jewel
(_Didimani_).]

The quiet floating away of a boat on the stream seems to add to the pathos
of a separation--it is so like death--the departing one lost to sight,
those left behind returning to their daily life, wiping their eyes. True,
the pang lasts but a while, and is perhaps already wearing off both in
those who have gone and those who remain,--pain being temporary, oblivion
permanent. But none the less it is not the forgetting, but the pain which
is true; and every now and then, in separation or in death, we realise how
terribly true.




ON BOARD A CANAL STEAMER GOING TO CUTTACK,

_August_ 1891.


My bag left behind, my clothes daily get more and more intolerably
disreputable,--this thought continually uppermost is not compatible with a
due sense of self-respect. With the bag I could have faced the world of
men head erect and spirits high; without it, I fain would skulk in
corners, away from the glances of the crowd. I go to bed in these clothes
and in them I appear in the morning, and on the top of that the steamer is
full of soot, and the unbearable heat of the day keeps one unpleasantly
moist.

Apart from this, I am having quite a time of it on board the steamer. My
fellow-passengers are of inexhaustible variety. There is one, Aghore Babu,
who cannot allude to anything, animate or inanimate, except in terms of
personal abuse. There is another, a lover of music, who persists in
attempting variations on the Bhairab[1] mode at dead of night, convincing
me of the untimeliness of his performance in more senses than one.

[Footnote: A Raga, or mode of Indian classical music, supposed to be
appropriate to the early dawn.]

The steamer has been aground in a narrow ditch of a canal ever since last
evening, and it is now past nine in the morning. I spent the night in a
corner of the crowded deck, more dead than alive. I had asked the steward
to fry some _luchis_ for my dinner, and he brought me some
nondescript slabs of fried dough with no vegetable accompaniments to eat
them with. On my expressing a pained surprise, he was all contrition and
offered to make me some hotch-potch at once. But the night being already
far advanced, I declined his offer, managed to swallow a few mouthfuls of
the stuff dry, and then, all lights on and the deck packed with
passengers, laid myself down to sleep.

Mosquitoes hovered above, cockroaches wandered around. There was a
fellow-sleeper stretched crosswise at my feet whose body my soles every
now and then came up against. Four or five noses were engaged in snoring.
Several mosquito-tormented, sleepless wretches were consoling themselves
by pulls at their hubble-bubble pipes; and above all, there rose those
variations on the mode _Bhairab_! Finally, at half-past three in the
morning, some fussy busy-bodies began loudly inciting each other to get
up. In despair, I also left my bed and dropped into my deck-chair to await
the dawn. Thus passed that variegated nightmare of a night.

One of the hands tells me that the steamer has stuck so fast that it may
take the whole day to get her off. I inquire of another whether any
Calcutta-bound steamer will be passing, and get the smiling reply that
this is the only boat on this line, and I may come back in her, if I like,
after she has reached Cuttack! By a stroke of luck, after a great deal of
tugging and hauling, they have just got her afloat at about ten o'clock.




TIRAN.

7_th September_ 1891.


The landing-place at Balia makes a pretty picture with its fine big trees
on either side, and on the whole the canal somehow reminds me of the
little river at Poona. On thinking it over I am sure I should have liked
the canal much better had it really been a river.

Cocoanut palms as well as mangoes and other shady trees line its banks,
which, turfed with beautifully green grass, slope gently down to the
water, and are sprinkled over with sensitive plants in flower. Here and
there are screwpine groves, and through gaps in the border of trees
glimpses can be caught of endless fields, stretching away into the
distance, their crops so soft and velvety after the rains that the eye
seems to sink into their depths. Then again, there are the little villages
under their clusters of cocoanut and date palms, nestling under the moist
cool shade of the low seasonal clouds.

Through all these the canal, with its gentle current, winds gracefully
between its clean, grassy banks, fringed, in its narrower stretches, with
clusters of water-lilies with reeds growing among them. And yet the mind
keeps fretting at the idea that after all it is nothing but an artificial
canal.

The murmur of its waters does not reach back to the beginning of time. It
knows naught of the mysteries of some distant, inaccessible mountain cave.
It has not flowed for ages, graced with an old-world feminine name, giving
the villages on its sides the milk of its breast. Even old artificial
lakes have acquired a greater dignity.

However when, a hundred years hence, the trees on its banks will have
grown statelier; its brand-new milestones been worn down and moss-covered
into mellowness; the date 1871, inscribed on its lock-gates, left behind
at a respectable distance; then, if I am reborn as my great-grandson and
come again to inspect the Cuttack estates along this canal, I may feel
differently towards it.




SHELIDAH,

_October_ 1891.


Boat after boat touches at the landing-place, and after a whole year
exiles are returning home from distant fields of work for the Poojah
vacation, their boxes, baskets, and bundles loaded with presents. I notice
one who, as his boat nears the shore, changes into a freshly folded and
crinkled muslin _dhoti_, dons over his cotton tunic a China silk
coat, carefully adjusts round his neck a neatly twisted scarf, and walks
off towards the village, umbrella held aloft.

Rustling waves pass over the rice-fields. Mango and cocoanut tree-tops
rise into the sky, and beyond them there are fluffy clouds on the horizon.
The fringes of the palm leaves wave in the breeze. The reeds on the
sand-bank are on the point of flowering. It is altogether an exhilarating
scene.

The feelings of the man who has just arrived home, the eager expectancy of
his folk awaiting him, this autumn sky, this world, the gentle morning
breeze, the universal responsive tremor in tree and shrub and in the
wavelets on the river, conspire to overwhelm this lonely youth, gazing
from his window, with unutterable joys and sorrows.

Glimpses of the world received from wayside windows bring new desires, or
rather, make old desires take on new forms. The day before yesterday, as I
was sitting at the window of the boat, a little fisher-dinghy floated
past, the boatman singing a song--not a very tuneful song. But it reminded
me of a night, years ago, when I was a child. We were going along the
Padma in a boat. I awoke one night at about 2 o'clock, and, on raising the
window and putting out my head, I saw the waters without a ripple,
gleaming in the moonlight, and a youth in a little dinghy paddling along
all by himself and singing, oh so sweetly,--such sweet melody I had never
heard before.

A sudden longing came upon me to go back to the day of that song; to be
allowed to make another essay at life, this time not to leave it thus
empty and unsatisfied; but with a poet's song on my lips to float about
the world on the crest of the rising tide, to sing it to men and subdue
their hearts; to see for myself what the world holds and where; to let men
know me, to get to know them; to burst forth through the world in life and
youth like the eager rushing breezes; and then return home to a fulfilled
and fruitful old age to spend it as a poet should.

Not a very lofty ideal, is it? To benefit the world would have been much
higher, no doubt; but being on the whole what I am, that ambition does not
even occur to me. I cannot make up my mind to sacrifice this precious gift
of life in a self-wrought famine, and disappoint the world and the hearts
of men by fasts and meditations and constant argument. I count it enough
to live and die as a man, loving and trusting the world, unable to look on
it either as a delusion of the Creator or a snare of the Devil. It is not
for me to strive to be wafted away into the airiness of an Angel.




SHELIDAH,

2_nd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891.


When I come to the country I cease to view man as separate from the rest.
As the river runs through many a clime, so does the stream of men babble
on, winding through woods and villages and towns. It is not a true
contrast that _men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever_.
Humanity, with all its confluent streams, big and small, flows on and on,
just as does the river, from its source in birth to its sea of death;--two
dark mysteries at either end, and between them various play and work and
chatter unceasing.

Over there the cultivators sing in the fields: here the fishing-boats
float by. The day wears on and the heat of the sun increases. Some bathers
are still in the river, others are finished and are taking home their
filled water-vessels. Thus, past both banks of the river, hundreds of
years have hummed their way, while the refrain rises in a mournful chorus:
_I go on for ever!_

Amid the noonday silence some youthful cowherd is heard calling at the top
of his voice for his companion; some boat splashes its way homewards; the
ripples lap against the empty jar which some village woman rests on the
water before dipping it; and with these mingle several other less definite
sounds,--the twittering of birds, the humming of bees, the plaintive
creaking of the house-boat as it gently swings to and fro,--the whole
making a tender lullaby, as of a mother trying to quiet a suffering child.
"Fret not," she sings, as she soothingly pats its fevered forehead. "Worry
not; weep no more. Let be your strugglings and grabbings and fightings;
forget a while, sleep a while."




SHELIDAH,

3_rd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891.


It was the _Kojagar_ full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside
conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was
doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The
poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the
power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?

But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but
never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from
away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is
seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this
shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat
in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island
sand-bank.

It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a
random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn
fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,--all the kings and the
princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished,
leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over
which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale
moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this
dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore--the shore
of life--where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold
sway, and tea and cigarettes.




SHELIDAH,

9_th January_ 1892.


For some days the weather here has been wavering between Winter and
Spring. In the morning, perhaps, shivers will run over both land and water
at the touch of the north wind; while the evening will thrill with the
south breeze coming through the moonlight.

There is no doubt that Spring is well on its way. After a long interval
the _papiya_ once more calls out from the groves on the opposite
bank. The hearts of men too are stirred; and after evening falls, sounds
of singing are heard in the village, showing that they are no longer in
such a hurry to close doors and windows and cover themselves up snugly for
the night.

To-night the moon is at its full, and its large, round face peers at me
through the open window on my left, as if trying to make out whether I
have anything to say against it in my letter,--it suspects, maybe, that we
mortals concern ourselves more with its stains than its beams.

A bird is plaintively crying tee-tee on the sand-bank. The river seems not
to move. There are no boats. The motionless groves on the bank cast an
unquivering shadow on the waters. The haze over the sky makes the moon
look like a sleepy eye kept open.

Henceforward the evenings will grow darker and darker; and when,
to-morrow, I come over from the office, this moon, the favourite companion
of my exile, will already have drifted a little farther from me, doubting
whether she had been wise to lay her heart so completely bare last
evening, and so covering it up again little by little.

Nature becomes really and truly intimate in strange and lonely places. I
have been actually worrying myself for days at the thought that after the
moon is past her full I shall daily miss the moonlight more and more;
feeling further and further exiled when the beauty and peace which awaits
my return to the riverside will no longer be there, and I shall have to
come back through darkness.

Anyhow I put it on record that to-day is the full moon--the first full
moon of this year's springtime. In years to come I may perchance be
reminded of this night, with the tee-tee of the bird on the bank, the
glimmer of the distant light on the boat off the other shore, the shining
expanse of river, the blur of shade thrown by the dark fringe of trees
along its edge, and the white sky gleaming overhead in unconcerned
aloofness.




SHELIDAH,

7_th April_ 1892.


The river is getting low, and the water in this arm of it is hardly more
than waist-deep anywhere. So it is not at all extraordinary that the boat
should be anchored in mid-stream. On the bank, to my right, the ryots are
ploughing and cows are now and then brought down to the water's edge for a
drink. To the left there are the mango and cocoanut trees of the old
Shelidah garden above, and on the bathing slope below there are village
women washing clothes, filling water jars, bathing, laughing and gossiping
in their provincial dialect.

The younger girls never seem to get through their sporting in the water;
it is a delight to hear their careless, merry laughter. The men gravely
take their regulation number of dips and go away, but girls are on much
more intimate terms with the water. Both alike babble and chatter and
ripple and sparkle in the same simple and natural manner; both may
languish and fade away under a scorching glare, yet both can take a blow
without hopelessly breaking under it. The hard world, which, but for them,
would be barren, cannot fathom the mystery of the soft embrace of their
arms.

Tennyson has it that woman to man is as water to wine. I feel to-day it
should be as water is to land. Woman is more at home with the water,
laving in it, playing with it, holding her gatherings beside it; and
while, for her, other burdens are not seemly, the carrying of water from
the spring, the well, the bank of river or pool, has ever been held to
become her.




BOLPUR,

2_nd May_ 1892.


There are many paradoxes in the world and one of them is this, that
wherever the landscape is immense, the sky unlimited, clouds intimately
dense, feelings unfathomable--that is to say where infinitude is
manifest--its fit companion is one solitary person; a multitude there
seems so petty, so distracting.

An individual and the infinite are on equal terms, worthy to gaze on one
another, each from his own throne. But where many men are, how small both
humanity and infinitude become, how much they have to knock off each
other, in order to fit in together! Each soul wants so much room to expand
that in a crowd it needs must wait for gaps through which to thrust a
little craning piece of a head from time to time.

So the only result of our endeavour to assemble is that we become unable
to fill our joined hands, our outstretched arms, with this endless,
fathomless expanse.




BOLPUR,

8_th Jaistha_ (_May_) 1892.


Women who try to be witty, but only succeed in being pert, are
insufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful in
women whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated,
and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, the
camel and the giraffe are comic, all overgrowth is comic.

It is rather keenness that is akin to beauty, as the thorn to the flower.
So sarcasm is not unbecoming in woman, though coming from her it hurts.
But ridicule which savours of bulkiness woman had better leave to our
sublime sex. The masculine Falstaff makes our sides split, but a feminine
Falstaff would only rack our nerves.




BOLPUR,

12_th Jaistha_ (_May_) 1892.


I usually pace the roof-terrace, alone, of an evening. Yesterday afternoon
I felt it my duty to show my visitors the beauties of the local scenery,
so I strolled out with them, taking Aghore as a guide.

On the verge of the horizon, where the distant fringe of trees was blue, a
thin line of dark blue cloud had risen over them and was looking
particularly beautiful. I tried to be poetical and said it was like blue
collyrium on the fringe of lashes enhancing a beautiful blue eye. Of my
companions one did not hear the remark, another did not understand, while
the third dismissed it with the reply: "Yes, very pretty." I did not feel
encouraged to attempt a second poetical flight.

After walking about a mile we came to a dam, and along the pool of water
there was a row of _tâl_ (fan palm) trees, under which was a natural
spring. While we stood there looking at this, we found that the line of
cloud which we had seen in the North was making for us, swollen and grown
darker, flashes of lightning gleaming the while.

We unanimously came to the conclusion that viewing the beauties of nature
could be better done from within the shelter of the house, but no sooner
had we turned homewards than a storm, making giant strides over the open
moorland, was on us with an angry roar. I had no idea, while I was
admiring the collyrium on the eyelashes of beauteous dame Nature, that she
would fly at us like an irate housewife, threatening so tremendous a slap!

It became so dark with the dust that we could not see beyond a few paces.
The fury of the storm increased, and flying stony particles of the rubbly
soil stung our bodies like shot, as the wind took us by the scruff of the
neck and thrust us along, to the whipping of drops of rain which had begun
to fall.

Run! Run! But the ground was not level, being deeply scarred with
watercourses, and not easy to cross at any time, much less in a storm. I
managed to get entangled in a thorny shrub, and was nearly thrown on my
face by the force of the wind as I stopped to free myself.

When we had almost reached the house, a host of servants came hurrying
towards us, shouting and gesticulating, and fell upon us like another
storm. Some took us by the arms, some bewailed our plight, some were eager
to show the way, others hung on our backs as if fearing that the storm
might carry us off altogether. We evaded their attentions with some
difficulty and managed at length to get into the house, panting, with wet
clothes, dusty bodies, and tumbled hair.

One thing I had learnt; and will never again write in novel or story the
lie that the hero with the picture of his lady-love in his mind can pass
unruffled through wind and rain. No one could keep any face in mind,
however lovely, in such a storm,--he has enough to do to keep the sand out
of his eyes!...

The Vaishnava-poets have sung ravishingly of Radha going to her tryst with
Krishna through a stormy night. Did they ever pause to consider, I wonder,
in what condition she must have reached him? The kind of tangle her hair
got into is easily imaginable, and also the state of the rest of her
toilet. When she arrived in her bower with the dust on her body soaked by
the rain into a coating of mud, she must have been a sight!

But when we read the Vaishnava poems, these thoughts do not occur. We only
see on the canvas of our mind the picture of a beautiful woman, passing
under the shelter of the flowering kadambas in the darkness of a stormy
_Shravan_[1] night, towards the bank of the Jumna, forgetful of wind
or rain, as in a dream, drawn by her surpassing love. She has tied up her
anklets lest they should tinkle; she is clad in dark blue raiment lest she
be discovered; but she holds no umbrella lest she get wet, carries no
lantern lest she fall!

[Footnote 1: July-August, the rainy season.]

Alas for useful things--how necessary in practical life, how neglected in
poetry! But poetry strives in vain to free us from their bondage--they
will be with us always; so much so, we are told, that with the march of
civilisation it is poetry that will become extinct, but patent after
patent will continue to be taken out for the improvement of shoes and
umbrellas.




BOLPUR,

16_th Jaistha (May)_ 1892.


No church tower clock chimes here, and there being no other human
habitation near by, complete silence falls with the evening, as soon as
the birds have ceased their song. There is not much difference between
early night and midnight. A sleepless night in Calcutta flows like a huge,
slow river of darkness; one can count the varied sounds of its passing,
lying on one's back in bed. But here the night is like a vast, still lake,
placidly reposing, with no sign of movement. And as I tossed from side to
side last night I felt enveloped within a dense stagnation.

This morning I left my bed a little later than usual and, coming
downstairs to my room, leant back on a bolster, one leg resting over the
other knee. There, with a slate on my chest, I began to write a poem to
the accompaniment of the morning breeze and the singing birds. I was
getting along splendidly--a smile playing over my lips, my eyes half
closed, my head swaying to the rhythm, the thing I hummed gradually taking
shape--when the post arrived.

There was a letter, the last number of the _Sadhana Magazine_, one of
the _Monist_, and some proof-sheets. I read the letter, raced my eyes
over the uncut pages of the _Sadhana_, and then again fell to nodding
and humming through my poem. I did not do another thing till I had
finished it.

I wonder why the writing of pages of prose does not give one anything like
the joy of completing a single poem. One's emotions take on such
perfection of form in a poem; they can, as it were, be taken up by the
fingers. But prose is like a sackful of loose material, heavy and
unwieldy, incapable of being lifted as you please.

If I could finish writing one poem a day, my life would pass in a kind of
joy; but though I have been busy tending poetry for many a year it has not
been tamed yet, and is not the kind of winged steed to allow me to bridle
it whenever I like! The joy of art is in freedom to take a distant flight
as fancy will; then, even after return within the prison-world, an echo
lingers in the ear, an exaltation in the mind.

Short poems keep coming to me unsought, and so prevent my getting on with
the play. Had it not been for these, I could have let in ideas for two or
three plays which have been knocking at the door. I am afraid I must wait
for the cold weather. All my plays except "Chitra" were written in the
winter. In that season lyrical fervour is apt to grow cold, and one gets
the leisure to write drama.




BOLPUR,

_31st May 1892._


It is not yet five o'clock, but the light has dawned, there is a
delightful breeze, and all the birds in the garden are awake and have
started singing. The _koel_ seems beside itself. It is difficult to
understand why it should keep on cooing so untiringly. Certainly not to
entertain us, nor to distract the pining lover[1]--it must have some
personal purpose of its own. But, sadly enough, that purpose never seems
to get fulfilled. Yet it is not down-hearted, and its Coo-oo! Coo-oo!
keeps going, with now and then an ultra-fervent trill. What can it mean?

[Footnote 1: A favourite conceit of the old Sanskrit poets.]

And then in the distance there is some other bird with only a faint
chuck-chuck that has no energy or enthusiasm, as if all hope were lost;
none the less, from within some shady nook it cannot resist uttering this
little plaint: chuck, chuck, chuck.

How little we really know of the household affairs of these innocent
winged creatures, with their soft, breasts and necks and their
many-coloured feathers! Why on earth do they find it necessary to sing so
persistently?




SHELIDAH,

_31st Jaistha (June)1892._


I hate these polite formalities. Nowadays I keep repeating the line: "Much
rather would I be an Arab Bedouin!" A fine, healthy, strong, and free
barbarity.

I feel I want to quit this constant ageing of mind and body, with
incessant argument and nicety concerning ancient decaying things, and to
feel the joy of a free and vigorous life; to have,--be they good or
bad,--broad, unhesitating, unfettered ideas and aspirations, free from
everlasting friction between custom and sense, sense and desire, desire
and action.

If only I could set utterly and boundlessly free this hampered life of
mine, I would storm the four quarters and raise wave upon wave of tumult
all round; I would career away madly, like a wild horse, for very joy of
my own speed! But I am a Bengali, not a Bedouin! I go on sitting in my
corner, and mope and worry and argue. I turn my mind now this way up, now
the other--as a fish is fried--and the boiling oil blisters first this
side, then that.

Let it pass. Since I cannot be thoroughly wild, it is but proper that I
should make an endeavour to be thoroughly civil. Why foment a quarrel
between the two?




SHELIDAH,

_16th June 1892._


The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearer
it becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform the
ordinary duties of one's daily life simply and naturally. From the grasses
in the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; and
there is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because none
of these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations.

Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has to
put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its
rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to
become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green.
And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the
societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to
big doings and fine talk.

Perhaps because the whole of our life is not vividly present at each
moment, some imaginary hope may lure, some glowing picture of a future,
untrammelled with everyday burdens, may tempt us; but these are illusory.




SHELIDAH,

_2nd Asarh (June) 1892._


Yesterday, the first day of _Asarh_,[1] the enthronement of the rainy
season was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance. It was very hot the
whole day, but in the afternoon dense clouds rolled up in stupendous
masses.

[Footnote 1: June-July, the commencement of the rainy season.]

I thought to myself, this first day of the rains, I would rather risk
getting wet than remain confined in my dungeon of a cabin.

The year 1293 [1] will not come again in my life, and,
for the matter of that, how many more even of these first days
of _Asarh_ will come? My life would be sufficiently long could it
number thirty of these first days of _Asarh_ to which the poet of the
_Meghaduta_[2] has, for me at least, given special distinction.

[Footnote 1: Of the Bengal era.]

[Footnote 2: In the _Meghaduta_ (Cloud Messenger) of Kalidas a famous
description of the burst of the Monsoon begins with the words: _On the
first day of Asarh_.]

It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should
take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting
sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white
flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!

A thousand years ago Kalidas welcomed that first day of _Asarh_; and
once in every year of my life that same day of _Asarh_ dawns in all
its glory--that self-same day of the poet of old Ujjain, which has brought
to countless men and women their joys of union, their pangs of separation.

Every year one such great, time-hallowed day drops out of my life; and the
time will come when this day of Kalidas, this day of the _Meghaduta_,
this eternal first day of the Rains in Hindustan, shall come no more for
me. When I realise this I feel I want to take a good look at nature, to
offer a conscious welcome to each day's sunrise, to say farewell to each
day's setting sun, as to an intimate friend.

What a grand festival, what a vast theatre of festivity! And we cannot
even fully respond to it, so far away do we live from the world! The light
of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot
reach our hearts--so many millions of miles further off are we!

The world into which I have tumbled is peopled with strange beings. They
are always busy erecting walls and rules round themselves, and how careful
they are with their curtains lest they should see! It is a wonder to me
they have not made drab covers for flowering plants and put up a canopy to
ward off the moon. If the next life is determined by the desires of this,
then I should be reborn from our enshrouded planet into some free and open
realm of joy.

Only those who cannot steep themselves in beauty to the full, despise it
as an object of the senses. But those who have tasted of its
inexpressibility know how far it is beyond the highest powers of mere eye
or ear--nay, even the heart is powerless to attain the end of its
yearning.

_P.S._--I have left out the very thing I started to tell of. Don't be
afraid, it won't take four more sheets. It is this, that on the evening of
the first day of _Asarh_ it came on to rain very heavily, in great
lance-like showers. That is all.




ON THE WAY TO GOALUNDA,

_21st June 1892._


Pictures in an endless variety, of sand-banks, fields and their crops, and
villages, glide into view on either hand--of clouds floating in the sky,
of colours blossoming when day meets night. Boats steal by, fishermen
catch fish; the waters make liquid, caressing sounds throughout the
livelong day; their broad expanse calms down in the evening stillness,
like a child lulled to sleep, over whom all the stars in the boundless sky
keep watch--then, as I sit up on wakeful nights, with sleeping banks on
either side, the silence is broken only by an occasional cry of a jackal
in the woods near some village, or by fragments undermined by the keen
current of the Padma, that tumble from the high cliff-like bank into the
water.

Not that the prospect is always of particular interest--a yellowish
sandbank, innocent of grass or tree, stretches away; an empty boat is tied
to its edge; the bluish water, of the same shade as the hazy sky, flows
past; yet I cannot tell how it moves me. I suspect that the old desires
and longings of my servant-ridden childhood--when in the solitary
imprisonment of my room I pored over the _Arabian Nights_, and shared
with Sinbad the Sailor his adventures in many a strange land--are not yet
dead within me, but are roused at the sight of any empty boat tied to a
sand-bank.

If I had not heard fairy tales and read the _Arabian Nights_ and
_Robinson Crusoe_ in childhood, I am sure views of distant banks, or
the farther side of wide fields, would not have stirred me so--the whole
world, in fact, would have had for me a different appeal.

What a maze of fancy and fact becomes tangled up within the mind of man!
The different strands--petty and great--of story and event and picture,
how they get knotted together!




SHELIDAH,

_22nd June 1892._


Early this morning, while still lying in bed, I heard the women at the
bathing-place sending forth joyous peals of _Ulu! Ulu!_[1] The sound
moved me curiously, though it is difficult to say why.

[Footnote 1: A peculiar shrill cheer given by women on auspicious or
festive occasions.]

Perhaps such joyful outbursts put one in mind of the great stream of
festive activity which goes on in this world, with most of which the
individual man has no connection. The world is so immense, the concourse
of men so vast, yet with how few has one any tie! Distant sounds of life,
wafted near, bearing tidings from unknown homes, make the individual
realise that the greater part of the world of men does not, cannot own or
know him; then he feels deserted, loosely attached to the world, and a
vague sadness creeps over him.

Thus these cries of _Ulu! Ulu!_ made my life, past and future, seem
like a long, long road, from the very ends of which they come to me. And
this feeling colours for me the beginning of my day.

As soon as the manager with his staff, and the ryots seeking audience,
come upon the scene, this faint vista of past and future will be promptly
elbowed out, and a very robust present will salute and stand before me.




SHAZADPUR,

_25th June 1892._


In to-day's letters there was a touch about A---'s singing which made my
heart yearn with a nameless longing. Each of the little joys of life,
which remain unappreciated amid the hubbub of the town, send in their
claims to the heart when far from home. I love music, and there is no
dearth of voices and instruments in Calcutta, yet I turn a deaf ear to
them. But, though I may fail to realise it at the time, this needs must
leave the heart athirst.

As I read to-day's letters, I felt such a poignant desire to hear A---'s
sweet song, I was at once sure that one of the many suppressed longings of
creation which cry after fulfilment is for neglected joys within reach;
while we are busy pursuing chimerical impossibilities we famish our
lives....

The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. And
the day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, I
would strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full these
little, unsought, everyday joys which life offers.




SHAZADPUR,

_27th June 1892._


Yesterday, in the afternoon, it clouded over so threateningly, I felt a
sense of dread. I do not remember ever to have seen before such
angry-looking clouds.

Swollen masses of the deepest indigo blue were piled, one on top of the
other, just above the horizon, looking like the puffed-out moustaches of
some raging demon.

Under the jagged lower edges of the clouds there shone forth a blood-red
glare, as through the eyes of a monstrous, sky-filling bison, with tossing
mane and with head lowered to strike the earth in fury.

The crops in the fields and the leaves of the trees trembled with fear of
the impending disaster; shudder after shudder ran across the waters; the
crows flew wildly about, distractedly cawing.




SHAZADPUR,

_29th June 1892._


I wrote yesterday that I had an engagement with Kalidas, the poet, for
this evening. As I lit a candle, drew my chair up to the table, and made
ready, not Kalidas, but the postmaster, walked in. A live postmaster
cannot but claim precedence over a dead poet, so I could not very well
tell him to make way for Kalidas, who was due by appointment,--he would
not have understood me! Therefore I offered him a chair and gave old
Kalidas the go-by.

There is a kind of bond between this postmaster and me. When the post
office was in a part of this estate building, I used to meet him every
day. I wrote my story of "The Postmaster" one afternoon in this very room.
And when the story was out in the _Hitabadi_ he came to me with a
succession of bashful smiles, as he deprecatingly touched on the subject.
Anyhow, I like the man. He has a fund of anecdote which I enjoy listening
to. He has also a sense of humour.

Though it was late when the postmaster left, I started at once on the
_Raghuvansa_[1], and read all about the _swayamuara_[2] of
Indumati.

[Footnote 1: Book of poems by Kalidas, who is perhaps best known to
European readers as the author of _Sakuntala_.]

[Footnote 2: An old Indian custom, according to which a princess chooses
among assembled rival suitors for her hand by placing a garland round the
neck of the one whose love she returns.]

The handsome, gaily adorned princes are seated on rows of thrones in the
assembly hall. Suddenly a blast of conch-shell and trumpet resounds, as
Indumati, in bridal robes, supported by Sunanda, is ushered in and stands
in the walk left between them. It was delightful to dwell on the picture.

Then as Sunanda introduces to her each one of the suitors, Indumati bows
low in loveless salutation, and passes on. How beautiful is this humble
courtesy! They are all princes. They are all her seniors. For she is a
mere girl. Had she not atoned for the inevitable rudeness of her rejection
by the grace of her humility, the scene would have lost its beauty.




SHELIDAH,

_20th August 1892._


"If only I could live there!" is often thought when looking at a beautiful
landscape painting. That is the kind of longing which is satisfied here,
where one feels alive in a brilliantly coloured picture, with none of the
hardness of reality. When I was a child, illustrations of woodland and
sea, in _Paul and Virginia_, or _Robinson Crusoe_, would waft me
away from the everyday world; and the sunshine here brings back to my mind
the feeling with which I used to gaze on those pictures.

I cannot account for this exactly, or explain definitely what kind of
longing it is which is roused within me. It seems like the throb of some
current flowing through the artery connecting me with the larger world. I
feel as if dim, distant memories come to me of the time when I was one
with the rest of the earth; when on me grew the green grass, and on me
fell the autumn light; when a warm scent of youth would rise from every
pore of my vast, soft, green body at the touch of the rays of the mellow
sun, and a fresh life, a sweet joy, would be half-consciously secreted and
inarticulately poured forth from all the immensity of my being, as it lay
dumbly stretched, with its varied countries and seas and mountains, under
the bright blue sky.

My feelings seem to be those of our ancient earth in the daily ecstasy of
its sun-kissed life; my own consciousness seems to stream through each
blade of grass, each sucking root, to rise with the sap through the trees,
to break out with joyous thrills in the waving fields of corn, in the
rustling palm leaves.

I feel impelled to give expression to my blood-tie with the earth, my
kinsman's love for her; but I am afraid I shall not be understood.




BOALIA,

_18th November 1892._


I am wondering where your train has got to by now. This is the time for
the sun to rise over the ups and downs of the treeless, rocky region near
Nawadih station. The scene around there must be brightened by the fresh
sunlight, through which distant, blue hills are beginning to be faintly
visible.

Cultivated fields are scarcely to be seen, except where the primitive
tribesmen have done a little ploughing with their buffaloes; on each side
of the railway cutting there are the heaped-up black rocks--the
boulder-marked footprints of dried-up streams--and the fidgety, black
wagtails, perched along the telegraph wires. A wild, seamed, and scarred
nature lies there in the sun, as though tamed at the touch of some soft,
bright, cherubic hand.

Do you know the picture which this calls up for me? In the _Sakuntala_ of
Kalidas there is a scene where Bharat, the infant son of King Dushyanta,
is playing with a lion cub. The child is lovingly passing his delicate,
rosy fingers through the rough mane of the great beast, which lies quietly
stretched in trustful repose, now and then casting affectionate glances
out of the corner of its eyes at its little human friend.

And shall I tell you what those dry, boulder-strewn watercourses put me in
mind of? We read in the English fairy tale of the Babes in the Wood, how
the little brother and sister left a trace of their wanderings, through
the unknown forest into which their stepmother had turned them out, by
dropping pebbles as they went. These streamlets are like lost babes in the
great world into which they are sent adrift, and that is why they leave
stones, as they go forth, to mark their course, so as not to lose their
way when they may be returning. But for them there is no return journey!




NATORE,

_2nd December_ 1892.


There is a depth of feeling and breadth of peace in a Bengal sunset behind
the trees which fringe the endless solitary fields, spreading away to the
horizon.

Lovingly, yet sadly withal, does our evening sky bend over and meet the
earth in the distance. It casts a mournful light on the earth it leaves
behind--a light which gives us a taste of the divine grief of the Eternal
Separation[1] and eloquent is the silence which then broods over earth,
sky, and waters.

[Footnote 1: _I.e._ between Purusha and Prakriti--God and Creation.]

As I gaze on in rapt motionlessness, I fall to wondering--If ever this
silence should fail to contain itself, if the expression for which this
hour has been seeking from the beginning of time should break forth, would
a profoundly solemn, poignantly moving music rise from earth to starland?

With a little steadfast concentration of effort we can, for ourselves,
translate the grand harmony of light and colour which permeates the
universe into music. We have only to close our eyes and receive with the
ear of the mind the vibration of this ever-flowing panorama.

But how often shall I write of these sunsets and sunrises? I feel their
renewed freshness every time; yet how am I to attain such renewed
freshness in my attempts at expression?




SHELIDAH,

_9th December_ 1892.


I am feeling weak and relaxed after my painful illness, and in this state
the ministrations of nature are sweet indeed. I feel as if, like the rest,
I too am lazily glittering out my delight at the rays of the sun, and my
letter-writing progresses but absent-mindedly.

The world is ever new to me; like an old friend loved through this and
former lives, the acquaintance between us is both long and deep.

I can well realise how, in ages past, when the earth in her first youth
came forth from her sea-bath and saluted the sun in prayer, I must have
been one of the trees sprung from her new-formed soil, spreading my
foliage in all the freshness of a primal impulse.

The great sea was rocking and swaying and smothering, like a foolishly
fond mother, its first-born land with repeated caresses; while I was
drinking in the sunlight with the whole of my being, quivering under the
blue sky with the unreasoning rapture of the new-born, holding fast and
sucking away at my mother earth with all my roots. In blind joy my leaves
burst forth and my flowers bloomed; and when the dark clouds gathered,
their grateful shade would comfort me with a tender touch.

From age to age, thereafter, have I been diversely reborn on this earth.
So whenever we now sit face to face, alone together, various ancient
memories, gradually, one after another, come back to me.

My mother earth sits to-day in the cornfields by the river-side, in her
raiment of sunlit gold; and near her feet, her knees, her lap, I roll
about and play. Mother of a multitude of children, she attends but
absently to their constant calls on her, with an immense patience, but
also with a certain aloofness. She is seated there, with her far-away look
fastened on the verge of the afternoon sky, while I keep chattering on
untiringly.




BALJA,

_Tuesday, February 1893_.


I do not want to wander about any more. I am pining for a corner in which
to nestle down snugly, away from the crowd.

India has two aspects--in one she is a householder, in the other a
wandering ascetic. The former refuses to budge from the home corner, the
latter has no home at all. I find both these within me. I want to roam
about and see all the wide world, yet I also yearn for a little sheltered
nook; like a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast sky for
flight.

I hanker after a corner because it serves to bring calmness to my mind. My
mind really wants to be busy, but in making the attempt it knocks so
repeatedly against the crowd as to become utterly frenzied and to keep
buffeting me, its cage, from within. If only it is allowed a little
leisurely solitude, and can look about and think to its heart's content,
it will express its feelings to its own satisfaction.

This freedom of solitude is what my mind is fretting for; it would be
alone with its imaginings, as the Creator broods over His own creation.




CUTTACK,

_February 1893_.


Till we can achieve something, let us live incognito, say I. So long as we
are only fit to be looked down upon, on what shall we base our claim to
respect? When we have acquired a foothold of our own in the world, when we
have had some share in shaping its course, then we can meet others
smilingly. Till then let us keep in the background, attending to our own
affairs.

But our countrymen seem to hold the opposite opinion. They set no store by
our more modest, intimate wants which have to be met behind the
scenes,--the whole of their attention is directed to momentary
attitudinising and display.

Ours is truly a God-forsaken country. Difficult, indeed, is it for us to
maintain the strength of will to _do_. We get no help in any real
sense. There is no one, within miles of us, in converse with whom we might
gain an accession of vitality. No one near seems to be thinking, or
feeling, or working. Not a soul has any experience of big striving, or of
really and truly living. They all eat and drink, do their office work,
smoke and sleep, and chatter nonsensically. When they touch upon emotion
they grow sentimental, when they reason they are childish. One yearns for
a full-blooded, sturdy, and capable personality; these are all so many
shadows, flitting about, out of touch with the world.




CUTTACK,

_10th February_ 1893.


He was a fully developed John Bull of the outrageous type--with a huge
beak of a nose, cunning eyes, and a yard-long chin. The curtailment of our
right to be tried by jury is now under consideration by the Government.
The fellow dragged in the subject by the ears and insisted on arguing it
out with our host, poor B---- Babu. He said the moral standard of the
people of this country was low; that they had no real belief in the
sacredness of life; so that they were unfit to serve on juries.

The utter contempt with which we are regarded by these people was brought
home to me when I saw how they can accept a Bengali's hospitality and talk
thus, seated at his table, without a quiver of compunction.

As I sat in a corner of the drawing-room after dinner, everything round me
looked blurred to my eyes. I seemed to be seated by the head of my great,
insulted Motherland, who lay there in the dust before me, disconsolate,
shorn of her glory. I cannot tell what a profound distress overpowered my
heart.

How incongruous seemed the _mem-sahibs_ there, in their
evening-dresses, the hum of English conversation, and the ripples of
laughter! How richly true for us is our India of the ages; how cheap and
false the hollow courtesies of an English dinner-party!




CUTTACK,

_March_ 1893.


If we begin to attach too much importance to the applause of Englishmen,
we shall have to be rid of much in us that is good, and to accept from
them much that is bad.

We shall grow ashamed of going about without socks, and cease to feel
shame at the sight of their ball dresses. We shall have no compunction in
throwing overboard our ancient manners, nor any in emulating their lack of
courtesy.

We shall leave off wearing our _achgans_ because they are susceptible of
improvement, but think nothing of surrendering our heads to their hats,
though no headgear could well be uglier.

In short, consciously or unconsciously, we shall have to cut our lives
down according as they clap their hands or not.

Wherefore I apostrophise myself and say: "O Earthen Pot! For goodness sake
keep away from that Metal Pot! Whether he comes to you in anger or merely
to give you a patronising pat on the back, you are done for, cracked in
either case. So pay heed to old Aesop's sage counsel, I pray--and keep
your distance."

Let the metal pot ornament wealthy homes; you have work to do in those of
the poor. If you let yourself be broken, you will have no place in either,
but merely return to the dust; or, at best, you may secure a corner in a
bric-a-brac cabinet--as a curiosity, and it is more glorious far to be
used for fetching water by the meanest of village women.




SHELIDAH,

_8th May 1893_.


Poetry is a very old love of mine--I must have been engaged to her when I
was only Rathi's[1] age. Long ago the recesses under the old banyan tree
beside our tank, the inner gardens, the unknown regions on the ground
floor of the house, the whole of the outside world, the nursery rhymes and
tales told by the maids, created a wonderful fairyland within me. It is
difficult to give a clear idea of all the vague and mysterious happenings
of that period, but this much is certain, that my exchange of garlands[2]
with Poetic Fancy was already duly celebrated.

[Footnote 1: Rathi, his son, was then five years old.]

[Footnote 2: The betrothal ceremony.]

I must admit, however, that my betrothed is not an auspicious
maiden--whatever else she may bring one, it is not good fortune. I cannot
say she has never given me happiness, but peace of mind with her is out of
the question. The lover whom she favours may get his fill of bliss, but
his heart's blood is wrung out under her relentless embrace. It is not for
the unfortunate creature of her choice ever to become a staid and sober
householder, comfortably settled down on a social foundation.

Consciously or unconsciously, I may have done many things that were
untrue, but I have never uttered anything false in my poetry--that is the
sanctuary where the deepest truths of my life find refuge.




SHELIDAH,

_10th May_ 1893.


Here come black, swollen masses of cloud; they soak up the golden sunshine
from the scene in front of me like great pads of blotting-paper. Rain must
be near, for the breeze feels moist and tearful.

Over there, on the sky-piercing peaks of Simla, you will find it hard to
realise exactly what an important event the coming of the clouds is here,
or how many are anxiously looking up to the sky, hailing their advent.

I feel a great tenderness for these peasant folk--our ryots--big,
helpless, infantile children of Providence, who must have food brought to
their very lips, or they are undone. When the breasts of Mother Earth dry
up they are at a loss what to do, and can only cry. But no sooner is their
hunger satisfied than they forget all their past sufferings.

I know not whether the socialistic ideal of a more equal distribution of
wealth is attainable, but if not, the dispensation of Providence is indeed
cruel, and man a truly unfortunate creature. For if in this world misery
must exist, so be it; but let some little loophole, some glimpse of
possibility at least, be left, which may serve to urge the nobler portion
of humanity to hope and struggle unceasingly for its alleviation.

They say a terribly hard thing who assert that the division of the world's
production to afford each one a mouthful of food, a bit of clothing, is
only an Utopian dream. All these social problems are hard indeed! Fate has
allowed humanity such a pitifully meagre coverlet, that in pulling it over
one part of the world, another has to be left bare. In allaying our
poverty we lose our wealth, and with this wealth what a world of grace and
beauty and power is lost to us.

But the sun shines forth again, though the clouds are still banked up in
the West.




SHELIDAH,

_11th May 1893._


There is another pleasure for me here. Sometimes one or other of our
simple, devoted, old ryots comes to see me--and their worshipful homage is
so unaffected! How much greater than I are they in the beautiful
simplicity and sincerity of their reverence. What if I am unworthy of
their veneration--their feeling loses nothing of its value.

I regard these grown-up children with the same kind of affection that I
have for little children--but there is also a difference. They are more
infantile still. Little children will grow up later on, but these big
children never.

A meek and radiantly simple soul shines through their worn and wrinkled,
old bodies. Little children are merely simple, they have not the
unquestioning, unwavering devotion of these. If there be any undercurrent
along which the souls of men may have communication with one another, then
my sincere blessing will surely reach and serve them.




SHELIDAH,

_16th May_ 1893.


I walk about for an hour on the river bank, fresh and clean after my
afternoon bath. Then I get into the new jolly-boat, anchor in mid-stream,
and on a bed, spread on the planked over-stern, I lie silently there on my
back, in the darkness of the evening. Little S---- sits beside me and
chatters away, and the sky becomes more and more thickly studded with
stars.

Each day the thought recurs to me: Shall I be reborn under this
star-spangled sky? Will the peaceful rapture of such wonderful evenings
ever again be mine, on this silent Bengal river, in so secluded a corner
of the world?

Perhaps not. The scene may be changed; I may be born with a different
mind. Many such evenings may come, but they may refuse to nestle so
trustfully, so lovingly, with such complete abandon, to my breast.

Curiously enough, my greatest fear is lest I should be reborn in Europe!
For there one cannot recline like this with one's whole being laid open to
the infinite above--one is liable, I am afraid, to be soundly rated for
lying down at all. I should probably have been hustling strenuously in
some factory or bank, or Parliament. Like the roads there, one's mind has
to be stone-metalled for heavy traffic--geometrically laid out, and kept
clear and regulated.

I am sure I cannot exactly say why this lazy, dreamy, self-absorbed,
sky-filled state of mind seems to me the more desirable. I feel no whit
inferior to the busiest men of the world as I lie here in my jolly-boat.
Rather, had I girded up my loins to be strenuous, I might have seemed ever
so feeble compared to those chips of old oaken blocks.




SHELIDAH,

_3rd July 1893._

All last night the wind howled like a stray dog, and the rain still pours
on without a break. The water from the fields is rushing in numberless,
purling streams to the river. The dripping ryots are crossing the river in
the ferryboat, some with their tokas[1] on, others with yam leaves held
over their heads. Big cargo-boats are gliding along, the boatman sitting
drenched at his helm, the crew straining at the tow-ropes through the
rain. The birds remain gloomily confined to their nests, but the sons of
men fare forth, for in spite of the weather the world's work must go on.

[Footnote 1: Conical hats of straw or of split bamboo.]

Two cowherd lads are grazing their cattle just in front of my boat. The
cows are munching away with great gusto, their noses plunged into the lush
grass, their tails incessantly busy flicking off the flies. The raindrops
and the sticks of the cowherd boys fall on their backs with the same
unreasonable persistency, and they bear both with equally uncritical
resignation, steadily going on with their munch, munch, munch. These cows
have such mild, affectionate, mournful eyes; why, I wonder, should
Providence have thought fit to impose all the burden of man's work on the
submissive shoulders of these great, gentle beasts?

The river is rising daily. What I could see yesterday only from the upper
deck, I can now see from my cabin windows. Every morning I awake to find
my field of vision growing larger. Not long since, only the tree-tops near
those distant villages used to appear, like dark green clouds. To-day the
whole of the wood is visible.

Land and water are gradually approaching each other like two bashful
lovers. The limit of their shyness has nearly been reached--their arms
will soon be round each other's necks. I shall enjoy my trip along this
brimful river at the height of the rains. I am fidgeting to give the order
to cast off.




SHELIDAH,

_4th July_ 1893.


A little gleam of sunlight shows this morning. There was a break in the
rains yesterday, but the clouds are banked up so heavily along the skirts
of the sky that there is not much hope of the break lasting. It looks as
if a heavy carpet of cloud had been rolled up to one side, and at any
moment a fussy breeze may come along and spread it over the whole place
again, covering every trace of blue sky and golden sunshine.

What a store of water must have been laid up in the sky this year. The
river has already risen over the low _chur_-lands,[1] threatening to
overwhelm all the standing crops. The wretched ryots, in despair, are
cutting and bringing away in boats sheaves of half-ripe rice. As they pass
my boat I hear them bewailing their fate. It is easy to understand how
heart-rending it must be for cultivators to have to cut down their rice on
the very eve of its ripening, the only hope left them being that some of
the ears may possibly have hardened into grain.

[Footnote 1: Old sand-banks consolidated by the deposit of a layer of
culturable soil.]

There must be some element of pity in the dispensations of Providence,
else how did we get our share of it? But it is so difficult to see where
it comes in. The lamentations of these hundreds of thousands of
unoffending creatures do not seem to get anywhere. The rain pours on as it
lists, the river still rises, and no amount of petitioning seems to have
the effect of bringing relief from any quarter. One has to seek
consolation by saying that all this is beyond the understanding of man.
And yet, it is so vitally necessary for man to understand that there are
such things as pity and justice in the world.

However, this is only sulking. Reason tells us that creation never can be
perfectly happy. So long as it is incomplete it must put up with
imperfection and sorrow. It can only be perfect when it ceases to be
creation, and is God. Do our prayers dare go so far?

The more we think over it, the oftener we come hack to the
starting-point--Why this creation at all? If we cannot make up our minds
to object to the thing itself, it is futile complaining about its
companion, sorrow.




SHAZADPUR,

_7th July_ 1893.


The flow of village life is not too rapid, neither is it stagnant. Work
and rest go together, hand in hand. The ferry crosses to and fro, the
passers-by with umbrellas up wend their way along the tow-path, women are
washing rice on the split-bamboo trays which they dip in the water, the
ryots are coming to the market with bundles of jute on their heads. Two
men are chopping away at a log of wood with regular, ringing blows. The
village carpenter is repairing an upturned dinghy under a big
_aswatha_ tree. A mongrel dog is prowling aimlessly along the canal
bank. Some cows are lying there chewing the cud, after a huge meal off the
luxuriant grass, lazily moving their ears backwards and forwards, flicking
off flies with their tails, and occasionally giving an impatient toss of
their heads when the crows perched on their backs take too much of a
liberty.

The monotonous blows of woodcutter's axe or carpenter's mallet, the
splashing of oars, the merry voices of the naked little children at play,
the plaintive tune of the ryot's song, the more dominant creaking of the
turning oil-mill, all these sounds of activity do not seem out of harmony
with murmuring leaves and singing birds, and all combine like moving
strains of some grand dream-orchestra, rendering a composition of immense
though restrained pathos.




SHAZADPUR,

_10th July 1893._


All I have to say about the discussion that is going on over "silent
poets" is that, though the strength of feeling may be the same in those
who are silent as in those who are vocal, that has nothing to do with
poetry. Poetry is not a matter of feeling, it is the creation of form.

Ideas take shape by some hidden, subtle skill at work within the poet.
This creative power is the origin of poetry. Perceptions, feelings, or
language, are only raw material. One may be gifted with feeling, a second
with language, a third with both; but he who has as well a creative
genius, alone is a poet.




PATISAR,

_13th August 1893._


Coming through these _beels_[1] to Kaligram, an idea took shape in my
mind. Not that the thought was new, but sometimes old ideas strike one
with new force.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Sometimes a stream passing through the
flat Bengal country encounters a stretch of low land and spreads out into
a sheet of water, called a _beel_, of indefinite extent, ranging from a
large pool in the dry season to a shoreless expanse during the rains.

Villages consisting of a cluster of huts, built on mounds, stand out here
and there like islands, and boats or round, earthen vessels are the only
means of getting about from village to village.

Where the waters cover cultivated tracts the rice grows through, often
from considerable depths, giving to the boats sailing over them the
curious appearance of gliding over a cornfield, so clear is the water.
Elsewhere these _beels_ have a peculiar flora and fauna of water-lilies
and irises and various water-fowl. As a result, they resemble neither a
marsh nor a lake, but have a distinct character of their own.]

The water loses its beauty when it ceases to be defined by banks and
spreads out into a monotonous vagueness. In the case of language, metre
serves for banks and gives form and beauty and character. Just as the
banks give each river a distinct personality, so does rhythm make each
poem an individual creation; prose is like the featureless, impersonal
_beel_. Again, the waters of the river have movement and progress; those
of the _beel_ engulf the country by expanse alone. So, in order to give
language power, the narrow bondage of metre becomes necessary; otherwise
it spreads and spreads, but cannot advance.

The country people call these _beels_ "dumb waters"--they have no
language, no self-expression. The river ceaselessly babbles; so the words
of the poem sing, they are not "dumb words." Thus bondage creates beauty
of form, motion, and music; bounds make not only for beauty but power.

Poetry gives itself up to the control of metre, not led by blind habit,
but because it thus finds the joy of motion. There are foolish persons who
think that metre is a species of verbal gymnastics, or legerdemain, of
which the object is to win the admiration of the crowd. That is not so.
Metre is born as all beauty is born the universe through. The current set
up within well-defined bounds gives metrical verse power to move the minds
of men as vague and indefinite prose cannot.

This idea became clear to me as I glided on from river to _beel_ and
_beel_ to river.




PATISAR,

_26th (Straven) August 1893._


For some time it has struck me that man is a rough-hewn and woman a
finished product.

There is an unbroken consistency in the manners, customs, speech, and
adornment of woman. And the reason is, that for ages Nature has assigned
to her the same definite rôle and has been adapting her to it. No
cataclysm, no political revolution, no alteration of social ideal, has yet
diverted woman from her particular functions, nor destroyed their
inter-relations. She has loved, tended, and caressed, and done nothing
else; and the exquisite skill which she has acquired in these, permeates
all her being and doing. Her disposition and action have become
inseparably one, like the flower and its scent. She has, therefore, no
doubts or hesitations.

But the character of man has still many hollows and protuberances; each of
the varied circumstances and forces which have contributed to his making
has left its mark upon him. That is why the features of one will display
an indefinite spread of forehead, of another an irresponsible prominence
of nose, of a third an unaccountable hardness about the jaws. Had man but
the benefit of continuity and uniformity of purpose, Nature must have
succeeded in elaborating a definite mould for him, enabling him to
function simply and naturally, without such strenuous effort. He would not
have so complicated a code of behaviour; and he would be less liable to
deviate from the normal when disturbed by outside influences.

Woman was cast in the mould of mother. Man has no such primal design to go
by, and that is why he has been unable to rise to an equal perfection of
beauty.




PATISAR,

_19th February 1894._


We have two elephants which come to graze on this bank of the river. They
greatly interest me. They give the ground a few taps with one foot, and
then taking hold of the grass with the end of their trunks wrench off an
enormous piece of turf, roots, soil, and all. This they go on swinging
till all the earth leaves the roots; they then put it into their mouths
and eat it up.

Sometimes the whim takes them to draw up the dust into their trunks, and
then with a snort they squirt it all over their bodies; this is their
elephantine toilet.

I love to look on these overgrown beasts, with their vast bodies, their
immense strength, their ungainly proportions, their docile harmlessness.
Their very size and clumsiness make me feel a kind of tenderness for
them--their unwieldy bulk has something infantile about it. Moreover, they
have large hearts. When they get wild they are furious, but when they calm
down they are peace itself.

The uncouthness which goes with bigness does not repel, it rather
attracts.




PATISAR,

_27th February 1894._


The sky is every now and then overcast and again clears up. Sudden little
puffs of wind make the boat lazily creak and groan in all its seams. Thus
the day wears on.

It is now past one o'clock. Steeped in this countryside noonday, with its
different sounds--the quacking of ducks, the swirl of passing boats,
bathers splashing the clothes they wash, the distant shouts from drovers
taking cattle across the ford,--it is difficult even to imagine the
chair-and-table, monotonously dismal routine-life of Calcutta.

Calcutta is as ponderously proper as a Government office. Each of its days
comes forth, like coin from a mint, clear-cut and glittering. Ah! those
dreary, deadly days, so precisely equal in weight, so decently
respectable!

Here I am quit of the demands of my circle, and do not feel like a wound
up machine. Each day is my own. And with leisure and my thoughts I walk
the fields, unfettered by bounds of space or time. The evening gradually
deepens over earth and sky and water, as with bowed head I stroll along.




PATISAR,

_22nd March 1894._


As I was sitting at the window of the boat, looking out on the river, I
saw, all of a sudden, an odd-looking bird making its way through the water
to the opposite bank, followed by a great commotion. I found it was a
domestic fowl which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley by
jumping overboard and was now trying frantically to win across. It had
almost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closed
on it, and it was brought back in triumph, gripped by the neck. I told the
cook I would not have any meat for dinner.

I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because
we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimes
which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put
down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is
not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice
distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its
protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on
perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us--in fact, any one who
does not join in is dubbed a crank.

How artificial is our apprehension of sin! I feel that the highest
commandment is that of sympathy for all sentient beings. Love is the
foundation of all religion. The other day I read in one of the English
papers that 50,000 pounds of animal carcasses had been sent to some army
station in Africa, but the meat being found to have gone bad on arrival,
the consignment was returned and was eventually auctioned off for a few
pounds at Portsmouth. What a shocking waste of life! What callousness to
its true worth! How many living creatures are sacrificed only to grace the
dishes at a dinner-party, a large proportion of which will leave the table
untouched!

So long as we are unconscious of our cruelty we may not be to blame. But
if, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelings
simply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult all
that is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet.




PATISAR,

_28th March 1894._


It is getting rather warm here, but I do not mind the heat of the sun
much. The heated wind whistles on its way, now and then pauses in a whirl,
then dances away twirling its skirt of dust and sand and dry leaves and
twigs.

This morning, however, it was quite cold--almost like a cold-weather
morning; in fact, I did not feel over-enthusiastic for my bath. It is so
difficult to account for what veritably happens in this big thing called
Nature. Some obscure cause turns up in some unknown corner, and all of a
sudden things look completely different.

The mind of man works in just the same mysterious fashion as outside
Nature--so it struck me yesterday. A wondrous alchemy is being wrought in
artery, vein, and nerve, in brain and marrow. The blood-stream rushes on,
the nerve--strings vibrate, the heart-muscle rises and falls, and the
seasons in man's being change from one to another. What kind of breezes
will blow next, when and from what quarter--of that we know nothing.

One day I am sure I shall get along splendidly; I feel strong enough to
leap over all the obstructing sorrows and trials of the world; and, as if
I had a printed programme for the rest of my life tucked safely away in my
pocket, I am at ease. The next day there is a nasty wind, sprung up from
some unknown _inferno_, the aspect of the sky is threatening, and I
begin to doubt whether I shall ever weather the storm. Merely because
something has gone wrong in some blood-vessel or nerve-fibre, all my
strength and intelligence seem to fail me.

This mystery within frightens me. It makes me diffident about talking of
what I shall or shall not do. Why was this tacked on to me--this immense
mystery which I can neither understand nor control? I know not where it
may lead me or I lead it. I cannot see what is happening, nor am I
consulted about what is going to happen, and yet I have to keep up an
appearance of mastery and pretend to be the doer....

I feel like a living pianoforte with a vast complication of machinery and
wires inside, but with no means of telling who the player is, and with
only a guess as to why the player plays at all. I can only know what is
being played, whether the mode is merry or mournful, when the notes are
sharp or flat, the tune in or out of time, the key high-pitched or low.
But do I really know even that?




PATISAR,

_30th March 1894._


Sometimes when I realise that Life's journey is long, and that the sorrows
to be encountered are many and inevitable, a supreme effort is required to
keep up my strength of mind. Some evenings, as I sit alone staring at the
flame of the lamp on the table, I vow I will live as a brave man
should--unmoved, silent, uncomplaining. The resolve puffs me up, and for
the moment I mistake myself for a very, very brave person indeed. But as
soon as the thorns on the road worry my feet, I writhe and begin to feel
serious misgivings as to the future. The path of life again seems long,
and my strength inadequate.

But this last conclusion cannot be the true one, for it is these petty
thorns which are the most difficult to bear. The household of the mind is
a thrifty one, and only so much is spent as is necessary. There is no
squandering on trifles, and its wealth of strength is saved up with
miserly strictness to meet the really big calamities. So any amount of
weeping and wailing over the lesser griefs fails to evoke a charitable
response. But when sorrow is deepest there is no stint of effort. Then the
surface crust is pierced, and consolation wells up, and all the forces of
patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. Thus great
suffering brings with it the power of great endurance.

One side of man's nature has the desire for pleasure--there is another
side which desires self-sacrifice. When the former meets with
disappointment, the latter gains strength, and on its thus finding fuller
scope a grand enthusiasm fills the soul. So while we are cowards before
petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood.
And in these, therefore, there is a joy.

It is not an empty paradox to say that there is joy in sorrow, just as, on
the other hand, it is true that there is a dissatisfaction in pleasure. It
is not difficult to understand why this should be so.




SHELIDAH,

_24th June 1894_.


I have been only four days here, but, having lost count of the hours, it
seems such a long while, I feel that if I were to return to Calcutta
to-day I should find much of it changed--as if I alone had been standing
still outside the current of time, unconscious of the gradually changing
position of the rest of the world.

The fact is that here, away from Calcutta, I live in my own inner world,
where the clocks do not keep ordinary time; where duration is measured
only by the intensity of the feelings; where, as the outside world does
not count the minutes, moments change into hours and hours into moments.
So it seems to me that the subdivisions of time and space are only mental
illusions. Every atom is immeasurable and every moment infinite.

There is a Persian story which I was greatly taken with when I read it as
a boy--I think I understood, even then, something of the underlying idea,
though I was a mere child. To show the illusory character of time, a
_faquir_ put some magic water into a tub and asked the King to take a
dip. The King no sooner dipped his head in than he found himself in a
strange country by the sea, where he spent a good long time going through
a variety of happenings and doings. He married, had children, his wife and
children died, he lost all his wealth, and as he writhed under his
sufferings he suddenly found himself back in the room, surrounded by his
courtiers. On his proceeding to revile the _faquir_ for his
misfortunes, they said: "But, Sire, you have only just dipped your head
in, and raised it out of the water!"

The whole of our life with its pleasures and pains is in the same way
enclosed in one moment of time. However long or intense we may feel it to
be while it lasts, as soon as we have finished our dip in the tub of the
world, we shall find how like a slight, momentary dream the whole thing
has been....




SHELIDAH,

_9th August 1894._


I saw a dead bird floating down the current to-day. The history of its
death may easily be divined. It had a nest in some mango tree at the edge
of a village. It returned home in the evening, nestling there against
soft-feathered companions, and resting a wearied little body in sleep. All
of a sudden, in the night, the mighty Padma tossed slightly in her bed,
and the earth was swept away from the roots of the mango tree. The little
creature bereft of its nest awoke just for a moment before it went to
sleep again for ever.

When I am in the presence of the awful mystery of all-destructive Nature,
the difference between myself and the other living things seems trivial.
In town, human society is to the fore and looms large; it is cruelly
callous to the happiness and misery of other creatures as compared with
its own.

In Europe, also, man is so complex and so dominant, that the animal is too
merely an animal to him. To Indians the idea of the transmigration of the
soul from animal to man, and man to animal, does not seem strange, and so
from our scriptures pity for all sentient creatures has not been banished
as a sentimental exaggeration.

When I am in close touch with Nature in the country, the Indian in me
asserts itself and I cannot remain coldly indifferent to the abounding joy
of life throbbing within the soft down-covered breast of a single tiny
bird.




SHELIDAH,

_10th August 1894._


Last night a rushing sound in the water awoke me--a sudden boisterous
disturbance of the river current--probably the onslaught of a freshet: a
thing that often happens at this season. One's feet on the planking of the
boat become aware of a variety of forces at work beneath it. Slight
tremors, little rockings, gentle heaves, and sudden jerks, all keep me in
touch with the pulse of the flowing stream.

There must have been some sudden excitement in the night, which sent the
current racing away. I rose and sat by the window. A hazy kind of light
made the turbulent river look madder than ever. The sky was spotted with
clouds. The reflection of a great big star quivered on the waters in a
long streak, like a burning gash of pain. Both banks were vague with the
dimness of slumber, and between them was this wild, sleepless unrest,
running and running regardless of consequences.

To watch a scene like this in the middle of the night makes one feel
altogether a different person, and the daylight life an illusion. Then
again, this morning, that midnight world faded away into some dreamland,
and vanished into thin air. The two are so different, yet both are true
for man.

The day-world seems to me like European Music--its concords and discords
resolving into each other in a great progression of harmony; the
night-world like Indian Music--pure, unfettered melody, grave and
poignant. What if their contrast be so striking--both move us. This
principle of opposites is at the very root of creation, which is divided
between the rule of the King and the Queen; Night and Day; the One and the
Varied; the Eternal and the Evolving.

We Indians are under the rule of Night. We are immersed in the Eternal,
the One. Our melodies are to be sung alone, to oneself; they take us out
of the everyday world into a solitude aloof. European Music is for the
multitude and takes them along, dancing, through the ups and downs of the
joys and sorrows of men.




SHELIDAH,

_13th August 1894._


Whatever I truly think, truly feel, truly realise,--its natural destiny is
to find true expression. There is some force in me which continually works
towards that end, but is not mine alone,--it permeates the universe. When
this universal force is manifested within an individual, it is beyond his
control and acts according to its own nature; and in surrendering our
lives to its power is our greatest joy. It not only gives us expression,
but also sensitiveness and love; this makes our feelings so fresh to us
every time, so full of wonder.

When my little daughter delights me, she merges into the original mystery
of joy which is the Universe; and my loving caresses are called forth like
worship. I am sure that all our love is but worship of the Great Mystery,
only we perform it unconsciously. Otherwise it is meaningless.

Like universal gravitation, which governs large and small alike in the
world of matter, this universal joy exerts its attraction throughout our
inner world, and baffles our understanding when we see it in a partial
view. The only rational explanation of why we find joy in man and nature
is given in the Upanishad:

 For of joy are born all created things.




SHELIDAH,

_19th August 1894._


The Vedanta seems to help many to free their minds from all doubt as to
the Universe and its First Cause, but my doubts remain undispelled. It is
true that the Vedanta is simpler than most other theories. The problem of
Creation and its Creator is more complex than appears at first sight; but
the Vedanta has certainly simplified it half way, by cutting the Gordian
knot and leaving out Creation altogether.

There is only Brahma, and the rest of us merely imagine that we are,--it
is wonderful how the human mind should have found room for such a thought.
It is still more wonderful to think that the idea is not so inconsistent
as it sounds, and the real difficulty is, rather, to prove that anything
does exist.

Anyhow, when as now the moon is up, and with half-closed eyes I am
stretched beneath it on the upper deck, the soft breeze cooling my
problem-vexed head, then the earth, waters, and sky around, the gentle
rippling of the river, the casual wayfarer passing along the tow-path, the
occasional dinghy gliding by, the trees across the fields, vague in the
moonlight, the sleepy village beyond, bounded by the dark shadows of its
groves,--verily seem an illusion of _Maya_; and yet they cling to and
draw the mind and heart more truly than truth itself, which is
abstraction, and it becomes impossible to realise what kind of salvation
there can be in freeing oneself from them.




SHAZADPUR,

_5th September 1894._


I realise how hungry for space I have become, and take my fill of it in
these rooms where I hold my state as sole monarch, with all doors and
windows thrown open. Here the desire and power to write are mine as they
are nowhere else. The stir of outside life comes into me in waves of
verdure, and with its light and scent and sound stimulated my fancy into
story-writing.

The afternoons have a special enchantment of their own. The glare of the
sun, the silence, the solitude, the bird cries, especially the cawings of
crows, and the delightful, restful leisure--these conspire to carry me
away altogether.

Just such noondays seem to have gone to the making of the Arabian
Nights,--in Damascus, Bokhara, or Samarkhand, with their desert roadways,
files of camels, wandering horsemen, crystal springs, welling up under the
shade of feathery date groves; their wilderness of roses, songs of
nightingales, wines of Shiraz; their narrow bazaar paths with bright
overhanging canopies, the men, in loose robes and multi-coloured turbans,
selling dates and nuts and melons; their palaces, fragrant with incense,
luxurious with kincob-covered divans and bolsters by the window-side;
their Zobedia or Amina or Sufia with gaily decorated jacket, wide
trousers, and gold-embroidered slippers, a long narghilah pipe curled up
at her feet, with gorgeously liveried eunuchs on guard,--and all the
possible and impossible tales of human deeds and desires, and the laughter
and wailing, of that distant mysterious region.




ON THE WAY TO DIGHAPATIAYA,

_20th September 1894._


Big trees are standing in the flood water, their trunks wholly submerged,
their branches and foliage bending over the waters. Boats are tied up
under shady groves of mango and bo tree, and people bathe screened behind
them. Here and there cottages stand out in the current, their inner
quadrangles under water.

As my boat rustles its way through standing crops it now and then comes
across what was a pool and is still to be distinguished by its clusters of
water-lilies, and diver-birds pursuing fish.

The water has penetrated every possible place. I have never before seen
such a complete defeat of the land. A little more and the water will be
right inside the cottages, and their occupants will have to put up
_machans_ to live on. The cows will die if they have to remain
standing like this in water up to their knees. All the snakes have been
flooded out of their holes, and they, with sundry other homeless reptiles
and insects, will have to chum with man and take refuge on the thatch of
his roof.

The vegetation rotting in the water, refuse of all kinds floating about,
naked children with shrivelled limbs and enlarged spleens splashing
everywhere, the long-suffering patient housewives exposed in their wet
clothes to wind and rain, wading through their daily tasks with tucked-up
skirts, and over all a thick pall of mosquitoes hovering in the noxious
atmosphere--the sight is hardly pleasing!

Colds and fevers and rheumatism in every home, the malaria-stricken
infants constantly crying,--nothing can save them. How is it possible for
men to live in such unlovely, unhealthy, squalid, neglected surroundings?
The fact is we are so used to bear everything, hands down,--the ravages of
Nature, the oppression of rulers, the pressure of our _shastras_ to
which we have not a word to say, while they keep eternally grinding us
down.




ON THE WAY TO BOALIA,

_22nd September 1894._


It feels strange to be reminded that only thirty-two Autumns have come and
gone in my life; for my memory seems to have receded back into the dimness
of time immemorial; and when my inner world is flooded with a light, as of
an unclouded autumn morning, I feel I am sitting at the window of some
magic palace, gazing entranced on a scene of distant reminiscence, soothed
with soft breezes laden with the faint perfume of all the Past.

Goethe on his death-bed wanted "more light." If I have any desire left at
all at such a time, it will be for "more space" as well; for I dearly love
both light and space. Many look down on Bengal as being only a flat
country, but that is just what makes me revel in its scenery all the more.
Its unobstructed sky is filled to the brim, like an amethyst cup, with the
descending twilight and peace of the evening; and the golden skirt of the
still, silent noonday spreads over the whole of it without let or
hindrance.

Where is there another such country for the eye to look on, the mind to
take in?




CALCUTTA,

_5th October 1894._


To-morrow is the Durga Festival. As I was going to S----'s yesterday, I
noticed images being made in almost every big house on the way. It struck
me that during these few days of the Poojahs, old and young alike had
become children.

When we come to think of it, all preparation for enjoyment is really a
playing with toys which are of no consequence in themselves. From outside
it may appear wasteful, but can that be called futile which raises such a
wave of feeling through and through the country? Even the driest of
worldly-wise people are moved out of their self-centred interests by the
rush of the pervading emotion.

Thus, once every year there comes a period when all minds are in a melting
mood, fit for the springing of love and affection and sympathy. The songs
of welcome and farewell to the goddess, the meeting of loved ones, the
strains of the festive pipes, the limpid sky and molten gold of autumn,
are all parts of one great paean of joy.

Pure joy is the children's joy. They have the power of using any and every
trivial thing to create their world of interest, and the ugliest doll is
made beautiful with their imagination and lives with their life. He who
can retain this faculty of enjoyment after he has grown up, is indeed the
true Idealist. For him things are not merely visible to the eye or audible
to the ear, but they are also sensible to the heart, and their narrowness
and imperfections are lost in the glad music which he himself supplies.

Every one cannot hope to be an Idealist, but a whole people approaches
nearest to this blissful state at such seasons of festivity. And then what
may ordinarily appear to be a mere toy loses its limitations and becomes
glorified with an ideal radiance.




BOLPUR,

_19th October 1894._


We know people only in dotted outline, that is to say, with gaps in our
knowledge which we have to fill in ourselves, as best we can. Thus, even
those we know well are largely made up of our imagination. Sometimes the
lines are so broken, with even the guiding dots missing, that a portion of
the picture remains darkly confused and uncertain. If, then, our best
friends are only pieces of broken outline strung on a thread of
imagination, do we really know anybody at all, or does anybody know us
except in the same disjointed fashion? But perhaps it is these very
loopholes, allowing entrance to each other's imagination, which make for
intimacy; otherwise each one, secure in his inviolate individuality, would
have been unapproachable to all but the Dweller within.

Our own self, too, we know only in bits, and with these scraps of material
we have to shape the hero of our life-story,--likewise with the help of
our imagination. Providence has, doubtless, deliberately omitted portions
so that we may assist in our own creation.




BOLPUR,

_31st October 1894._


The first of the north winds has begun to blow to-day, shiveringly. It
looks as if there had been a visitation of the tax-gatherer in the
_Amlaki_ groves,--everything beside itself, sighing, trembling,
withering. The tired impassiveness of the noonday sunshine, with its
monotonous cooing of doves in the dense shade of the mango-tops, seems to
overcast the drowsy watches of the day with a pang, as of some impending
parting.

The ticking of the clock on my table, and the pattering of the squirrels
which scamper in and out of my room, are in harmony with all other midday
sounds.

It amuses me to watch these soft, grey and black striped, furry squirrels,
with their bushy tails, their twinkling bead-like eyes, their gentle yet
busily practical demeanour. Everything eatable has to be put away in the
wire-gauze cupboard in the corner, safe from these greedy creatures. So,
sniffing with an irrepressible eagerness, they come nosing round and round
the cupboard, trying to find some hole for entrance. If any grain or crumb
has been dropped outside they are sure to find it, and, taking it between
their forepaws, nibble away with great industry, turning it over and over
to adjust it to their mouths. At the least movement of mine up go their
tails over their backs and off they run, only to stop short half-way, sit
up on their tails on the door-mat, scratching their ears with their
hind-paws, and then come back.

Thus little sounds continue all day long--gnawing teeth, scampering feet,
and the tinkling of the china on the shelves.




SHELIDAH,

_7th December 1894._


As I walk on the moonlit sands, S---- usually comes up for a business
talk.

He came last evening; and when silence fell upon me after the talk was
over, I became aware of the eternal universe standing before me in the
evening light. The trivial chatter of one person had been enough to
obscure the presence of its all-pervading manifestation.

As soon as the patter of words came to an end, the peace of the stars
descended, and filled my heart to overflowing. I found my seat in one
corner, with these assembled millions of shining orbs, in the great
mysterious conclave of Being.

I have to start out early in the evening so as to let my mind absorb the
tranquillity outside, before S---- comes along with his jarring inquiries
as to whether the milk has agreed with me, and if I have finished going
through the Annual Statement.

How curiously placed are we between the Eternal and the Ephemeral! Any
allusion to the affairs of the stomach sounds so hopelessly discordant
when the mind is dwelling on the things of the spirit,--and yet the soul
and the stomach have been living together so long. The very spot on which
the moonlight falls is my landed property, but the moonlight tells me that
my _zamindari_ is an illusion, and my _zamindari_ tells me that
this moonlight is all emptiness. And as for poor me, I remain distracted
between the two.




SHELIDAH,

_23rd February_ 1895.


I grow quite absent-minded when I try to write for the _Sadhana_
magazine.

I raise my eyes to every passing boat and keep staring at the ferry going
to and fro. And then on the bank, close to my boat, there are a herd of
buffaloes thrusting their massive snouts into the herbage, wrapping their
tongues round it to get it into their mouths, and then munching away,
blowing hard with great big gasps of contentment, and flicking the flies
off their backs with their tails.

All of a sudden a naked weakling of a human cub appears on the scene,
makes sundry noises, and pokes one of the patient beasts with a cudgel,
whereupon, throwing occasional glances at the human sprig out of a corner
of its eye, and snatching at tufts of leaves or grass here and there on
the way, the unruffled beast leisurely moves on a few paces, and that imp
of a boy seems to feel that his duty as herdsman has been done.

I fail to penetrate this mystery of the boy-cowherd's mind. Whenever a cow
or a buffalo has selected a spot to its liking and is comfortably grazing
there, I cannot divine what purpose is served by worrying it, as he
insists on doing, till it shifts somewhere else. I suppose it is man's
masterfulness glorying in triumph over the powerful creature it has tamed.
Anyhow, I love to see these buffaloes amongst the lush grass.

But this is not what I started to say. I wanted to tell you how the least
thing distracts me nowadays from my duty to the _Sadhana_. In my last
letter[1] I told you of the bumble-bees which hover round me in some
fruitless quest, to the tune of a meaningless humming, with tireless
assiduity.

[Footnote 1: Not included in this selection.]

They come every day at about nine or ten in the morning, dart up to my
table, shoot down under the desk, go bang on to the coloured glass
window-pane, and then with a circuit or two round my head are off again
with a whizz.

I could easily have thought them to be departed spirits who had left this
world unsatisfied, and so keep coming back to it again and again in the
guise of bees, paying me an inquiring visit in passing. But I think
nothing of the kind. I am sure they are real bees, otherwise known, in
Sanskrit, as honey-suckers, or on still rarer occasions as
double-proboscideans.




SHELIDAH,

_16th (Phalgun) February_ 1895.


We have to tread every single moment of the way as we go on living our
life, but when taken as a whole it is such a very small thing, two hours
uninterrupted thought can hold all of it.

After thirty years of strenuous living Shelley could only supply material
for two volumes of biography, of which, moreover, a considerable space is
taken up by Dowden's chatter. The thirty years of my life would not fill
even one volume.

What a to-do there is over this tiny bit of life! To think of the quantity
of land and trade and commerce which go to furnish its commissariat alone,
the amount of space occupied by each individual throughout the world,
though one little chair is large enough to hold the whole of him! Yet,
after all is over and done, there remains only material for two hours'
thought, some pages of writing!

What a negligible fraction of my few pages would this one lazy day of mine
occupy! But then, will not this peaceful day, on the desolate sands by the
placid river, leave nevertheless a distinct little gold mark even upon the
scroll of my eternal past and eternal future?




SHELIDAH,

_28th February_ 1895.


I have got an anonymous letter to-day which begins:

 To give up one's self at the feet of another,
 is the truest of all gifts.

The writer has never seen me, but knows me from my writings, and goes on
to say:

  However petty or distant, the Sun[1]-worshipper gets a share of the
  Sun's rays. You are the world's poet, yet to me it seems you are my own
  poet!

[Footnote 1: Rabi, the author's name, means the Sun.]

and more in the same strain.

Man is so anxious to bestow his love on some object, that he ends by
falling in love with his own Ideal. But why should we suppose the idea to
be less true than the reality? We can never know for certain the truth of
the substance underlying what we get through the senses. Why should the
doubt be greater in the case of the entity behind the ideas which are the
creation of mind?

The mother realises in her child the great Idea, which is in every child,
the ineffableness of which, however, is not revealed to any one else. Are
we to say that what draws forth the mother's very life and soul is
illusory, but what fails to draw the rest of us to the same extent is the
real truth?

Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love--the beauty of his
soul knows no limit.... But I am departing into generalities. What I
wanted to express is, that in one sense I have no right to accept this
offering of my admirer's heart; that is to say, for me, seen within my
everyday covering, such a person could not possibly have had these
feelings. But there is another sense in which I am worthy of all this, or
of even greater adoration.




ON THE WAY TO PABNA,

_9th July_ 1895.


I am gliding through this winding little Ichamati, this streamlet of the
rainy season. With rows of villages along its banks, its fields of jute
and sugar-cane, its reed patches, its green bathing slopes, it is like a
few lines of a poem, often repeated and as often enjoyed. One cannot
commit to memory a big river like the Padma, but this meandering little
Ichamati, the flow of whose syllables is regulated by the rhythm of the
rains, I am gradually making my very own....

It is dusk, the sky getting dark with clouds. The thunder rumbles
fitfully, and the wild casuarina clumps bend in waves to the stormy gusts
which pass through them. The depths of bamboo thickets look black as ink.
The pallid twilight glimmers over the water like the herald of some weird
event.

I am bending over my desk in the dimness, writing this letter. I want to
whisper low-toned, intimate talk, in keeping with this penumbra of the
dusk. But it is just wishes like these which baffle all effort. They
either get fulfilled of themselves, or not at all. That is why it is a
simple matter to warm up to a grim battle, but not to an easy,
inconsequent talk.




SHELIDAH,

_14th August_ 1895.


One great point about work is that for its sake the individual has to make
light of his personal joys and sorrows; indeed, so far as may be, to
ignore them. I am reminded of an incident at Shazadpur. My servant was
late one morning, and I was greatly annoyed at his delay. He came up and
stood before me with his usual _salaam_, and with a slight catch in
his voice explained that his eight-year-old daughter had died last night.
Then, with his duster, he set to tidying up my room.

When we look at the field of work, we see some at their trades, some
tilling the soil, some carrying burdens, and yet underneath, death,
sorrow, and loss are flowing, in an unseen undercurrent, every day,--their
privacy not intruded upon. If ever these should break forth beyond control
and come to the surface, then all this work would at once come to a stop.
Over the individual sorrows, flowing beneath, is a hard stone track,
across which the trains of duty, with their human load, thunder their way,
stopping for none save at appointed stations. This very cruelty of work
proves, perhaps, man's sternest consolation.




KUSHTEA,

_5th October 1895_.


The religion that only comes to us from external scriptures never becomes
our own; our only tie with it is that of habit. To gain religion within is
man's great lifelong adventure. In the extremity of suffering must it be
born; on his life-blood it must live; and then, whether or not it brings
him happiness, the man's journey shall end in the joy of fulfilment.

We rarely realise how false for us is that which we hear from other lips,
or keep repeating with our own, while all the time the temple of our Truth
is building within us, brick by brick, day after day. We fail to
understand the mystery of this eternal building when we view our joys and
sorrows apart by themselves, in the midst of fleeting time; just as a
sentence becomes unintelligible if one has to spell through every word of
it.

When once we perceive the unity of the scheme of that creation which is
going on in us, we realise our relation to the ever-unfolding universe. We
realise that we are in the process of being created in the same way as are
the glowing heavenly orbs which revolve in their courses,--our desires,
our sufferings, all finding their proper place within the whole.

We may not know exactly what is happening: we do not know exactly even
about a speck of dust. But when we feel the flow of life in us to be one
with the universal life outside, then all our pleasures and pains are seen
strung upon one long thread of joy. The facts: _I am, I move, I
grow_, are seen in all their immensity in connection with the fact that
everything else is there along with me, and not the tiniest atom can do
without me.

The relation of my soul to this beautiful autumn morning, this vast
radiance, is one of intimate kinship; and all this colour, scent, and
music is but the outward expression of our secret communion. This constant
communion, whether realised or unrealised, keeps my mind in movement; out
of this intercourse between my inner and outer worlds I gain such
religion, be it much or little, as my capacity allows: and in its light I
have to test scriptures before I can make them really my own.




SHELIDAH,

_12th December 1895._


The other evening I was reading an English book of criticisms, full of all
manner of disputations about Poetry, Art, Beauty, and so forth and so on.
As I plodded through these artificial discussions, my tired faculties
seemed to have wandered into a region of empty mirage, filled with the
presence of a mocking demon.

The night was far advanced. I closed the book with a bang and flung it on
the table. Then I blew out the lamp with the idea of turning into bed. No
sooner had I done so than, through the open windows, the moonlight burst
into the room, with a shock of surprise.

That little bit of a lamp had been sneering drily at me, like some
Mephistopheles: and that tiniest sneer had screened off this infinite
light of joy issuing forth from the deep love which is in all the world.
What, forsooth, had I been looking for in the empty wordiness of the book?
There was the very thing itself, filling the skies, silently waiting for
me outside, all these hours!

If I had gone off to bed leaving the shutters closed, and thus missed this
vision, it would have stayed there all the same without any protest
against the mocking lamp inside. Even if I had remained blind to it all my
life,--letting the lamp triumph to the end,--till for the last time I went
darkling to bed,--even then the moon would have still been there, sweetly
smiling, unperturbed and unobtrusive, waiting for me as she has throughout
the ages.







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