The Home and the World, Rabindranath Tagore [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗

for

himself and his family, a bare two meals a day during much more

than half the year. His method of eating is to begin with a good

filling draught of water, and his staple food is the cheapest

kind of seedy banana. And yet the family has to go with only one

meal a day for the rest of the year.

At one time I had an idea of making him a charity allowance,

"But," said my master, "your gift may destroy the man, it cannot

destroy the hardship of his lot. Mother Bengal has not only this

one Panchu. If the milk in her breasts has run dry, that cannot

be supplied from the outside."

These are thoughts which give one pause, and I decided to devote

myself to working it out. That very day I said to Bimal: "Let us

dedicate our lives to removing the root of this sorrow in our

country."

"You are my Prince Siddharta, [17] I see," she replied with a

smile. "But do not let the torrent of your feelings end by

sweeping me away also!"

"Siddharta took his vows alone. I want ours to be a joint

arrangement."

The idea passed away in talk. The fact is, Bimala is at heart

what is called a "lady". Though her own people are not well off,

she was born a Rani. She has no doubts in her mind that there is

a lower unit of measure for the trials and troubles of the "lower

classes". Want is, of course, a permanent feature of their

lives, but does not necessarily mean "want" to them. Their very

smallness protects them, as the banks protect the pool; by

widening bounds only the slime is exposed.

The real fact is that Bimala has only come into my home, not into

my life. I had magnified her so, leaving her such a large place,

that when I lost her, my whole way of life became narrow and

confined. I had thrust aside all other objects into a corner to

make room for Bimala--taken up as I was with decorating her and

dressing her and educating her and moving round her day and

night; forgetting how great is humanity and how nobly precious is

man's life. When the actualities of everyday things get the

better of the man, then is Truth lost sight of and freedom

missed. So painfully important did Bimala make the mere

actualities, that the truth remained concealed from me. That is

why I find no gap in my misery, and spread this minute point of

my emptiness over all the world. And so, for hours on this

Autumn morning, the refrain has been humming in my ears:

/*

It is the month of August, and the sky breaks into a passionate

rain;

Alas, my house is empty.

*/

The name by which Buddha was known when a Prince, before

renouncing the world.

Bimala's Story

XI

The change which had, in a moment, come over the mind of Bengal

was tremendous. It was as if the Ganges had touched the ashes of

the sixty thousand sons of Sagar [18] which no fire could

enkindle, no other water knead again into living clay. The ashes

of lifeless Bengal suddenly spoke up: "Here am I."

I have read somewhere that in ancient Greece a sculptor had the

good fortune to impart life to the image made by his own hand.

Even in that miracle, however, there was the process of form

preceding life. But where was the unity in this heap of barren

ashes? Had they been hard like stone, we might have had hopes of

some form emerging, even as Ahalya, though turned to stone, at

last won back her humanity. But these scattered ashes must have

dropped to the dust through gaps in the Creator's fingers, to be

blown hither and thither by the wind. They had become heaped up,

but were never before united. Yet in this day which had come to

Bengal, even this collection of looseness had taken shape, and

proclaimed in a thundering voice, at our very door: "Here I am."

How could we help thinking that it was all supernatural? This

moment of our history seemed to have dropped into our hand like a

jewel from the crown of some drunken god. It had no resemblance

to our past; and so we were led to hope that all our wants and

miseries would disappear by the spell of some magic charm, that

for us there was no longer any boundary line between the possible

and the impossible. Everything seemed to be saying to us: "It is

coming; it has come!"

Thus we came to cherish the belief that our history needed no

steed, but that like heaven's chariot it would move with its own

inherent power--At least no wages would have to be paid to the

charioteer; only his wine cup would have to be filled again and

again. And then in some impossible paradise the goal of our

hopes would be reached.

My husband was not altogether unmoved, but through all our

excitement it was the strain of sadness in him which deepened and

deepened. He seemed to have a vision of something beyond the

surging present.

I remember one day, in the course of the arguments he continually

had with Sandip, he said: "Good fortune comes to our gate and

announces itself, only to prove that we have not the power to

receive it--that we have not kept things ready to be able to

invite it into our house."

"No," was Sandip's answer. "You talk like an atheist because you

do not believe in our gods. To us it has been made quite visible

that the Goddess has come with her boon, yet you distrust the

obvious signs of her presence."

"It is because I strongly believe in my God," said my husband,

"that I feel so certain that our preparations for his worship are

lacking. God has power to give the boon, but we must have power

to accept it."

This kind of talk from my husband would only annoy me. I could

not keep from joining in: "You think this excitement is only a

fire of drunkenness, but does not drunkenness, up to a point,

give strength?"

"Yes," my husband replied. "It may give strength, but not

weapons."

"But strength is the gift of God," I went on. "Weapons can be

supplied by mere mechanics."

My husband smiled. "The mechanics will claim their wages before

they deliver their supplies," he said.

Sandip swelled his chest as he retorted: "Don't you trouble about

that. Their wages shall be paid."

"I shall bespeak the festive music when the payment has been

made, not before," my husband answered.

"You needn't imagine that we are depending on your bounty for the

music," said Sandip scornfully. "Our festival is above all money

payments."

And in his thick voice he began to sing:

/*

"My lover of the unpriced love, spurning payments,

Plays upon the simple pipe, bought for nothing,

Drawing my heart away."

*/

Then with a smile he turned to me and said: "If I sing, Queen

Bee, it is only to prove that when music comes into one's life,

the lack of a good voice is no matter. When we sing merely on

the strength of our tunefulness, the song is belittled. Now that

a full flood of music has swept over our country, let Nikhil

practise his scales, while we rouse the land with our cracked

voices:

/*

"My house cries to me: Why go out to lose your all?

My life says: All that you have, fling to the winds!

If we must lose our all, let us lose it: what is it worth after

all?

If I must court ruin, let me do it smilingly;

For my quest is the death-draught of immortality.

*/

"The truth is, Nikhil, that we have all lost our hearts. None

can hold us any longer within the bounds of the easily possible,

in our forward rush to the hopelessly impossible.

/*

"Those who would draw us back,

They know not the fearful joy of recklessness.

They know not that we have had our call

From the end of the crooked path.

All that is good and straight and trim--

Let it topple over in the dust."

*/

I thought that my husband was going to continue the discussion,

but he rose silently from his seat and left us.

The thing that was agitating me within was merely a variation of

the stormy passion outside, which swept the country from one end

to the other. The car of the wielder of my destiny was fast

approaching, and the sound of its wheels reverberated in my

being. I had a constant feeling that something extraordinary

might happen any moment, for which, however, the responsibility

would not be mine. Was I not removed from the plane in which

right and wrong, and the feelings of others, have to be

considered? Had I ever wanted this--had I ever been waiting or

hoping for any such thing? Look at my whole life and tell me

then, if I was in any way accountable.

Through all my past I had been consistent in my devotion--but

when at length it came to receiving the boon, a different god

appeared! And just as the awakened country, with its _Bande

Mataram_, thrills in salutation to the unrealized future

before it, so do all my veins and nerves send forth shocks of

welcome to the unthought-of, the unknown, the importunate

Stranger.

One night I left my bed and slipped out of my room on to the open

terrace. Beyond our garden wall are fields of ripening rice.

Through the gaps in the village groves to the North, glimpses of

the river are seen. The whole scene slept in the darkness like

the vague embryo of some future creation.

In that future I saw my country, a woman like myself, standing

expectant. She has been drawn forth from her home corner by the

sudden call of some Unknown. She has had no time to pause or

ponder, or to light herself a torch, as she rushes forward into

the darkness ahead. I know well how her very soul responds to

the distant flute-strains which call her; how her breast rises

and falls; how she feels she nears it, nay it is already hers, so

that it matters not even if she run blindfold. She is no mother.

There is no call to her of children in their hunger, no home to

be lighted of an evening, no household work to be done. So; she

hies to her tryst, for this is the land of the Vaishnava Poets.

She has left home, forgotten domestic duties; she has nothing but

an unfathomable yearning which hurries her on--by what road, to

what goal, she recks not.

I, also, am possessed of just such a yearning. I likewise have

lost my home and also lost my way. Both the end and the means

have become equally shadowy to me. There remain only the

yearning and the hurrying on. Ah! wretched wanderer through the

night, when the dawn reddens you will see no trace of a way to

return. But why return? Death will serve as well. If the Dark

which sounded the flute should lead to destruction, why trouble

about the hereafter? When I am merged in its blackness, neither

I, nor good and bad, nor laughter, nor tears, shall be any more!

The condition of