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

but its empty hollow. Nikhil has of late got a

taste of that pure emptiness--one can see it in his face, which

pains even me. But it was Nikhil's boast that he wanted the

Truth, while mine was that I would never let go illusion from my

grasp. Each has been suited to his taste, so why complain?

To keep Bimala's heart in the rarefied air of idealism, I cut

short all further discussion over the five thousand rupees. I

reverted to the demon-destroying goddess and her worship. When

was the ceremony to be held and where? There is a great annual

fair at Ruimari, within Nikhil's estates, where hundreds of

thousands of pilgrims assemble. That would be a grand place to

inaugurate the worship of our goddess!

Bimala waxed intensely enthusiastic. This was not the burning of

foreign cloth or the people's granaries, so even Nikhil could

have no objection--so thought she. But I smiled inwardly. How

little these two persons, who have been together, day and night,

for nine whole years, know of each other! They know something

perhaps of their home life, but when it comes to outside concerns

they are entirely at sea. They had cherished the belief that the

harmony of the home with the outside was perfect. Today they

realize to their cost that it is too late to repair their neglect

of years, and seek to harmonize them now.

What does it matter? Let those who have made the mistake learn

their error by knocking against the world. Why need I bother

about their plight? For the present I find it wearisome to keep

Bimala soaring much longer, like a captive balloon, in regions

ethereal. I had better get quite through with the matter in

hand.

When Bimala rose to depart and had neared the door I remarked in

my most casual manner: "So, about the money ..."

Bimala halted and faced back as she said: "On the expiry of the

month, when our personal allowances become due ..."

"That, I am afraid, would be much too late."

"When do you want it then?"

"Tomorrow.

"Tomorrow you shall have it."

A line from Bankim Chatterjee's national song _Bande

Mataram_.

A quotation from the Upanishads.

There is a world of sentiment attached to the ornaments worn

by women in Bengal.

They are not merely indicative of the love and regard of the

giver, but the wearing of them symbolizes all that is held best

in wifehood--the constant solicitude for her husband's welfare,

the successful performance of the material and spiritual duties

of the household entrusted to her care. When the husband dies,

and the responsibility for the household changes hands, then are

all ornaments cast aside as a sign of the widow's renunciation of

worldly concerns. At any other time the giving up of omaments is

always a sign of supreme distress and as such appeals acutely to

the sense of chivalry of any Bengali who may happen to witness it

[Trans.].

Chapter Eight

Nikhil's Story

X

PARAGRAPHS and letters against me have begun to come out in the

local papers; cartoons and lampoons are to follow, I am told.

Jets of wit and humour are being splashed about, and the lies

thus scattered are convulsing the whole country. They know that

the monopoly of mud-throwing is theirs, and the innocent passer-

by cannot escape unsoiled.

They are saying that the residents in my estates, from the

highest to the lowest, are in favour of Swadeshi, but they

dare not declare themselves, for fear of me. The few who have

been brave enough to defy me have felt the full rigour of my

persecution. I am in secret league with the police, and in

private communication with the magistrate, and these frantic

efforts of mine to add a foreign title of my own earning to the

one I have inherited, will not, it is opined, go in vain.

On the other hand, the papers are full of praise for those

devoted sons of the motherland, the Kundu and the Chakravarti

zamindars. If only, say they, the country had a few more

of such staunch patriots, the mills of Manchester would have, had

to sound their own dirge to the tune of Bande Mataram.

Then comes a letter in blood-red ink, giving a list of the

traitorous zamindars whose treasuries have been burnt down

because of their failing to support the Cause. Holy Fire, it

goes on to say, has been aroused to its sacred function of

purifying the country; and other agencies are also at work to see

that those who are not true sons of the motherland do cease to

encumber her lap. The signature is an obvious _nom-de-

plume_.

I could see that this was the doing of our local students. So I

sent for some of them and showed them the letter.

The B.A. student gravely informed me that they also had heard

that a band of desperate patriots had been formed who would stick

at nothing in order to clear away all obstacles to the success of

Swadeshi.

"If," said I, "even one of our countrymen succumbs to these

overbearing desperadoes, that will indeed be a defeat for the

country!"

"We fail to follow you, Maharaja," said the history student.

"'Our country," I tried to explain, "has been brought to death's

door through sheer fear--from fear of the gods down to fear of

the police; and if you set up, in the name of freedom, the fear

of some other bogey, whatever it may be called; if you would

raise your victorious standard on the cowardice of the country by

means of downright oppression, then no true lover of the country

can bow to your decision."

"Is there any country, sir," pursued the history student, "where

submission to Government is not due to fear?"

"The freedom that exists in any country," I replied, "may be

measured by the extent of this reign of fear. Where its threat

is confined to those who would hurt or plunder, there the

Government may claim to have freed man from the violence of man.

But if fear is to regulate how people are to dress, where they

shall trade, or what they must eat, then is man's freedom of will

utterly ignored, and manhood destroyed at the root."

"Is not such coercion of the individual will seen in other

countries too?" continued the history student.

"Who denies it?" I exclaimed. "But in every country man has

destroyed himself to the extent that he has permitted slavery to

flourish."

"Does it not rather show," interposed a Master of Arts, "that

trading in slavery is inherent in man--a fundamental fact of his

nature?"

"Sandip Babu made the whole thing clear," said a graduate. "He

gave us the example of Harish Kundu, your neighbouring

zamindar. From his estates you cannot ferret out a single

ounce of foreign salt. Why? Because he has always ruled with an

iron hand. In the case of those who are slaves by nature, the

lack of a strong master is the greatest of all calamities."

"Why, sir!" chimed in an undergraduate, "have you not heard of

the obstreperous tenant of Chakravarti, the other zamindar

close by--how the law was set on him till he was reduced to utter

destitution? When at last he was left with nothing to eat, he

started out to sell his wife's silver ornaments, but no one dared

buy them. Then Chakravarti's manager offered him five rupees for

the lot. They were worth over thirty, but he had to accept or

starve. After taking over the bundle from him the manager coolly

said that those five rupees would be credited towards his rent!

We felt like having nothing more to do with Chakravarti or his

manager after that, but Sandip Babu told us that if we threw over

all the live people, we should have only dead bodies from the

burning-grounds to carry on the work with! These live men, he

pointed out, know what they want and how to get it--they are born

rulers. Those who do not know how to desire for themselves, must

live in accordance with, or die by virtue of, the desires of such

as these. Sandip Babu contrasted them--Kundu and Chakravarti--

with you, Maharaja. You, he said, for all your good intentions,

will never succeed in planting Swadeshi within your

territory."

"It is my desire," I said, "to plant something greater than

Swadeshi. I am not after dead logs but living trees--and

these will take time to grow."

"I am afraid, sir," sneered the history student, "that you will

get neither log nor tree. Sandip Babu rightly teaches that in

order to get, you must snatch. This is taking all of us some

time to learn, because it runs counter to what we were taught at

school. I have seen with my own eyes that when a rent-collector

of Harish Kundu's found one of the tenants with nothing which

could be sold up to pay his rent, he was made to sell his young

wife! Buyers were not wanting, and the zamindar's demand

was satisfied. I tell you, sir, the sight of that man's distress

prevented my getting sleep for nights together! But, feel it as

I did, this much I realized, that the man who knows how to get

the money he is out for, even by selling up his debtor's wife, is

a better man than I am. I confess it is beyond me--I am a

weakling, my eyes fill with tears. If anybody can save our

country it is these Kundus and these Chakravartis and their

officials!"

I was shocked beyond words. "If what you say be true," I cried,

"I clearly see that it must be the one endeavour of my life to

save the country from these same Kundus and Chakravartis and

officials. The slavery that has entered into our very bones is

breaking out, at this opportunity, as ghastly tyranny. You have

been so used to submit to domination through fear, you have come

to believe that to make others submit is a kind of religion. My

fight shall be against this weakness, this atrocious cruelty!"

These things, which are so simple to ordinary folk, get so

twisted in the minds of our B.A.'s and M.A.'s, the only purpose

of whose historical quibbles seems to be to torture the truth!

XI

I am worried over Panchu's sham aunt. It will be difficult to

disprove her, for though witnesses of a real event may be few or

even wanting, innumerable proofs of a thing that has not happened

can always be marshalled. The object of this move is, evidently,

to get the sale of Panchu's holding to me set aside. Being

unable to find any other way out of it, I was thinking of

allowing Panchu to hold a permanent tenure in my estates and

building him a cottage on it. But my master would not have it.

I should not give in to these nefarious tactics so easily, he

objected, and offered to attend to the matter himself.

"You, sir!" I cried, considerably surprised.

"Yes, I," he repeated.

I could not see, at all clearly, what my master could do to

counteract these legal machinations. That evening, at the time

he usually came to me, he did not turn up. On my making

inquiries, his servant said he had left home with a few things

packed in a small trunk, and some bedding, saying he would