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

by little, the gap between day and

night, it would take an eternity to do it. But the sun rises and

the darkness is dispelled--a moment is sufficient to overcome an

infinite distance.

One day there came the new era of Swadeshi [8] in Bengal;

but as to how it happened, we had no distinct vision. There was

no gradual slope connecting the past with the present. For that

reason, I imagine, the new epoch came in like a flood, breaking

down the dykes and sweeping all our prudence and fear before it.

We had no time even to think about, or understand, what had

happened, or what was about to happen.

My sight and my mind, my hopes and my desires, became red with

the passion of this new age. Though, up to this time, the walls

of the home--which was the ultimate world to my mind--remained

unbroken, yet I stood looking over into the distance, and I heard

a voice from the far horizon, whose meaning was not perfectly

clear to me, but whose call went straight to my heart.

From the time my husband had been a college student he had been

trying to get the things required by our people produced in our

own country. There are plenty of date trees in our district. He

tried to invent an apparatus for extracting the juice and boiling

it into sugar and treacle. I heard that it was a great success,

only it extracted more money than juice. After a while he came

to the conclusion that our attempts at reviving our industries

were not succeeding for want of a bank of our own. He was, at

the time, trying to teach me political economy. This alone would

not have done much harm, but he also took it into his head to

teach his countrymen ideas of thrift, so as to pave the way for a

bank; and then he actually started a small bank. Its high rate

of interest, which made the villagers flock so enthusiastically

to put in their money, ended by swamping the bank altogether.

The old officers of the estate felt troubled and frightened.

There was jubilation in the enemy's camp. Of all the family,

only my husband's grandmother remained unmoved. She would scold

me, saying: "Why are you all plaguing him so? Is it the fate of

the estate that is worrying you? How many times have I seen this

estate in the hands of the court receiver! Are men like women?

Men are born spendthrifts and only know how to waste. Look here,

child, count yourself fortunate that your husband is not wasting

himself as well!"

My husband's list of charities was a long one. He would assist

to the bitter end of utter failure anyone who wanted to invent a

new loom or rice-husking machine. But what annoyed me most was

the way that Sandip Babu [9] used to fleece him on the pretext of

Swadeshi work. Whenever he wanted to start a newspaper,

or travel about preaching the Cause, or take a change of air by

the advice of his doctor, my husband would unquestioningly supply

him with the money. This was over and above the regular living

allowance which Sandip Babu also received from him. The

strangest part of it was that my husband and Sandip Babu did not

agree in their opinions.

As soon as the Swadeshi storm reached my blood, I said to

my husband: "I must burn all my foreign clothes."

"Why burn them?" said he. "You need not wear them as long as

you please."

"As long as I please! Not in this life ..."

"Very well, do not wear them for the rest of your life, then.

But why this bonfire business?"

"Would you thwart me in my resolve?"

"What I want to say is this: Why not try to build up something?

You should not waste even a tenth part of your energies in this

destructive excitement."

"Such excitement will give us the energy to build."

"That is as much as to say, that you cannot light the house

unless you set fire to it."

Then there came another trouble. When Miss Gilby first came to

our house there was a great flutter, which afterwards calmed down

when they got used to her. Now the whole thing was stirred up

afresh. I had never bothered myself before as to whether Miss

Gilby was European or Indian, but I began to do so now. I said

to my husband: "We must get rid of Miss Gilby."

He kept silent.

I talked to him wildly, and he went away sad at heart.

After a fit of weeping, I felt in a more reasonable mood when we

met at night. "I cannot," my husband said, "look upon Miss Gilby

through a mist of abstraction, just because she is English.

Cannot you get over the barrier of her name after such a long

acquaintance? Cannot you realize that she loves you?"

I felt a little ashamed and replied with some sharpness: "Let her

remain. I am not over anxious to send her away." And Miss Gilby

remained.

But one day I was told that she had been insulted by a young

fellow on her way to church. This was a boy whom we were

supporting. My husband turned him out of the house. There was

not a single soul, that day, who could forgive my husband for

that act--not even I. This time Miss Gilby left of her own

accord. She shed tears when she came to say good-bye, but my

mood would not melt. To slander the poor boy so--and such a fine

boy, too, who would forget his daily bath and food in his

enthusiasm for Swadeshi.

My husband escorted Miss Gilby to the railway station in his own

carriage. I was sure he was going too far. When exaggerated

accounts of the incident gave rise to a public scandal, which

found its way to the newspapers, I felt he had been rightly

served.

I had often become anxious at my husband's doings, but had never

before been ashamed; yet now I had to blush for him! I did not

know exactly, nor did I care, what wrong poor Noren might, or

might not, have done to Miss Gilby, but the idea of sitting in

judgement on such a matter at such a time! I should have refused

to damp the spirit which prompted young Noren to defy the

Englishwoman. I could not but look upon it as a sign of

cowardice in my husband, that he should fail to understand this

simple thing. And so I blushed for him.

And yet it was not that my husband refused to support

Swadeshi, or was in any way against the Cause. Only he

had not been able whole-heartedly to accept the spirit of

Bande Mataram. [10]

"I am willing," he said, "to serve my country; but my worship I

reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To

worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it."

The Nationalist movement, which began more as an economic than

a political one, having as its main object the encouragement of

indigenous industries [Trans.].

"Babu" is a term of respect, like "Father" or "Mister," but

has also meant in colonial days a person who understands some

English. [on-line ed.]

Lit.: "Hail Mother"; the opening words of a song by Bankim

Chatterjee, the famous Bengali novelist. The song has now become

the national anthem, and Bande Mataram the national cry,

since the days of the Swadeshi movement [Trans.].

Chapter Two

Bimala's Story

IV

THIS was the time when Sandip Babu with his followers came to our

neighbourhood to preach Swadeshi.

There is to be a big meeting in our temple pavilion. We women

are sitting there, on one side, behind a screen. Triumphant

shouts of Bande Mataram come nearer: and to them I am

thrilling through and through. Suddenly a stream of barefooted

youths in turbans, clad in ascetic ochre, rushes into the

quadrangle, like a silt-reddened freshet into a dry river-bed at

the first burst of the rains. The whole place is filled with an

immense crowd, through which Sandip Babu is borne, seated in a

big chair hoisted on the shoulders of ten or twelve of the

youths.

Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram! It seems

as though the skies would be rent and scattered into a thousand

fragments.

I had seen Sandip Babu's photograph before. There was something

in his features which I did not quite like. Not that he was bad-

looking--far from it: he had a splendidly handsome face. Yet, I

know not why, it seemed to me, in spite of all its brilliance,

that too much of base alloy had gone into its making. The light

in his eyes somehow did not shine true. That was why I did not

like it when my husband unquestioningly gave in to all his

demands. I could bear the waste of money; but it vexed me to

think that he was imposing on my husband, taking advantage of

friendship. His bearing was not that of an ascetic, nor even of

a person of moderate means, but foppish all over. Love of

comfort seemed to ... any number of such reflections come back

to me today, but let them be.

When, however, Sandip Babu began to speak that afternoon, and the

hearts of the crowd swayed and surged to his words, as though

they would break all bounds, I saw him wonderfully transformed.

Especially when his features were suddenly lit up by a shaft of

light from the slowly setting sun, as it sunk below the roof-line

of the pavilion, he seemed to me to be marked out by the gods as

their messenger to mortal men and women.

From beginning to end of his speech, each one of his utterances

was a stormy outburst. There was no limit to the confidence of

his assurance. I do not know how it happened, but I found I had

impatiently pushed away the screen from before me and had fixed

my gaze upon him. Yet there was none in that crowd who paid any

heed to my doings. Only once, I noticed, his eyes, like stars in

fateful Orion, flashed full on my face.

I was utterly unconscious of myself. I was no longer the lady of

the Rajah's house, but the sole representative of Bengal's

womanhood. And he was the champion of Bengal. As the sky had

shed its light over him, so he must receive the consecration of a

woman's benediction ...

It seemed clear to me that, since he had caught sight of me, the

fire in his words had flamed up more fiercely. Indra's [11]

steed refused to be reined in, and there came the roar of thunder

and the flash of lightning. I said within myself that his

language had caught fire from my eyes; for we women are not only

the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul

itself.

I returned home that evening radiant with a new pride and joy.

The storm within me had shifted my whole being from one centre to

another. Like the Greek maidens of old, I fain would cut off my

long, resplendent tresses to make a bowstring for my hero. Had

my outward ornaments been