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

of that, I have become unpopular with all my

countrymen because I have not joined them in their carousals.

They are certain that either I have a longing for some title, or

else that I am afraid of the police. The police on their side

suspect me of harbouring some hidden design and protesting too

much in my mildness.

What I really feel is this, that those who cannot find food for

their enthusiasm in a knowledge of their country as it actually

is, or those who cannot love men just because they are men--who

needs must shout and deify their country in order to keep up

their excitement--these love excitement more than their country.

To try to give our infatuation a higher place than Truth is a

sign of inherent slavishness. Where our minds are free we find

ourselves lost. Our moribund vitality must have for its rider

either some fantasy, or someone in authority, or a sanction from

the pundits, in order to make it move. So long as we are

impervious to truth and have to be moved by some hypnotic

stimulus, we must know that we lack the capacity for self-

government. Whatever may be our condition, we shall either need

some imaginary ghost or some actual medicine-man to terrorize

over us.

The other day when Sandip accused me of lack of imagination,

saying that this prevented me from realizing my country in a

visible image, Bimala agreed with him. I did not say anything in

my defence, because to win in argument does not lead to

happiness. Her difference of opinion is not due to any

inequality of intelligence, but rather to dissimilarity of

nature.

They accuse me of being unimaginative--that is, according to

them, I may have oil in my lamp, but no flame. Now this is

exactly the accusation which I bring against them. I would say

to them: "You are dark, even as the flints are. You must come to

violent conflicts and make a noise in order to produce your

sparks. But their disconnected flashes merely assist your pride,

and not your clear vision."

I have been noticing for some time that there is a gross cupidity

about Sandip. His fleshly feelings make him harbour delusions

about his religion and impel him into a tyrannical attitude in

his patriotism. His intellect is keen, but his nature is coarse,

and so he glorifies his selfish lusts under high-sounding names.

The cheap consolations of hatred are as urgently necessary for

him as the satisfaction of his appetites. Bimala has often

warned me, in the old days, of his hankering after money. I

understood this, but I could not bring myself to haggle with

Sandip. I felt ashamed even to own to myself that he was trying

to take advantage of me.

It will, however, be difficult to explain to Bimala today that

Sandip's love of country is but a different phase of his covetous

self-love. Bimala's hero-worship of Sandip makes me hesitate all

the more to talk to her about him, lest some touch of jealousy

may lead me unwittingly into exaggeration. It may be that the

pain at my heart is already making me see a distorted picture of

Sandip. And yet it is better perhaps to speak out than to keep

my feelings gnawing within me.

II

I have known my master these thirty years. Neither calumny, nor

disaster, nor death itself has any terrors for him. Nothing

could have saved me, born as I was into the traditions of this

family of ours, but that he has established his own life in the

centre of mine, with its peace and truth and spiritual vision,

thus making it possible for me to realize goodness in its truth.

My master came to me that day and said: "Is it necessary to

detain Sandip here any longer?"

His nature was so sensitive to all omens of evil that he had at

once understood. He was not easily moved, but that day he felt

the dark shadow of trouble ahead. Do I not know how well he

loves me?

At tea-time I said to Sandip: "I have just had a letter from

Rangpur. They are complaining that I am selfishly detaining you.

When will you be going there?"

Bimala was pouring out the tea. Her face fell at once. She

threw just one enquiring glance at Sandip.

"I have been thinking," said Sandip, "that this wandering up and

down means a tremendous waste of energy. I feel that if I could

work from a centre I could achieve more permanent results."

With this he looked up at Bimala and asked: "Do you not think so

too?"

Bimala hesitated for a reply and then said: "Both ways seem good

--to do the work from a centre, as well as by travelling about.

That in which you find greater satisfaction is the way for you."

"Then let me speak out my mind," said Sandip. "I have never yet

found any one source of inspiration suffice me for good. That is

why I have been constantly moving about, rousing enthusiasm in

the people, from which in turn I draw my own store of energy.

Today you have given me the message of my country. Such fire I

have never beheld in any man. I shall be able to spread the fire

of enthusiasm in my country by borrowing it from you. No, do not

be ashamed. You are far above all modesty and diffidence. You

are the Queen Bee of our hive, and we the workers shall rally

around you. You shall be our centre, our inspiration."

Bimala flushed all over with bashful pride and her hand shook as

she went on pouring out the tea.

Another day my master came to me and said: "Why don't you two go

up to Darjeeling for a change? You are not looking well. Have

you been getting enough sleep?"

I asked Bimala in the evening whether she would care to have a

trip to the Hills. I knew she had a great longing to see the

Himalayas. But she refused ... The country's Cause, I suppose!

I must not lose my faith: I shall wait. The passage from the

narrow to the larger world is stormy. When she is familiar with

this freedom, then I shall know where my place is. If I discover

that I do not fit in with the arrangement of the outer world,

then I shall not quarrel with my fate, but silently take my leave

... Use force? But for what? Can force prevail against Truth?

Sandip's Story

I

The impotent man says: "That which has come to my share is mine."

And the weak man assents. But the lesson of the whole world is:

"That is really mine which I can snatch away." My country does

not become mine simply because it is the country of my birth. It

becomes mine on the day when I am able to win it by force.

Every man has a natural right to possess, and therefore greed is

natural. It is not in the wisdom of nature that we should be

content to be deprived. What my mind covets, my surroundings

must supply. This is the only true understanding between our

inner and outer nature in this world. Let moral ideals remain

merely for those poor anaemic creatures of starved desire whose

grasp is weak. Those who can desire with all their soul and

enjoy with all their heart, those who have no hesitation or

scruple, it is they who are the anointed of Providence. Nature

spreads out her riches and loveliest treasures for their benefit.

They swim across streams, leap over walls, kick open doors, to

help themselves to whatever is worth taking. In such a getting

one can rejoice; such wresting as this gives value to the thing

taken.

Nature surrenders herself, but only to the robber. For she

delights in this forceful desire, this forceful abduction. And

so she does not put the garland of her acceptance round the lean,

scraggy neck of the ascetic. The music of the wedding march is

struck. The time of the wedding I must not let pass. My heart

therefore is eager. For, who is the bridegroom? It is I. The

bridegroom's place belongs to him who, torch in hand, can come in

time. The bridegroom in Nature's wedding hall comes unexpected

and uninvited.

Ashamed? No, I am never ashamed! I ask for whatever I want, and

I do not always wait to ask before I take it. Those who are

deprived by their own diffidence dignify their privation by the

name of modesty. The world into which we are born is the world

of reality. When a man goes away from the market of real things

with empty hands and empty stomach, merely filling his bag with

big sounding words, I wonder why he ever came into this hard

world at all. Did these men get their appointment from the

epicures of the religious world, to play set tunes on sweet,

pious texts in that pleasure garden where blossom airy nothings?

I neither affect those tunes nor do I find any sustenance in

those blossoms.

What I desire, I desire positively, superlatively. I want to

knead it with both my hands and both my feet; I want to smear it

all over my body; I want to gorge myself with it to the full.

The scrannel pipes of those who have worn themselves out by their

moral fastings, till they have become flat and pale like starved

vermin infesting a long-deserted bed, will never reach my ear.

I would conceal nothing, because that would be cowardly. But if

I cannot bring myself to conceal when concealment is needful,

that also is cowardly. Because you have your greed, you build

your walls. Because I have my greed, I break through them. You

use your power: I use my craft. These are the realities of life.

On these depend kingdoms and empires and all the great

enterprises of men.

As for those avatars who come down from their paradise to

talk to us in some holy jargon--their words are not real.

Therefore, in spite of all the applause they get, these sayings

of theirs only find a place in the hiding corners of the weak.

They are despised by those who are strong, the rulers of the

world. Those who have had the courage to see this have won

success, while those poor wretches who are dragged one way by

nature and the other way by these ava tars, they set one foot in

the boat of the real and the other in the boat of the unreal, and

thus are in a pitiable plight, able neither to advance nor to

keep their place.

There are many men who seem to have been born only with an

obsession to die. Possibly there is a beauty, like that of a

sunset, in this lingering death in life which seems to fascinate

them. Nikhil lives this kind of life, if life it may be called.

Years ago, I had a great argument with him on this point.

"It is true," he said, "that you cannot get anything except by

force. But then what is this force? And then also, what is this

getting? The strength I believe in is the strength of

renouncing."

"So you," I exclaimed, "are infatuated with the glory of

bankruptcy."

"Just as