An extract from 'Tagore for the 21st Century Reader'

selected fiction, poetry and drama

rabindranath

FOR THE 21st CENTURY READER

TAGORE

Preface by Satyajit Ray Translated by Ar unava Sinha

Translator’s Dedication

To the memory of my mother-in-law Roma Chakraborty

BIMALA’S STORY Mother mine, today I remember the vermilion in your hair, your sari with the broad red border, your eyes—serene, loving, limpid.

In my heart you were like a sunbeam at daybreak. My life began its journey with this golden gift. And after that? Dark clouds swooped down on me like highwaymen, leaving me not even a single drop of that light. But no matter—the virginal dawn’s gift might be eclipsed by a storm, but it can never be destroyed.

Fair is lovely in our land. But the sky that gives us light is blue.

My mother was dark-skinned, her glow was of piety. Her beauty put the vanity of loveliness in the shade.

Everyone tells me I resemble my mother. In childhood I even vented my rage over this on the mirror. I used to feel my body was an injustice—my complexion was not my own but someone else’s, a mistake through and though.

I’m not beautiful, but I sought the boon of the virtuous woman’s halo from the gods—just like my mother. When my marriage was being arranged, an astrologer sent by the groom’s family had read my palm and pronounced, all the signs about this girl are propitious, she will be the ideal devoted wife. All the women said, naturally, doesn’t Bimala resemble her mother, after all?

I was married into a family of rajahs. Their title had been bestowed in some ancient age of badshahs. Ever since I heard all the stories of fairy-tale princes in my childhood, I had held a particular image of my groom in my mind. A son of kings, with a body made of jasmine petals and a face assembled one grain at a time from the intense desire of all the unmarried women who had worshipped Shiva over the generations. A nascent line of a moustache like the wings of a bee, as black as it was tender.

When I saw my husband, he didn’t quite match the image.

Even his complexion, I discovered, was just like mine. While my

regret over my own lack of beauty was mitigated a little, I also sighed deeply. Perhaps I would have died of mortification at my own appearance, but why could I not have had a glimpse of the prince who had reigned in my heart?

But maybe it’s best when beauty evades the scrutiny of the eyes and presents itself within. It does not have to put on a pretty face when it appears at the pinnacle of devotion. From infancy I had observed how everything is made beautiful by the natural beauty of this devoutness. Even as a child I realized that when my mother peeled fruits specially for my father and arranged them in a white marble bowl, when she wrapped the paan sprinkled with rosewater in individual pieces of cloth with great attention, when she gently waved away flies with a fan of palm leaves while he ate, the care from her loving hands, the flow of affection from her heart merged into an ocean of infinite beauty.

These notes of worship played in my heart, too. Beyond debate or analysis, they made for pure music. If it was true that an entire life could be fulfilled through a paean of praise to the lord of life in his own temple, the attempt had begun with this morning melody.

When I woke up in the morning and delicately touched my husband’s feet in reverence, I remember the line of vermilion in my hair blazing like the evening star. Waking up suddenly one day, he said with a smile, what are you doing, Bimal? I could have died of shame. Perhaps he had imagined I was covertly establishing my piousness. But it wasn’t that, it wasn’t piety for me—it was my womanly heart, whose love naturally seeks to express itself through worship.

My husband’s family was bound to traditional customs. Some of its rules belonged to the age of Mughals and Pathans, and some others, to the principles of Manu. But my husband was absolutely modern. He was the first in the family to actually study and get an MA degree. His two elder brothers drank themselves to death early in life—they had no children. My husband did not drink; his mind did not run to other pursuits. This made him such a misfit in this family that not everyone approved of him—they believed that only those who had no bountiful women at home deserved to lead such pure lives. The stars cannot display blemishes, only the moon does.

Rabindranath Tagore for the 21st Century Reader

My father- and mother-in-law having died a long time ago, my husband’s grandmother was my guardian. My husband was the apple of her eye, her dearest possession, which was why he dared to flout tradition. So when he engaged Miss Gilby as my companion and teacher, all the tongues inside and outside began to drip poison—but still he had his way.

That was when he was reading for his MA examinations after getting his BA degree. He used to write to me practically every day—the letters were short and the language, plain. His rounded script seemed to gaze at me amiably.

I used to store all his letters in a sandalwood box, picking flowers from the garden every day to cover them with. By then the prince of my dreams had disappeared like the moon in the light of the sun. My real-life prince had occupied the throne in my heart instead. I was his queen, I had been given a seat by his side; but my greater joy was in finding my rightful place at his feet.

Having acquired an education, I had become familiar with the contemporary age through a contemporary language. These words of mine now sound unnecessarily ornamental even to myself. Had I not been confronted with modernity, I would have considered my feelings then as simple prose. I knew in my heart that just as I had been naturally born a woman, so too was it natural for a woman to recast love as devotion—there was no need to consider this particularly poetic and beautiful.

But the times changed even before I had travelled from my youth to middle age. Now I was being advised to apply craft to what was once as easy as breathing. All the thinking men of the world began to assert in high voices the wonders of fidelity in a wife and of celibacy in a widow. It was clear that truth and beauty had parted ways in this aspect of life. Could truth be regained if only beauty were to be invoked?

I don’t believe that every woman’s mind is cast in the same mould. But I do know that I held in my heart something my mother also did—the eagerness to worship someone. When the world no longer made this easy, I realized that this was my natural propensity.

But such was my fate, my husband would not allow me the opportunity for devoutness. This was his greatness. The moneyThe Home and the World

hungry attendant at the temple fights for clients because he is not worthy of being worshipped; only cowards demand that their wives worship them. This humiliates both the worshipper and the worshipped.

But why all this opulence for me? My husband’s love seemed to overflow, taking the form of clothes and jewellery and maids and servants and all kinds of material possessions. When would I be able to push all these away and give myself? More than taking, I needed the opportunity to give. By nature love is apathetic about possessions—it makes its flowers bloom in the dust on the wayside, it cannot display its riches in the porcelain pot in the drawing room.

Rabindranath Tagore for the 21st Century Reader