My reminiscences

MY REMINISCENCES

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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RABINDRANATH TAGORE

FROM THE PORTRAIT IN COLOURS BY SASI KUMAR HESH

MY REMINISCENCES

BY

SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE

WITH FRONTISPIECE FROM THE PORTRAIT
IN COLORS BY SASI KUMAR HESH

Ct

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1917

4»V rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1916 AND 1917

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1917.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

THESE Reminiscences were written and
published by the Author in his fiftieth
year, shortly before he started on a trip
to Europe and America for his failing health
in 1912. It was in the course of this trip that
he wrote for the first time in the English language
for publication.

In these memory pictures, so lightly, even
casually presented by the author there is, never-
theless, revealed a connected history of his inner
life together with that of the varying literary
forms in which his growing self found successive
expression, up to the point at which both his soul
and poetry attained maturity.

This lightness of manner and importance of
matter form a combination the translation of
which into a different language is naturally a
matter of considerable difficulty. It was, in any
case, a task which the present Translator, not
being an original writer in the English language,
would hardly have ventured to undertake, had
there not been other considerations. The trans-
lator's familiarity, however, with the persons,

vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

scenes, and events herein depicted made it a
temptation difficult for him to resist, as well as a
responsibility which he did not care to leave to
others not possessing these advantages, and there-
fore more liable to miss a point, or give a wrong
impression.

The Translator, moreover, had the author's
permission and advice to make a free translation,
a portion of which was completed and approved
by the latter before he left India on his recent tour
to Japan and America.

In regard to the nature of the freedom taken
for the purposes of the translation, it may be
mentioned that those suggestions which might
not have been as clear to the foreign as to the
Bengali reader have been brought out in a slightly
more elaborate manner than in the original text;
while again, in rare cases, others which depend
on allusions entirely unfamiliar to the non-Indian
reader, have been omitted rather than spoil by
an over-elaboration the simplicity and natural-
ness which is the great feature of the original.

There are no footnotes in the original. All the
footnotes here given have been added by the
Translator in the hope that they may be of further
assistance to the foreign reader.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Translator's Preface v

PART I

I i

2. Teaching Begins 3

3. Within and Without 8

PART II

4. Servocracy 25

5. The Normal School 30

6. Versification 35

7. Various Learning 38

8. My First Outing 44

9. Practising Poetry 48

PART III

10. Srikantha Babu 53

11. Our Bengali Course Ends 57

12. The Professor 60

13. My Father 67

14. A Journey with my Father 76

15. At the Himalayas 89

PART IV

16. My Return 101

17. Home Studies ill

18. My Home Environment 116

19. Literary Companions 125

20. Publishing 133

vii

viii CONTENTS

PAGE

21. Bhanu Singha 135

22. Patriotism 138

23. The Bharati 147

PART V

24. Ahmedabad 155

25. England 157

26. Loken Palit 175

27. The Broken Heart 177

PART VI

28. European Music 189

29. Valmiki Pratibha 192

30. Evening Songs 199

31. An Essay on Music 203

32. The River-side 207

33. More About the Evening Songs 210

34. Morning Songs 214

PART VII

35. Rajendrahal Mitra 23 1

36. Karwar 235

37. Nature's Revenge 238

38. Pictures and Songs 241

39. An Intervening Period 244

40. Bankim Chandra 247

PART VIII

41. The Steamer Hulk 255

42. Bereavements 257

43. The Rains and Autumn 264

44. Sharps and Flats 267

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Rabindranath Tagore from the Portrait by S. K.

Hesh Frontispiece

Facing Page

Tagore in 1877 6

The Inner Garden Was My Paradise 14

The Ganges 54

Satya 64

Singing to My Father 82

The Himalayas 94

The Servant-Maids in the Verandah 106

My Eldest Brother 120

Moonlight 180

The Ganges Again 208

Karwar Beach 236

My Brother Jyotirindra 256

PART I

MY REMINISCENCES

(i)

I KNOW not who paints the pictures on
memory's canvas; but whoever he may
be, what he is painting are pictures; by
which I mean that he is not there with his brush
simply to make a faithful copy of all that is hap- >
pening. He takes in and leaves out according/
to his taste. He makes many a big thing small
and small thing big. He has no compunction
in putting into the background that which was
to the fore, or bringing to the front that which
was behind. In__short he is painting pictures,
and not writing history.

Thus, over Life's outward aspect passes the
series of events, and within is being painted a set
of pictures. The two correspond but are not one.
We do not get the leisure to view thoroughly
this studio within us. Portions of it now and then
catch our eye, but the greater part remains out of
sight in the darkness. Why the ever-busy painter
is painting; when he will have done; for what
gallery his pictures are destined — who can tell?

2 MY REMINISCENCES

Some years ago, on being questioned as to
the events of my past life, I had occasion to pry
into this picture-chamber. I had thought to be
content with selecting some few materials for
my Life's story. I then discovered, as I opened
the door, that Life's memories are not Life's
history, but the original work of an unseen Artist.
The variegated colours scattered about are not
reflections of outside lights, but belong to the
painter himself, and come passion-tinged from
his heart; thereby unfitting the record on the
canvas for use as evidence in a court of law.

But though the attempt to gather precise
history from memory's storehouse may be fruit-
less, there is a fascination in looking over the
pictures, a fascination which cast its spell on
me.

The road over which we journey, the wayside
shelter in which we pause, are not pictures
while yet we travel — they are too necessary, too
obvious. When, however, before turning into
the evening resthouse, we look back upon the
cities, fields, rivers and hills which we have been
through in Life's morning, then, in the light of the
passing day, are they pictures indeed. Thus,
when my opportunity came, did I look back, and
was engrossed.

Was this interest aroused within me solely by

MY REMINISCENCES 3

a natural affection for my own past? Some per-
sonal feeling, of course, there must have been,
but the pictures had also an independent artistic
value of their own. There is no event in my rem-
iniscences worthy of being preserved for all time.
But the quality of the subject is not the only
justification for a record. What one has truly
felt, if only it can be made sensible to others, is
always of importance to one's fellow men. If
pictures which have taken shape in memory can
be brought out in words, they are worth a place
in literature.

It is as literary material that I offer my mem-
ory pictures. To take them as an attempt at
autobiography would be a mistake. In such a
view these reminiscences would appear useless as
well as incomplete.

(2) Teaching Begins

We three boys were being brought up together.
Both my companions were two years older than I.
When they were placed under their tutor, my
teaching also began, but of what I learnt nothing
remains in my memory.

What constantly recurs to me is "The rain
patters, the leaf quivers." l I am just come to

1 A jingling sentence in the Bengali Child's Primer.

4 MY REMINISCENCES

anchor after crossing the stormy region of the
kara^ khala 1 series; and I am reading "The rain
patters, the leaf quivers," for me the first poem
of the Arch Poet. Whenever the joy of that day
comes back to me, even now, I realise why rhyme
is so needful in poetry. Because of it the words
come to an end, and yet end not; the utterance is
over, but not its ring; and the ear and the mind
can go on and on with their game of tossing the
rhyme to each other. Thus did the rain patter
and the leaves quiver again and again, the live-
long day in my consciousness.

Another episode of this period of my early
boyhood is held fast in my mind.

We had an old cashier, Kailash by name, who
was like one of the family. He was a great wit,
and would be constantly cracking jokes with
everybody, old and young; recently married sons-
in-law, new comers into the family circle, being
his special butts. There was room for the sus-
picion that his humour had not deserted him
even after death. Once my elders were engaged
in an attempt to start a postal service with the
other world by means of a planchette. At one
of the sittings the pencil scrawled out the name
of Kailash. He was asked as to the sort of life
one led where he was. Not a bit of it, was the

1 Exercises in two-syllables.

MY REMINISCENCES 5

reply. "Why should you get so cheap what I
had to die to learn?"

This Kailash used to rattle off for my special
delectation a doggerel ballad of his own composi-
tion. The hero was myself and there was a glow-
ing anticipation of the arrival of a heroine. And
as I listened my interest would wax intense at the
picture of this world-charming bride illuminating
the lap of the future in which she sat enthroned.
The list of the jewellery with which she was be-
decked from head to foot, and the unheard of
splendour of the preparations for the bridal,
might have turned older and wiser heads; but
what moved the boy, and set wonderful joy pic-
tures flitting before his vision, was the rapid jingle
of the frequent rhymes and the swing of the
rhythm.

These two literary delights still linger in my
memory — and there is the other, the infants'
classic: "The rain falls pit-a-pat, the tide comes
up the river."

The next thing I remember is the beginning
of my school-life. One day I saw my elder brother,
and my sister's son Satya, also a little older than
myself, starting off to school, leaving me behind,
accounted unfit. I had never before ridden in a
carriage nor even been out of the house. So when
Satya came back, full of unduly glowing accounts

6 MY REMINISCENCES

of his adventures on the way, I felt I simply could
not stay at home. Our tutor tried to dispel my
illusion with sound advice and a resounding slap:

t" You're crying to go to school now, you'll have
to cry a lot more to be let off later on." I have
no recollection of the name, features or disposi-
tion of this tutor of ours, but the impression of
his weighty advice and weightier hand has not
yet faded. Never in my life have I heard a truer
prophecy.

My crying drove me prematurely into the
Oriental Seminary. What I learnt there I have
no idea, but one of its methods of punishment
I still bear in mind. The boy who was unable
to repeat his lessons was made to stand on a bench
with arms extended, and on his upturned palms
were piled a number of slates. It is for psycholo-
gists to debate how far this method is likely to
conduce to a better grasp of things. I thus began
my schooling at an extremely tender age.

My initiation into literature had its origin, at
the same time, in the books which were in vogue
in the servants' quarters. Chief among these
were a Bengali translation of Chanakya's aphor-
isms, and the Ramayana of Krittivasa.

A picture of one day's reading of the Ramayana
comes clearly back to me.

The day was a cloudy one. I was playing

Rabindranath Tagore in 1877

MY REMINISCENCES 7

about in the long verandah l overlooking the
road. All of a sudden Satya, for some reason I
do not remember, wanted to frighten me by
shouting, "Policeman! Policeman!" My ideas
of the duties of policemen were of an extremely
vague description. One thing I was certain about,
that a person charged with crime once placed in
a policeman's hands would, as sure as the wretch
caught in a crocodile's serrated grip, go under
and be seen no more. Not knowing how an inno-
cent boy could escape this relentless penal code,
I bolted towards the inner apartments, with shud-
ders running down my back for blind fear of
pursuing policemen. * I broke to my mother the
news of my impending doom, but it did not seem
to disturb her much. However, not deeming it
safe to venture out again, I sat down on the sill
of my mother's door to read the dog-eared Rama-
yana, with a marbled paper cover, which belonged
to her old aunt. Alongside stretched the verandah
running round the four sides of the open inner
quadrangle, on which had fallen the faint after-
noon glow of the clouded sky, and finding me

1 Roofed colonnade or balcony. The writer's family house is an
irregular three-storied mass of buildings, which had grown with the
joint family it sheltered, built round several courtyards or quad-
rangles, with long colonnades along the outer faces, and narrower
galleries running round each quadrangle, giving access to the single
rows of rooms.

8 MY REMINISCENCES

weeping over one of its sorrowful situations my
great-aunt came and took away the book from me.

(3) Within and Without

Luxury was a thing almost unknown in the
days of my infancy. The standard of living was
then, as a whole, much more simple than it is
now. Apart from that, the children of our house-
hold were entirely free from the fuss of being too
much looked after. The fact is that, while the
process of looking after may be an occasional
treat for the guardians, to the children it is always
an unmitigated nuisance.

We used to be under the rule of the servants.
To save themselves trouble they had almost
suppressed our right of free movement. But the
freedom of not being petted made up even for
the harshness of this bondage, for our minds were
left clear of the toils of constant coddling, pamper-
ing and dressing-up.

Our food had nothing to do with delicacies.
A list of our articles of clothing would only invite
the modern boy's scorn. On no pretext did we
wear socks or shoes till we had passed our tenth
year. In the cold weather a second cotton tunic
over the first one sufficed. It never entered our
heads to consider ourselves ill-off for that reason.

MY REMINISCENCES 9

It was only when old Niyamat, the tailor, would
forget to put a pocket into one of our tunics that
we complained, for no boy has yet been born so
poor as not to have the wherewithal to stuff his
pockets; nor, by a merciful dispensation of provi-
dence, is there much difference between the wealth
of boys of rich and of poor parentage. We used to
have a pair of slippers each, but not always where
we had our feet. Our habit of kicking the slippers
on ahead, and catching them up again, made
them work none the less hard, through effectually
defeating at every step the reason of their being.

Our elders were in every way at a great dis-
tance from us, in their dress and food, living and
doing, conversation and amusement. We caught
glimpses of these, but they were beyond our reach.
Elders have become cheap to modern children;
they are too readily accessible, and so are all
objects of desire. Nothing ever came so easily
to us. Many a trivial thing was for us a rarity,
and we lived mostly in the hope of attaining, when
we were old enough, the things which the distant
future held in trust for us. The result was that
what little we did get we enjoyed to the utmost;
from skin to core nothing was thrown away. The
modern child of a well-to-do family nibbles at
only half the things he gets; the greater part of
his world is wasted on him.

io MY REMINISCENCES

Our days were spent in the servants' quarters
in the south-east corner of the outer apartments.
One of our servants was Shyam, a dark chubby
boy with curly locks, hailing from the District
of Khulna. He would put me into a selected
spot and, tracing a chalk line all round, warn
me with solemn face and uplifted finger of
the perils of transgressing this ring. Whether
the threatened danger was material or spiritual
I never fully understood, but a great fear used
to possess me. I had read in the Ramayana of
the tribulations of Sita for having left the ring
drawn by Lakshman, so it was not possible for
me to be sceptical of its potency.

Just below the window of this room was a
tank with a flight of masonry steps leading
down into the water; on its west bank, along the
garden wall, an immense banyan tree; to the
south a fringe of cocoanut palms. Ringed round
as I was near this window I would spend the whole
day peering through the drawn Venetian shutters,
gazing and gazing on this scene as on a picture
book. From early morning our neighbours would
drop in one by one to have their bath. I knew
the time for each one to arrive. I was familiar
with the peculiarities of each one's toilet. One
would stop up his ears with his fingers as he took
his regulation number of dips, after which he

MY REMINISCENCES u

would depart. Another would not venture on
a complete immersion but be content with only
squeezing his wet towel repeatedly over his head.
A third would carefully drive the surface impuri-
ties away from him with a rapid play of his arms,
and then on a sudden impulse take his plunge.
There was one who jumped in from the top steps
without any preliminaries at all. Another would
walk slowly in, step by step, muttering his morn-
ing prayers the while. One was always in a hurry,
hastening home as soon as he was through with
his dip. Another was in no sort of hurry at all,
taking his bath leisurely, followed with a good
rub-down, and a change from wet bathing clothes
into clean ones, including a careful adjustment
of the folds of his waist cloth, ending with a turn
or two in the outer 1 garden, and the gathering
of flowers, with which he would finally saunter
slowly homewards, radiating the cool comfort of
his refreshed body, as he went. This would go
on till it was past noon. Then the bathing places
would be deserted and become silent. Only the
ducks remained, paddling about after water snails,
or busy preening their feathers, the live-long day.
When solitude thus reigned over the water,
my whole attention would be drawn to the shad-

1 The men's portion of the house is the outer; and the women's the
inner.

12 MY REMINISCENCES

ows under the banyan tree. Some of its aerial
roots, creeping down along its trunk, had formed
a dark complication of coils at its base. It seemed
as if into this mysterious region the laws of the
universe had not found entrance; as if some old-
world dream-land had escaped the divine vigilance
and lingered on into the light of modern day.
Whom I used to see there, and what those beings
did, it is not possible to express in intelligible
language. It was about this banyan tree that I
wrote later:

With tangled roots hanging down from your branches,

O ancient banyan tree,
You stand still day and night, like an ascetic at his

penances,
Do you ever remember the child whose fancy played

with your shadows?

Alas ! that banyan tree is no more, nor the piece
of water which served to mirror the majestic
forest-lord! Many of those who used to bathe
there have also followed into oblivion the shade
of the banyan tree. And that boy, grown older,
is counting the alternations of light and darkness
which penetrate the complexities with which the
roots he has thrown off on all sides have encircled
him.

Going out of the house was forbidden to us,
in fact we had not even the freedom of all its

MY REMINISCENCES 13

parts. We perforce took our peeps at nature
from behind the barriers. Beyond my reach
there was this limitless thing called the Outside,
of which flashes and sounds and scents used
momentarily to come and touch me through its
interstices. It seemed to want to play with me
through the bars with so many gestures. But it
was free and I was bound — there was no way
of meeting. So the attraction was all the stronger.
The chalk line has been wiped away to-day, but
the confining ring is still there. The distant is
just as distant, the outside is still beyond me;
and I am reminded of the poem I wrote when I
was older:

The tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the
forest,

They met when the time came, it was a decree of fate.

The free bird cries, "O my love, let us fly to wood."

The cage bird whispers, "Come hither, let us both
live in the cage."

Says the free bird, "Among bars, where is there room
to spread one's wings?"

"Alas," cries the cage bird, "I should not know
where to sit perched in the sky."

The parapets of our terraced roofs were higher
than my head. When I had grown taller; when
the tyranny of the servants had relaxed; when,
with the coming of a newly married bride into

I4 MY REMINISCENCES

the house, I had achieved some recognition as a
companion of her leisure, then did I sometimes
come up to the terrace in the middle of the day.
By that time everybody in the house would have
finished their meal; there would be an interval
in the business of the household; over the inner
apartments would rest the quiet of the midday
siesta; the wet bathing clothes would be hanging
over the parapets to dry; the crows would be pick-
ing at the leavings thrown on the refuse heap at
the corner of the yard; in the solitude of that
interval the caged bird would, through the gaps
in the parapet, commune bill to bill with the
free bird!

I would stand and gaze. . . . My glance first
falls on the row of cocoanut trees on the further
edge of our inner garden. Through these are seen
the "Singhi's Garden" with its cluster of huts 1
and tank, and on the edge of the tank the dairy
of our milkwoman, Tara; still further on, mixed
up with the tree-tops, the various shapes and
different heights of the terraced roofs of Calcutta,
flashing back the blazing whiteness of the midday
sun, stretch right away into the grayish blue of the
eastern horizon. And some of these far distant

1 These Bustees or settlements consisting of tumbledown hovels,
existing side by side with palatial buildings, are still one of the anom-
alies of Calcutta. Tr.

The Inner Garden was Mv Paradise

MY REMINISCENCES 15

dwellings from which stand forth their roofed stair-
ways leading up to the terrace, look as if with up-
lifted finger and a wink they are hinting to me of
the mysteries of their interiors. Like the beggar at
the palace door who imagines impossible treasures
to be held in the strong rooms closed to him, I can
hardly tell of the wealth of play and freedom
which these unknown dwellings seem to me
crowded with. From the furthest depth of the
sky full of burning sunshine overhead the thin
shrill cry of a kite reaches my ear; and from the
lane adjoining Singhi's Garden comes up, past
the houses silent in their noonday slumber, the
sing-song of the bangle-seller — chai choori chai . . .
and my whole being would fly away from the
work-a-day world.

My father hardly ever stayed at home, he was
constantly roaming about. His rooms on the
third storey used to remain shut up. I would
pass my hands through the Venetian shutters,
and thus opening the latch get the door open, and
spend the afternoon lying motionless on his sofa
at the south end. First of all it was a room al-
ways closed, and then there was the stolen entry,
this gave it a deep flavour of mystery; further
the broad empty expanse of terrace to the south,
glowing in the rays of the sun would set me day-
dreaming.

16 MY REMINISCENCES

There was yet another attraction. The water-
works had just been started in Calcutta, and in
the first exuberance of its triumphant entry it did
not stint even the Indian quarters of their supply.
In that golden age of pipe water, it used to flow
even up to my father's third storey rooms. And
turning on the shower tap I would indulge to my
heart's content in an untimely bath. Not so
much for the comfort of it, as to give rein to my
desire to do just as I fancied. The alternation of
the joy of liberty, and the fear of being caught,
made that shower of municipal water send arrows
of delight thrilling into me.

It was perhaps because the possibility of contact
with the outside was so remote that the joy of it
came to me so much more readily. When material
is in profusion, the mind gets lazy and leaves every-
thing to it, forgetting that for a successful feast
of joy its internal equipment counts for more
than the external. This is the chief lesson which
his infant state has to teach to man. There his
possessions are few and trivial, yet he needs no
more for his happiness. The world of play is
spoilt for the unfortunate youngster who is
burdened with an unlimited quantity of play-
things.

To call our inner garden a garden is to say a
deal too much. Its properties consisted of a

MY REMINISCENCES 17

citron tree, a couple of plum trees of different
varieties, and a row of cocoanut trees. In the
centre was a paved circle the cracks of which
various grasses and weeds had invaded and planted
in them their victorious standards. Only those
flowering plants which refused to die of neglect
continued uncomplainingly to perform their re-
spective duties without casting any aspersions
on the gardener. In the northern corner was a
rice-husking shed, where the inmates of the inner
apartments would occasionally foregather when
household necessity demanded. This last vestige
of rural life has since owned defeat and slunk
away ashamed and unnoticed.

None the less I suspect that Adam's garden
of Eden could hardly have been better adorned
than this one of ours; for he and his paradise were
alike naked; they needed not to be furnished
with material things. It is only since his tasting
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and till he
can fully digest it, that man's need for external
furniture and embellishment persistently grows.
Our inner garden was my paradise; it was enough
for me. I well remember how in the early au-
tumn dawn I would run there as soon as I was
awake. A scent of dewy grass and foliage would
rush to meet me, and the morning with its cool
fresh sunlight would peep out at me over the top

i8 MY REMINISCENCES

of the Eastern garden wall from below the trem-
bling tassels of the cocoanut palms.

There is another piece of vacant land to the
north of the house which to this day we call the
golabari (barn house). The name shows that in
some remote past this must have been the place
where the year's store of grain used to be kept
in a barn. Then, as with brother and sister in
infancy, the likeness between town and country
was visible all over. Now the family resemblance
can hardly be traced. This golabari would be
my holiday haunt if I got the chance. It would
hardly be correct to say that I went there to
play — it was the place not play, which drew me.
Why this was so, is difficult to tell. Perhaps its
being a deserted bit of waste land lying in an
out-of-the-way corner gave it its charm for me.
It was entirely outside the living quarters and
bore no stamp of usefulness; moreover it was as
unadorned as it was useless, for no one had ever
planted anything there; it was doubtless for these
reasons that this desert spot offered no resistance
to the free play of the boy's imagination. When-
ever I got any loop-hole to evade the vigilance
of my warders and could contrive to reach the
golabari I felt I had a holiday indeed.

There was yet another place in our house which
I have even yet not succeeded in rinding out.

MY REMINISCENCES 19

A little girl playmate of my own age called this
the "King's palace." 1 "I have just been there,"
she would sometimes tell me. But somehow the
propitious moment never turned up when she
could take me along with her. That was a wonder-
ful place, and its playthings were as wonderful
as the games that were played there. It seemed
to me it must be somewhere very near — perhaps
in the first or second storey; the only thing was
one never seemed to be able to get there. How
often have I asked my companion, "Only tell
me, is it really inside the house or outside?"
And she would always reply, "No, no, it's in this
very house." I would sit and wonder: "Where
then can it be? Don't I know all the rooms of
the house?" Who the king might be I never
cared to inquire; where his palace is still remains
undiscovered; this much was clear — the king's
palace was within our house.

Looking back on childhood's days the thing
that recurs most often is the mystery which used
to fill both life and world. Something undreamt
of was lurking everywhere and the uppermost
question every day was: when, Oh! when would
we come across it? It was as if nature held some-
thing in her closed hands and was smilingly ask-
ing us: "What d'you think I have?" What was

1 Corresponding to "Wonderland."

20 MY REMINISCENCES

impossible for her to have was the thing we had
no idea of.

Well do I remember the custard apple seed
which I had planted and kept in a corner of the
south verandah, and used to water every day. The
thought that the seed might possibly grow into a
tree kept me in a great state of fluttering wonder.
Custard apple seeds still have the habit of sprout-
ing, but no longer to the accompaniment of that
feeling of wonder. The fault is not in the custard
apple but in the mind. We had once stolen some
rocks from an elder cousin's rockery and started a
little rockery of our own. The plants which we
sowed in its interstices were cared for so exces-
sively that it was only because of their vegetable
nature that they managed to put up with it till
their untimely death. Words cannot recount
the endless joy and wonder which this miniature
mountain-top held for us. We had no doubt that
this creation of ours would be a wonderful thing
to our elders also. The day that we sought to
put this to the proof, however, the hillock in
the corner of our room, with all its rocks, and all
its vegetation, vanished. The knowledge that
the schoolroom floor was not a proper foundation
for the erection of a mountain was imparted so
rudely, and with such suddenness, that it gave us
a considerable shock. The weight of stone of

MY REMINISCENCES 21

which the floor was relieved settled on our minds
when we realised the gulf between our fancies
and the will of our elders.

How intimately did the life of the world throb
for us in those days! Earth, water, foliage and
sky, they all spoke to us and would not be dis-
regarded. How often were we struck by the
poignant regret that we could only see the upper
storey of the earth and knew nothing of its inner
storey. All our planning was as to how we could
pry beneath its dust-coloured cover. If, thought
we, we could drive in bamboo after bamboo, one
over the other, we might perhaps get into some
sort of touch with its inmost depths.

During the Magh festival a series of wooden
pillars used to be planted round the outer court-
yard for supporting the chandeliers. Digging
holes for these would begin on the first of Magh.
The preparations for festivity are ever interesting
to young folk. But this digging had a special
attraction for me. Though I had watched it
done year after year — and seen the hole grow
bigger and bigger till the digger had completely
disappeared inside, and yet nothing extraordinary,
nothing worthy of the quest of prince or knight,
had ever appeared — yet every time I had the feel-
ing that the lid being lifted off a chest of mystery.
I felt that a little bit more digging would do it.

22 MY REMINISCENCES

Year after year passed, but that bit never got done.
There was a pull at the curtain but it was not
drawn. The elders, thought I, can do whatever
they please, why do they rest content with such
shallow delving? If we young folk had the order-
ing of it, the inmost mystery of the earth would
no longer be allowed to remain smothered in its
dust covering.

And the thought that behind every part of the
vault of blue reposed the mysteries of the sky
would also spur our imaginings. When our
Pundit, in illustration of some lesson in our Ben-
gali science primer, told us that the blue sphere
was not an enclosure, how thunderstruck we
were! "Put ladder upon ladder," said he, "and
go on mounting away, but you will never bump
your head." He must be sparing of his ladders,
I opined, and questioned with a rising inflection,
"And what if we put more ladders, and more,
and more?" When I realised that it was fruitless
multiplying ladders I remained dumbfounded
pondering over the matter. Surely, I concluded,
such an astounding piece of news must be known
only to those who are the world's schoolmasters!

PART II

(4) Servocracy

IN the history of India the regime of the Slave
Dynasty was not a happy one. In going back
to the reign of the servants in my own life's
history I can find nothing glorious or cheerful
touching the period. There were frequent changes
of king, but never a variation in the code of re-
straints and punishments with which we were
afflicted. We, however, had no opportunity at the
time for philosophising on the subject; our backs
bore as best they could the blows which befell
them: and we accepted as one of the laws of the
universe that it is for the Big to hurt and for the
Small to be hurt. It has taken me a long time to
learn the opposite truth that it is the Big who
suffer and the Small who cause suffering.

The quarry does not view virtue and vice from
the standpoint of the hunter. That is why the
alert bird, whose cry warns its fellows before the
shot has sped, gets abused as vicious. We howled
when we were beaten, which our chastisers did not
consider good manners; it was in fact counted
sedition against the servocracy. I cannot forget
how, in order effectively to suppress such sedition,
our heads used to be crammed into the huge water
jars then in use; distasteful, doubtless, was this

25

26 MY REMINISCENCES

outcry to those who caused it; moreover, it was
likely to have unpleasant consequences.

I now sometimes wonder why such cruel treat-
ment was meted out to us by the servants. I
cannot admit that there was on the whole any-
thing in our behaviour or demeanour to have put
us beyond the pale of human kindness. The real
reason must have been that the whole of our bur-
den was thrown on the servants, and the whole
burden is a thing difficult to bear even for those
who are nearest and dearest. If children are only
allowed to be children, to run and play about and
satisfy their curiosity, it becomes quite simple.
Insoluble problems are only created if you try to
confine them inside, keep them still or hamper
their play. Then does the burden of the child, so
lightly borne by its own childishness, fall heavily
on the guardian — like that of the horse in the fable
which was carried instead of being allowed to trot
on its own legs : and though money procured bearers
even for such a burden it could not prevent them
taking it out of the unlucky beast at every step.

Of most of these tyrants of our childhood I re-
member only their cuffings and boxings, and noth-
ing more. Only one personality stands out in my
memory.

His name was Iswar. He had been a village
schoolmaster before. He was a prim, proper and

MY REMINISCENCES 27

sedately dignified personage. The Earth seemed
too earthy for him, with too little water to keep it
sufficiently clean; so that he had to be in a con-
stant state of warfare with its chronic soiled state.
He would shoot his water-pot into the tank with
a lightning movement so as to get his supply from
an uncontaminated depth. It was he who, when
bathing in the tank, would be continually thrusting
away the surface impurities till he took a sudden
plunge expecting, as it were, to catch the water
unawares. When walking his right arm stood out
at an angle from his body, as if, so it seemed to us,
he could not trust the cleanliness even of his own
garments. His whole bearing had the appearance
of an effort to keep clear of the imperfections
which, through unguarded avenues, find entrance
into earth, water and air, and into the ways of
men. Unfathomable was the depth of his gravity.
With head slightly tilted he would mince his care-
fully selected words in a deep voice. His literary
diction would give food for merriment to our elders
behind his back, some of his high-flown phrases
finding a permanent place in our family repertoire
of witticisms. But I doubt whether the expres-
sions he used would sound as remarkable to-day;
showing how the literary and spoken languages,
which used to be as sky from earth asunder, are
now coming nearer each other.

28 MY REMINISCENCES

This erstwhile schoolmaster had discovered a
way of keeping us quiet in the evenings. Every
evening he would gather us round the cracked
castor-oil lamp and read out to us stories from the
Ramayana and Mahabharata. Some of the other
servants would also come and join the audience.
The lamp would be throwing huge shadows right
up to the beams of the roof, the little house lizards
catching insects on the walls, the bats doing a mad
dervish dance round and round the verandahs
outside, and we listening in silent open-mouthed
wonder.

I still remember, on the evening we came to the
story of Kusha and Lava, and those two valiant
lads were threatening to humble to the dust the
renown of their father and uncles, how the tense
silence of that dimly lighted room was bursting
with eager anticipation. It was getting late, our
prescribed period of wakefulness was drawing to a
close, and yet the denouement was far off.

At this critical juncture my father's old follower
Kishori came to the rescue, and finished the episode
for us, at express speed, to the quickstep of Dasu-
raya's jingling verses. The impression of the soft
slow chant of Krittivasa's 1 fourteen-syllabled
measure was swept clean away and we were left

1 There are innumerable renderings of the Ramayana in the Indian
languages.

MY REMINISCENCES 29

overwhelmed by a flood of rhymes and allitera-
tions.

On some occasions these readings would give
rise to shastric discussions, which would at length
be settled by the depth of Iswar's wise pronounce-
ments. Though, as one of the children's servants,
his rank in our domestic society was below that of
many, yet, as with old Grandfather Bhisma in the
Mahabharata, his supremacy would assert itself
from his seat below his juniors.

Our grave and reverend servitor had one weak-
ness to which, for the sake of historical accuracy,
I feel bound to allude. He used to take opium.
This created a craving for rich food. So that when
he brought us our morning goblets of milk the
forces of attraction in his mind would be greater
than those of repulsion. If we gave the least ex-
pression to our natural repugnance for this meal,
no sense of responsibility for our health could
prompt him to press it on us a second time.

Iswar also held somewhat narrow views as to
our capacity for solid nourishment. We would sit
down to our evening repast and a quantity of
luchis * heaped on a thick round wooden tray
would be placed before us. He would begin by
gingerly dropping a few on each platter, from a

1 A kind of crisp unsweetened pancake taken like bread along with
the other courses.

30 MY REMINISCENCES

sufficient height to safeguard himself from con-
tamination1— like unwilling favours, wrested from
the gods by dint of importunity, did they descend,
so dexterously inhospitable was he. Next would
come the inquiry whether he should give us any
more. I knew the reply which would be most
gratifying, and could not bring myself to deprive
him by asking for another help.

Then again Iswar was entrusted with a daily
allowance of money for procuring our afternoon
light refreshment. He would ask us every morning
what we should like to have. We knew that to
mention the cheapest would be accounted best, so
sometimes we ordered a light refection of puffed
rice, and at others an indigestible one of boiled
gram or roasted groundnuts. It was evident that
Iswar was not as painstakingly punctilious in re-
gard to our diet as with the shastric proprieties.

(5) The Normal School

While at the Oriental Seminary I had discovered
a way out of the degradation of being a mere
pupil. I had started a class of my own in a corner
of our verandah. The wooden bars of the railing

1 Food while being eaten, and utensils or anything else touched by
the hand engaged in conveying food to the mouth, are considered
ceremonially unclean.

MY REMINISCENCES 31

were my pupils, and I would act the schoolmaster,
cane in hand, seated on a chair in front of them.
I had decided which were the good boys and which
the bad — nay, further, I could distinguish clearly
the quiet from the naughty, the clever from the
stupid. The bad rails had suffered so much from
my constant caning that they must have longed to
give up the ghost had they been alive. And the
more scarred they got with my strokes the worse
they angered me, till I knew not how to punish
them enough. None remain to bear witness to-day
how tremendously I tyrannised over that poor
dumb class of mine. My wooden pupils have since
been replaced by cast-iron railings, nor have any
of the new generation taken up their education in
the same way — they could never have made the
same impression.

I have since realised how much easier it is to
acquire the manner than the matter. Without an
effort had I assimilated all the impatience, the
short temper, the partiality and the injustice dis-
played by my teachers to the exclusion of the rest
of their teaching. My only consolation is that I
had not the power of venting these barbarities on
any sentient creature. Nevertheless the difference
between my wooden pupils and those of the Sem-
inary did not prevent my psychology from being
identical with that of its schoolmasters.

32 MY REMINISCENCES

I could not have been long at the Oriental Sem-
inary, for I was still of tender age when I joined
the Normal School. The only one of its features
which I remember is that before the classes began
all the boys had to sit in a row in the gallery and
go through some kind of singing or chanting of
verses — evidently an attempt at introducing an
element of cheerfulness into the daily routine.

Unfortunately the words were English and the
tune quite as foreign, so that we had not the faint-
est notion what sort of incantation we were prac-
tising; neither did the meaningless monotony of
the performance tend to make us cheerful. This
failed to disturb the serene self-satisfaction of the
school authorities at having provided such a treat;
they deemed it superfluous to inquire into the
practical effect of their bounty; they would prob-
ably have counted it a crime for the boys not to
be dutifully happy. Anyhow they rested content
with taking the song as they found it, words and
all, from the self-same English book which had
furnished the theory.

The language into which this English resolved
itself in our mouths cannot but be edifying to
philologists. I can recall only one line:

Kallokee pullokee singill mellaling mellaling mel-
laling.

After much thought I have been able to guess

MY REMINISCENCES 33

at the original of a part of it. Of what words kal-
lokee is the transformation still baffles me. The
rest I think was:

. . . full of glee, singing merrily, merrily, merrily!

As my memories of the Normal School emerge
from haziness and become clearer they are not the
least sweet in any particular. Had I been able to
associate with the other boys, the woes of learning
might not have seemed so intolerable. But that
turned out to be impossible — so nasty were most
of the boys in their manners and habits. So, in
the intervals of the classes, I would go up to the
second storey and while away the time sitting near
a window overlooking the street. I would count:
one year — two years — three years — ; wondering
how many such would have to be got through like
this.

Of the teachers I remember only one, whose
language was so foul that, out of sheer contempt
for him, I steadily refused to answer any one of his
questions. Thus I sat silent throughout the year
at the bottom of his class, and while the rest of
the class was busy I would be left alone to attempt
the solution of many an intricate problem.

One of these, I remember, on which I used to
cogitate profoundly, was how to defeat an enemy
without having arms. My preoccupation with
this question, amidst the hum of the boys reciting

34 MY REMINISCENCES

their lessons, comes back to me even now. If I
could properly train up a number of dogs, tigers
and other ferocious beasts, and put a few lines of
these on the field of battle, that, I thought, would
serve very well as an inspiriting prelude. With
our personal prowess let loose thereafter, victory
should by no means be out of reach. And, as the
picture of this wonderfully simple strategy waxed
vivid in my imagination, the victory of my side
became assured beyond doubt.

While work had not yet come into my life I
always found it easy to devise short cuts to achieve-
ment; since I have been working I find that what
is hard is hard indeed, and what is difficult re-
mains difficult. This, of course, is less comforting;
but nowhere near so bad as the discomfort of trying
to take shortcuts.

When at length a year of that class had passed,
we were examined in Bengali by Pandit Mad-
husudan Vachaspati. I got the largest number of
marks of all the boys. The teacher complained to
the school authorities that there had been favourit-
ism in my case. So I was examined a second time,
with the superintendent of the school seated beside
the examiner. This time, also, I got a top place.

MY REMINISCENCES 35

(6) Versification

I could not have been more than eight years old
at the time. Jyoti, a son of a niece of my father's,
was considerably older than I. He had just gained
an entrance into English literature, and would re-
cite Hamlet's soliloquy with great gusto. Why he
should have taken it into his head to get a child,
as I was, to write poetry I cannot tell. One after-
noon he sent for me to his room, and asked me to
try and make up a verse; after which he explained
to me the construction of the payar metre of four-
teen syllables.

I had up to then only seen poems in printed
books — no mistakes penned through, no sign to the
eye of doubt or trouble or any human weakness. I
could not have dared even to imagine that any
effort of mine could produce such poetry.

One day a thief had been caught in our house.
Overpowered by curiosity, yet in fear and trem-
bling, I ventured to the spot to take a peep at him.
I found he was just an ordinary man! And when
he was somewhat roughly handled by our door-
keeper I felt a great pity. I had a similar expe-
rience with poetry.

When, after stringing together a few words at
my own sweet will, I found them turned into a

36 MY REMINISCENCES

payar verse I felt I had no illusions left about the
glories of poetising. So when poor Poetry is mis-
handled, even now I feel as unhappy as I did about
the thief. Many a time have I been moved to
pity and yet been unable to restrain impatient
hands itching for the assault. Thieves have
scarcely suffered so much, and from so many.

The first feeling of awe once overcome there was
no holding me back. I managed to get hold of a
blue-paper manuscript book by the favour of one
of the officers of our estate. With my own hands
I ruled it with pencil lines, at not very regular in-
tervals, and thereon I began to write verses in a
large childish scrawl.

Like a young deer which butts here, there and
everywhere with its newly sprouting horns, I
made myself a nuisance with my budding poetry.
More so my elder l brother, whose pride in my
performance impelled him to hunt about the house
for an audience.

I recollect how, as the pair of us, one day, were
coming out of the estate offices on the ground floor,
after a conquering expedition against the officers,
we came across the editor of "The National
Paper," Nabagopal Mitter, who had just stepped
into the house. My brother tackled him without

1 The writer is the youngest of seven brothers. The sixth brother
is here meant.

MY REMINISCENCES 37

further ado: "Look here, Nabagopal Babu! won't
you listen to a poem which Rabi has written?"
The reading forthwith followed.

My works had not as yet become voluminous.
The poet could carry all his effusions about in his
pockets. I was writer, printer and publisher, all in
one; my brother, as advertiser, being my only col-
league. I had composed some verses on The Lotus
which I recited to Nabagopal Babu then and there,
at the foot of the stairs, in a voice pitched as high
as my enthusiasm. "Well done!" said he with a
smile. "But what is a dwirepha ?" 1

How I had got hold of this word I do not re-
member. The ordinary name would have fitted
the metre quite as well. But this was the one
word in the whole poem on which I had pinned my
hopes. It had doubtless duly impressed our offi-
cers. But curiously enough Nabagopal Babu did
not succumb to it — on the contrary he smiled! He
could not be an understanding man, I felt sure. I
never read poetry to him again. I have since added
many years to my age but have not been able to
improve upon my test of what does or does not
constitute understanding in my hearer. However
Nabagopal Babu might smile, the word dwirepha,
like a bee drunk with honey- stuck to its place,
unmoved.

1 Obsolete word meaning bee.

38 MY REMINISCENCES

(7) Various Learning

One of the teachers of the Normal School also
gave us private lessons at home. His body was
lean, his features dry, his voice sharp. He looked
like a cane incarnate. His hours were from six to
half-past-nine in the morning. With him our
reading ranged from popular literary and science
readers in Bengali to the epic of Meghnadvadha.

My third brother was very keen on imparting
to us a variety of knowledge. So at home we had
to go through much more than what was required
by the school course. We had to get up before
dawn and, clad in loin-cloths, begin with a bout or
two with a blind wrestler. Without a pause we
donned our tunics on our dusty bodies, and started
on our courses of literature, mathematics, geog-
raphy and history. On our return from school
our drawing and gymnastic masters would be
ready for us. In the evening Aghore Babu came
for our English lessons. It was only after nine
that we were free.

On Sunday morning we had singing lessons with
Vishnu. Then, almost every Sunday, came Sita-
nath Dutta to give us demonstrations in physical
science. The last were of great interest to me. I
remember distinctly the feeling of wonder which

MY REMINISCENCES 39

filled me when he put some water, with sawdust
in it, on the fire in a glass vessel, and showed us
how the lightened hot water came up, and the cold
water went down and how finally the water began
to boil. I also felt a great elation the day I learnt
that water is a separable part of milk, and that
milk thickens when boiled because the water frees
itself as vapour from the connexion. Sunday did
not feel Sunday-like unless Sitanath Babu turned
up.

There was also an hour when we would be told
all about human bones by a pupil of the Campbell
Medical School, for which purpose a skeleton,
with the bones fastened together by wires was
hung up in our schoolroom. And finally, time was
also found for Pandit Heramba Tatwaratna to
come and get us to learn by rote rules of Sanscrit
grammar. I am not sure which of them, the names
of the bones or the sutras of the grammarian, were
the more jaw-breaking. I think the latter took
the palm.

We began to learn English after we had made
considerable progress in learning through the
medium of Bengali. Aghore Babu, our English
tutor, was attending the Medical College, so he
came to teach us in the evening.

Books tell us that the discovery of fire was one
of the biggest discoveries of man. I do not wish

40 MY REMINISCENCES

to dispute this. But I cannot help feeling how
fortunate the little birds are that their parents
cannot light lamps of an evening. They have
their language lessons early in the morning and
you must have noticed how gleefully they
learn them. Of course we must not forget that
they do not have to learn the English lan-
guage!

The health of this medical-student tutor of ours
was so good that even the fervent and united wishes
of his three pupils were not enough to cause his
absence even for a day. Only once was he laid up
with a broken head when, on the occasion of a
fight between the Indian and Eurasian students
of the Medical College, a chair was thrown at him.
It was a regrettable occurrence; nevertheless we
were not able to take it as a personal sorrow, and
his recovery somehow seemed to us needlessly
swift.

It is evening. The rain is pouring in lance-like
showers. Our lane is under knee-deep water. The
tank has overflown into the garden, and the bushy
tops of the Bael trees are seen standing out over
the waters. Our whole being, on this delightful
rainy evening, is radiating rapture like the Ka-
damba flower its fragrant spikes. The time for
the arrival of our tutor is over by just a few min-
utes. Yet there is no certainty. . . ! We are

MY REMINISCENCES 41

sitting on the verandah overlooking the lane *
watching and watching with a piteous gaze. All
of a sudden, with a great big thump, our hearts
seem to fall in a swoon. The familiar black um-
brella has turned the corner undefeated even by
such weather! Could it not be somebody else?
It certainly could not! In the wide wide world
there might be found another, his equal in per-
tinacity, but never in this little lane of ours.

Looking back on his period as a whole, I cannot
say that Aghore Babu was a hard man. He did
not rule us with a rod. Even his rebukes did not
amount to scoldings. But whatever may have
been his personal merits, his time was evening, and
his subject English! I am certain that even an
angel would have seemed a veritable messenger
of Yama 2 to any Bengali boy if he came to him
at the end of his miserable day at school, and
lighted a dismally dim lamp to teach him English.

How well do I remember the day our tutor tried
to impress on us the attractiveness of the English
language. With this object he recited to us with
great unction some lines — prose or poetry we could
not tell — out of an English book. It had a most
unlocked for effect on us. We laughed so im-

1 The lane, a blind one, leads, at right angles to the front verandah,
from the public main road to the grounds round the house.

2 God of Death.

42 MY REMINISCENCES

moderately that he had to dismiss us for that
evening. He must have realised that he held no
easy brief — that to get us to pronounce in his
favour would entail a contest ranging over years.

Aghore Babu would sometimes try to bring the
zephyr of outside knowledge to play on the arid
routine of our schoolroom. One day he brought a
paper parcel out of his pocket and said: "I'll
show you to-day a wonderful piece of work of the
Creator." With this he untied the paper wrapping
and, producing a portion of the vocal organs of a
human being, proceeded to expound the marvels
of its mechanism.

I can still call to mind the shock this gave me
at the time. I had always thought the whole
man spoke — had never even imagined that the
act of speech could be viewed in this detached
way. However wonderful the mechanism of a
part may be, it is certainly less so than the whole
man. Not that I put it to myself in so many
words, but that was the cause of my dismay. It
was perhaps because the tutor had lost sight of
this truth that the pupil could not respond to the
enthusiasm with which he was discoursing on the
subject.

Another day he took us to the dissecting room
of the Medical College. The body of an old
woman was stretched on the table. This did not

MY REMINISCENCES 43

disturb me so much. But an amputated leg which
was lying on the floor upset me altogether. To
view man in this fragmentary way seemed to me so
horrid, so absurd that I could not get rid of the
impression of that dark, unmeaning leg for many
a day.

After getting through Peary Sarkar's first and
second English readers we entered upon McCul-
loch's Course of Reading. Our bodies were weary
at the end of the day, our minds yearning for the
inner apartments, the book was black and thick
with difficult words, and the subject-matter
could hardly have been more inviting, for in
those days, Mother Saraswati's 1 maternal tender-
ness was not in evidence. Children's books were
not full of pictures then as they are now. More-
over, at the gateway of every reading lesson stood
sentinel an array of words, with separated syllables,
and forbidding accent marks like fixed bayonets,
barring the way to the infant mind. I had re-
peatedly attacked their serried ranks in vain.

Our tutor would try to shame us by recounting
the exploits of some other brilliant pupil of his.
We felt duly ashamed, and also not well-disposed
towards that other pupil, but this did not help
to dispel the darkness which clung to that black
volume.

1 Goddess of Learning.

44 MY REMINISCENCES

Providence, out of pity for mankind, has in-
stilled a soporific charm into all tedious things.
No sooner did our English lessons begin than our
heads began to nod. Sprinkling water into our
eyes, or taking a run round the verandahs, were
palliatives which had no lasting effect. If by any
chance my eldest brother happened to be passing
that way, and caught a glimpse of our sleep-
tormented condition, we would get let off for
the rest of the evening. It did not take our drowsi-
ness another moment to get completely cured.

(8) My First Outing

Once, when the dengue fever was raging in
Calcutta, some portion of our extensive family
had to take shelter in Chhatu Babu's river-side
villa. We were among them.

This was my first outing. The bank of the
Ganges welcomed me into its lap like a friend of a
former birth. There, in front of the servants'
quarters, was a grove of guava trees; and, sitting
in the verandah under the shade of these, gazing
at the flowing current through the gaps between
their trunks, my days would pass. Every morn-
ing, as I awoke, I somehow felt the day coming
to me like a new gilt-edged letter, with some un-
heard-of news awaiting me on the opening of the

MY REMINISCENCES 45

envelope. And, lest I should lose any fragment
of it, I would hurry through my toilet to my chair
outside. Every day there was the ebb and flow
of the tide on the Ganges; the various gait of so
many different boats; the shifting of the shadows
of the trees from west to east; and, over the fringe
of shade-patches of the woods on the opposite
bank, the gush of golden life-blood through the
pierced breast of the evening sky. Some days
would be cloudy from early morning; the opposite
woods black; black shadows moving over the
river. Then with a rush would come the vocifer-
ous rain, blotting out the horizon; the dim line
of the other bank taking its leave in tears: the
river swelling with suppressed heavings; and
the moist wind making free with the foliage of
the trees overhead.

I felt that out of the bowels of wall, beam and
rafter, I had a new birth into the outside. In
making fresh acquaintance with things, the dingy
covering of petty habits seemed to drop off the
world. I am sure that the sugar-cane molasses,
which I had with cold luchis for my breakfast,
could not have tasted different from the ambrosia
which Indra 1 quaffs in his heaven; for, the im-
mortality is not in the nectar but in the taster,
and thus is missed by those who seek it.

1 The Jupiter Pluvius of Hindu Mythology.

46 MY REMINISCENCES

Behind the house was a walled-in enclosure
with a tank and a flight of steps leading into the
water from a bathing platform. On one side of
the platform was an immense Jambolan tree,
and all round were various fruit trees, growing
in thick clusters, in the shade of which the tank
nestled in its privacy. The veiled beauty of this
retired little inner garden had a wonderful charm
for me, so different from the broad expanse of the
river-bank in front. It was like the bride of the
house, in the seclusion of her midday siesta, rest-
ing on a many-coloured quilt of her own embroider-
ing, murmuring low the secrets of her heart. Many
a midday hour did I spend alone under that
Jambolan tree dreaming of the fearsome king-
dom of the Yakshas l within the depths of the
tank.

I had a great curiosity to see a Bengal village.
Its clusters of cottages, its thatched pavilions, its
lanes and bathing places, its games and gather-
ings, its fields and markets, its life as a whole as
I saw it in imagination, greatly attracted me.
Just such a village was right on the other side of
our garden wall, but it was forbidden to us. We
had come out, but not into freedom. We had
been in a cage, and were now on a perch, but the
chain was still there.

1 The King of the Yakshas is the Pluto of Hindu Mythology.

MY REMINISCENCES 47

One morning two of our elders went out for a
stroll into the village. I could not restrain my
eagerness any longer, and, slipping out unper-
ceived, followed them for some distance. As I
went along the deeply shaded lane, with its close
thorny seora hedges, by the side of the tank
covered with green water weeds, I rapturously
took in picture after picture. I still remember
the man with bare body, engaged in a belated
toilet on the edge of the tank, cleaning his teeth
with the chewed end of a twig. Suddenly my
elders became aware of my presence behind them.
"Get away, get away, go back at once!" they
scolded. They were scandalised. My feet were
bare, I had no scarf or upper-robe over my tunic,
I was not dressed fit to come out; as if it was my
fault! I never owned any socks or superfluous
apparel, so not only went back disappointed for
that morning, but had no chance of repairing my
shortcomings and being allowed to come out any
other day. However though the Beyond was
thus shut out from behind, in front the Ganges
freed me from all bondage, and my mind, when-
ever it listed, could embark on the boats gaily
sailing along, and hie away to lands not named
in any geography.

This was forty years ago. Since then I have
never set foot again in that champ ak-sha.ded villa

48 MY REMINISCENCES

garden. The same old house and the same old
trees must still be there, but I know it cannot any
longer be the same — for where am I now to get
that fresh feeling of wonder which made it what
it was ?

We returned to our Jorasanko house in town.
And my days were as so many mouthfuls offered
up to be gulped down into the yawning interior
of the Normal School.

(9) Practising Poetry

That blue manuscript book was soon filled,
like the hive of some insect, with a network of
variously slanting lines and the thick and thin
strokes of letters. The eager pressure of the boy
writer soon crumpled its leaves; and then the
edges got frayed, and twisted up claw-like as if
to hold fast the writing within, till at last, down
what river Baitarani 1 I know not, its pages were
swept away by merciful oblivion. Anyhow they
escaped the pangs of a passage through the print-
ing press and need fear no birth into this vale of
woe.

I cannot claim to have been a passive witness
of the spread of my reputation as a poet. Though
Satkari Babu was not a teacher of our class he

1 Corresponding to Lethe.

MY REMINISCENCES 49

was very fond of me. He had written a book on
Natural History — wherein I hope no unkind
humorist will try to find a reason for such fond-
ness. He sent for me one day and asked: "So
you write poetry, do you?" I did not conceal
the fact. From that time on, he would now and
then ask me to complete a quatrain by adding a
couplet of my own to one given by him.

Gobinda Babu of our school was very dark,
and short and fat. He was the Superintendent.
He sat, in his black suit, with his account books,
in an office room on the second storey. We were
all afraid of him, for he was the rod-bearing judge.
On one occasion I had escaped from the attentions
of some bullies into his room. The persecutors
were five or six older boys. I had no one to bear
witness on my side — except my tears. I won my
case and since then Govinda Babu had a soft
corner in his heart for me.

One day he called me into his room during
the recess. I went in fear and trembling but had
no sooner stepped before him than he also ac-
costed me with the question: "So you write
poetry?" I did not hesitate to make the admis-
sion. He commissioned me to write a poem on
some high moral precept which I do not remember.
The amount of condescension and affability which
such a request coming from him implied can only

50 MY REMINISCENCES

be appreciated by those who were his pupils.
When I finished and handed him the verses next
day, he took me to the highest class and made
me stand before the boys. "Recite," he com-
manded. And I recited loudly.

The only praiseworthy thing about this moral
poem was that it soon got lost. Its moral effect
on that class was far from encouraging — the
sentiment it aroused being not one of regard for
its author. Most of them were certain that it
was not my own composition. One said he could
produce the book from which it was copied, but
was not pressed to do so; the process of proving
is such a nuisance to those who want to believe.
Finally the number of seekers after poetic fame
began to increase alarmingly; moreover their
methods were not those which are recognised
as roads to moral improvement.

Nowadays there is nothing strange in a youngster
writing verses. The glamour of poesy is gone.
I remember how the few women who wrote poetry
in those days were looked upon as miraculous
creations of the Deity. If one hears to-day that
some young lady does not write poems one feels
sceptical. Poetry now sprouts long before the
highest Bengali class is reached; so that no modern
Gobinda Babu would have taken any notice of
the poetic exploit I have recounted.

PART III

(10) Srikantha Babu

A this time I was blessed with a hearer the like
of whom I shall never get again. He had so
inordinate a capacity for being pleased as to
have utterly disqualified him for the post of critic
in any of our monthly Reviews. The old man was
like a perfectly ripe Alfonso mango — not a trace
of acid or coarse fibre in his composition. His
tender clean-shaven face was rounded off by an
all-pervading baldness; there was not the vestige
of a tooth to worry the inside of his mouth; and
his big smiling eyes gleamed with a constant de-
light. When he spoke in his soft deep voice, his
mouth and eyes and hands all spoke likewise.
He was of the old school of Persian culture and
knew not a word of English. His inseparable
companions were a hubble-bubble at his left, and
a sitar on his lap; and from his throat flowed
song unceasing.

Srikantha Babu had no need to wait for a formal
introduction, for none could resist the natural
claims of his genial heart. Once he took us to
be photographed with him in some big English
photographic studio. There he so captivated the
proprietor with his artless story, in a jumble of
Hindusthani and Bengali, of how he was a poor

53

54 MY REMINISCENCES

man, but badly wanted this particular photo-
graph taken, that the man smilingly allowed him
a reduced rate. Nor did such bargaining sound
at all incongruous in that unbending English
establishment, so naive was Srikantha Babu, so
unconscious of any possibility of giving offence.
He would sometimes take me along to a European
missionary's house. There, also, with his playing
and singing, his caresses of the missionary's little
girl and his unstinted admiration of the little
booted feet of the missionary's lady, he would
enliven the gathering as no one else could have
done. Another behaving so absurdly would have
been deemed a bore, but his transparent simplicity
pleased all and drew them to join in his gaiety.

Srikantha Babu was impervious to rudeness
or insolence. There was at the time a singer of
some repute retained in our establishment. When
the latter was the worse for liquor he would rail
at poor Srikantha Babu's singing in no very
choice terms. This he would bear unflinchingly,
with no attempt at retort. When at last the man's
incorrigible rudeness brought about his dismissal
Srikantha Babu anxiously interceded for him.
"It was not he, it was the liquor," he insisted.

He could not bear to see anyone sorrowing or
even to hear of it. So when any one of the boys
wanted to torment him they had only to read

The Ganges

MY REMINISCENCES 55

out passages from Vidyasagar's " Banishment of
Sita"; whereat he would be greatly exercised,
thrusting out his hands in protest and begging
and praying of them to stop.

This old man was the friend alike of my father,
my elder brothers and ourselves. He was of an
age with each and every one of us. As any piece
of stone is good enough for the freshet to dance
round and gambol with, so the least provocation
would suffice to make him beside himself with joy.
Once I had composed a hymn, and had not failed
to make due allusion to the trials and tribulations
of this world. Srikantha Babu was convinced
that my father would be overjoyed at such a per-
fect gem of a devotional poem. With unbounded
enthusiasm he volunteered personally to acquaint
him with it. By a piece of good fortune I was
not there at the time but heard afterwards that
my father was hugely amused that the sorrows
of the world should have so early moved his
youngest son to the point of versification. I am
sure Gobinda Babu, the superintendent, would
have shown more respect for my effort on so
serious a subject.

In singing I was Srikantha Babu's favorite
pupil. He had taught me a song: "No more of
Vraja l for me," and would drag me about to

1 Krishna's playground.

56 MY REMINISCENCES

everyone's rooms and get me to sing it to them.
I would sing and he would thrum an accompani-
ment on his sitar and when we came to the chorus
he would join in, and repeat it over and over
again, smiling and nodding his head at each one
in turn, as if nudging them on to a more enthu-
siastic appreciation.

He was a devoted admirer of my father. A
hymn had been set to one of his tunes, "For He
is the heart of our hearts." When he sang this
to my father Srikantha Babu got so excited that
he jumped up from his seat and in alternation
violently twanged his sitar as he sang: "For
He is the heart of our hearts" and then waved
his hand about my father's face as he changed
the words to "For you are the heart of our
hearts."

When the old man paid his last visit to my
father, the latter, himself bed-ridden, was at a
river-side villa in Chinsurah. Srikantha Babu,
stricken with his last illness, could not rise un-
aided and had to push open his eyelids to see. In
this state, tended by his daughter, he journeyed
to Chinsurah from his place in Birbhoom. With
a great effort he managed to take the dust of my
father's feet and then return to his lodgings in
Chinsurah where he breathed his last a few days
later. I heard afterwards from his daughter that

MY REMINISCENCES 57

he went to his eternal youth with the song "How
sweet is thy mercy, Lord!" on his lips.

(n) Our Bengali Course Ends

At School we were then in the class below the
highest one. At home we had advanced in Ben-
gali much further than the subjects taught in
the class. We had been through Akshay Datta's
book on Popular Physics, and had also finished
the epic of Meghnadvadha. We read our physics
without any reference to physical objects and so
our knowledge of the subject was correspondingly
bookish. In fact the time spent on it had been
thoroughly wasted; much more so to my mind
than if it had been wasted in doing nothing. The
Meghnadvadha, also, was not a thing of joy to us.
The tastiest tit-bit may not be relished when
thrown at one's head. To employ an epic to teach
language is like using a sword to shave with —
sad for the sword, bad for the chin. A poem
should be taught from the emotional standpoint;
inveigling it into service as grammar-cum-dic-
tionary is not calculated to propitiate the divine
Saraswati.

All of a sudden our Normal School career came
to an end; and thereby hangs a tale. One of our
school teachers wanted to borrow a copy of my

58 MY REMINISCENCES

grandfather's life by Mitra from our library.
My nephew and classmate Satya managed to screw
up courage enough to volunteer to mention this
to my father. He came to the conclusion that
everyday Bengali would hardly do to approach
him with. So he concocted and delivered himself
of an archaic phrase with such meticulous pre-
cision that my father must have felt our study
of the Bengali language had gone a bit too far
and was in danger of over-reaching itself. So the
next morning, when according to our wont our
table had been placed in the south verandah,
the blackboard hung up on a nail in the wall,
and everything was in readiness for our lessons
with Nilkamal Babu, we three were sent for by
my father to his room upstairs. "You need not
do any more Bengali lessons," he said. Our minds
danced for very joy.

Nilkamal Babu was waiting downstairs, our
books were lying open on the table, and the idea
of getting us once more to go through the Megh-
nadvadha doubtless still occupied his mind. But
as on one's death-bed the various routine of daily
life seems unreal, so, in a moment, did everything,
from the Pandit down to the nail on which the
blackboard was hung, become for us as empty
as a mirage. Our sole trouble was how to give
this news to Nilkamal Babu with due decorum.

MY REMINISCENCES 59

We did it at last with considerable restraint,
while the geometrical figures on the blackboard
stared at us in wonder and the blank verse of
the Meghnadvadha looked blankly on.

Our Pandit's parting words were: "At the call
of duty I may have been sometimes harsh with
you — do not keep that in remembrance. You will
learn the value of what I have taught you later
on."

Indeed I have learnt that value. It was be-
cause we were taught in our own language that
our minds quickened. Learning should as far as
possible follow the process of eating. When the
taste begins from the first bite, the stomach is
awakened to its function before it is loaded, so
that its digestive juices get full play. Nothing
like this happens, however, when the Bengali
boy is taught in English. The first bite bids fair
to wrench loose both rows of teeth — like a veritable
earthquake in the mouth! And by the time he
discovers that the morsel is not of the genus stone,
but a digestible bonbon, half his allotted span of
life is over. While one is choking and spluttering
over the spelling and grammar, the inside re-
mains starved, and when at length the taste is
felt, the appetite has vanished. If the whole
mind does not work from the beginning its full
powers remain undeveloped to the end. While

60 MY REMINISCENCES

all around was the cry for English teaching, my
third brother was brave enough to keep us to our
Bengali course. To him in heaven my grateful
reverence.

(12) The Professor

On leaving the Normal School we were sent
to the Bengal Academy, a Eurasian institution.
We felt we had gained an access of dignity, that
we had grown up — at least into the first storey of
freedom. In point of fact the only progress we
made in that academy was towards freedom.
What we were taught there we never understood,
nor did we make any attempt to learn, nor did
it seem to make any difference to anybody that
we did not. The boys here were annoying but
not disgusting — which was a great comfort. They
wrote ASS on their palms and slapped it on to our
backs with a cordial "hello!" They gave us a
dig in the ribs from behind and looked innocently
another way. They dabbed banana pulp on our
heads and made away unperceived. Nevertheless
it was like coming out of slime on to rock — we
were worried but not soiled.

This school had one great advantage for me.
No one there cherished the forlorn hope that boys
of our sort could make any advance in learning.
It was a petty institution with an insufficient

MY REMINISCENCES 61

income, so that we had one supreme merit in
the eyes of its authorities — we paid our fees
regularly. This prevented even the Latin Gram-
mar from proving a stumbling block, and the most
egregious of blunders left our backs unscathed.
Pity for us had nothing to do with it — the school
authorities had spoken to the teachers!

Still, harmless though it was, after all it was
a school. The rooms were cruelly dismal with
their walls on guard like policemen. The house
was more like a pigeon-holed box than a human
habitation. No decoration, no pictures, not a
touch of colour, not an attempt to attract the
boyish heart. The fact that likes and dislikes
form a large part of the child mind was completely
ignored. Naturally our whole being was depressed
as we stepped through its doorway into the narrow
quadrangle — and playing truant became chronic
with us.

In this we found an accomplice. My elder
brothers had a Persian tutor. We used to call
him Munshi. He was of middle age and all skin
and bone, as though dark parchment had been
stretched over his skeleton without any filling
of flesh and blood. He probably knew Persian
well, his knowledge of English was quite fair,
but in neither of these directions lay his ambition.
His belief was that his proficiency in singlestick

62 MY REMINISCENCES

was matched only by his skill in song. He would
stand in the sun in the middle of our courtyard
and go through a wonderful series of antics with
a staff — his own shadow being his antagonist.
I need hardly add that his shadow never got the
better of him and when at the end he gave a great
big shout and whacked it on the head with a vic-
torious smile, it lay submissively prone at his
feet. His singing, nasal and out of tune, sounded
like a gruesome mixture of groaning and moaning
coming from some ghost-world. Our singing
master Vishnu would sometimes chaff him: "Look
here, Munshi, you'll be taking the bread out of our
mouths at this rate!" To which his only reply
would be a disdainful smile.

This shows that the Munshi was amenable to
soft words; and in fact, whenever we wanted we
could persuade him to write to the school au-
thorities to excuse us from attendance. The school
authorities took no pains to scrutinise these letters,
they knew it would be all the same whether we
attended or not, so far as educational results were
concerned.

I have now a school of my own in which the
boys are up to all kinds of mischief, for boys
will be mischievous — and schoolmasters unforgiv-
ing. When any of us are beset with undue un-
easiness at their conduct and are stirred into a

MY REMINISCENCES 63

resolution to deal out condign punishment, the
misdeeds of my own schooldays confront me in a
row and smile at me.

I now clearly see that the mistake is to judge
boys by the standard of grown-ups, to forget
that a child is quick and mobile like a running
stream; and that, in the case of such, any touch
of imperfection need cause no great alarm, for
the speed of the flow is itself the best corrective.
When stagnation sets in then comes the danger.
So it is for the teacher, more than the pupil, to
beware of wrongdoing.

There was a separate refreshment room for
Bengali boys for meeting their caste requirements.
This was where we struck up a friendship with
some of the others. They were all older than we.
One of these will bear to be dilated upon.

His specialty was the art of Magic, so much
so that he had actually written and published a
little booklet on it, the front page of which bore
his name with the title of Professor. I had never
before come across a schoolboy whose name had
appeared in print, so that my reverence for him —
as a professor of magic I mean — was profound.
How could I have brought myself to believe that
anything questionable could possibly find place
in the straight and upright ranks of printed letters?
To be able to record one's own words in indelible

64 MY REMINISCENCES

ink — was that a slight thing? To stand unscreened
yet unabashed, self-confessed before the world,—
how could one withhold belief in the face of such
supreme self-confidence? I remember how once
I got the types for the letters of my name from
some printing press, and what a memorable thing
it seemed when I inked and pressed them on
paper and found my name imprinted.

We used to give a lift in our carriage to this
schoolfellow and author-friend of ours. This led
to visiting terms. He was also great at theatricals.
With his help we erected a stage on our wrestling
ground with painted paper stretched over a split
bamboo framework. But a peremptory negative
from upstairs prevented any play from being
acted thereon.

A comedy of errors was however played later
on without any stage at all. The author of this
has already been introduced to the reader in these
pages. He was none other than my nephew
Satya. Those who behold his present calm and
sedate demeanour would be shocked to learn of
the tricks of which he was the originator.

The event of which I am writing happened
sometime afterwards when I was twelve or thir-
teen. Our magician friend had told of so many
strange properties of things that I was consumed
with curiosity to see them for myself. But the

Satya

MY REMINISCENCES 65

materials of which he spoke were invariably so
rare or distant that one could hardly hope to get
hold of them without the help of Sindbad the sailor.
Once, as it happened, the Professor forgot him-
self so far as to mention accessible things. Who
could ever believe that a seed dipped and dried
twenty-one times in the juice of a species of cactus
would sprout and flower and fruit all in the space
of an hour? I was determined to test this, not
daring withal to doubt the assurance of a Profes-
sor whose name appeared in a printed book.

I got our gardener to furnish me with a plentiful
supply of the milky juice, and betook myself, on
a Sunday afternoon, to our mystic nook in a
corner of the roof terrace, to experiment with
the stone of a mango. I was wrapt in my task of
dipping and drying — but the grown-up reader will
probably not wait to ask me the result. In the
meantime, I little knew that Satya, in another
corner, had, in the space of an hour, caused to root
and sprout a mystical plant of his own creation.
This was to bear curious fruit later on.

After the day of this experiment the Professor
rather avoided me, as I gradually came to per-
ceive. He would not sit on the same side in the
carriage, and altogether seemed to fight shy of me.

One day, all of a sudden, he proposed that
each one in turn should jump off the bench in

66 MY REMINISCENCES

our schoolroom. He wanted to observe the dif-
ferences in style, he said. Such scientific curiosity
did not appear queer in a professor of magic.
Everyone jumped, so did I. He shook his head
with a subdued "h'm." No amount of per-
suasion could draw anything further out of
him.

Another day he informed us that some good
friends of his wanted to make our acquaintance
and asked us to accompany him to their house.
Our guardians had no objection, so off we went.
The crowd in the room seemed full of curiosity.
They expressed their eagerness to hear me sing.
I sang a song or two. Mere child as I was I could
hardly have bellowed like a bull. "Quite a sweet
voice," they all agreed.

When refreshments were put before us they sat
round and watched us eat. I was bashful by
nature and not used to strange company; more-
over the habit I acquired during the attendance
of our servant Iswar left me a poor eater for good.
They all seemed impressed with the delicacy of
my appetite.

In the fifth act I got some curiously warm letters
from our Professor which revealed the whole
situation. And here let the curtain fall.

I subsequently learnt from Satya that while
I had been practising magic on the mango seed,

MY REMINISCENCES 67

he had successfully convinced the Professor that
I was dressed as a boy by our guardians merely
for getting me a better schooling, but that really
this was only a disguise. To those who are curious
in regard to imaginary science I should explain
that a girl is supposed to jump with her left foot
forward, and this is what I had done on the occa-
sion of the Professor's trial. I little realised at
the time what a tremendously false step mine
had been!

(13) My Father

Shortly after my birth my father took to con-
stantly travelling about. So it is no exaggeration
to say that in my early childhood I hardly knew
him. He would now and then come back home all
of a sudden, and with him came foreign servants
with whom I felt extremely eager to make friends.
Once there came in this way a young Panjabi
servant named Lenu. The cordiality of the re-
ception he got from us would have been worthy of
Ranjit Singh himself. Not only was he a foreigner,
but a Panjabi to boot, — what wonder he stole our
hearts away?

We had the same reverence for the whole Pan-
jabi nation as for Bhima and Arjuna of the Mahab-
harata. They were warriors; and if they had some-

68 MY REMINISCENCES

times fought and lost, that was clearly the enemy's
fault. It was glorious to have Lenu, of the Panjab,
in our very home.

My sister-in-law had a model war-ship under a
glass case, which, when wound up, rocked on blue-
painted silken waves to the tinkling of a musical
box. I would beg hard for the loan of this to dis-
play its marvels to the admiring Lenu.

Caged in the house as we were, anything savour-
ing of foreign parts had a peculiar charm for me.
This was one of the reasons why I made so much
of Lenu. This was also the reason why Gabriel,
the Jew, with his embroidered gaberdine, who
came to sell attars and scented oils, stirred me so;
and the huge Kabulis, with their dusty, baggy
trousers and knapsacks and bundles, wrought on
my young mind a fearful fascination.

Anyhow, when my father came, we would be
content with wandering round about his entourage
and in the company of his servants. We did not
reach his immediate presence.

Once while my father was away in the Hima-
layas, that old bogey of the British Government,
the Russian invasion, came to be a subject of agi-
tated conversation among the people. Some well-
meaning lady friend had enlarged on the impending
danger to my mother with all the circumstance of
a prolific imagination. How could a body tell

MY REMINISCENCES 69

from which of the Tibetan passes the Russian host
might suddenly flash forth like a baleful comet?

My mother was seriously alarmed. Possibly the
other members of the family did not share her mis-
givings; so, despairing of grown-up sympathy, she
sought my boyish support. "Won't you write to
your father about the Russians?" she asked.

That letter, carrying the tidings of my mother's
anxieties, was my first one to my father. I did not
know how to begin or end a letter, or anything at
all about it. I went to Mahananda, the estate
munshi.1 The resulting style of address was doubt-
less correct enough, but the sentiments could not
have escaped the musty flavour inseparable from
literature emanating from an estate office.

I got a reply to my letter. My father asked me
not to be afraid; if the Russians came he would
drive them away himself. This confident assur-
ance did not seem to have the effect of relieving
my mother's fears, but it served to free me from
all timidity as regards my father. After that I
wanted to write to him every day and pestered
Mahananda accordingly. Unable to withstand
my importunity he would make out drafts for me
to copy. But I did not know that there was the
postage to be paid for. I had an idea that letters
placed in Mahananda's hands got to their destina-

1 Correspondence clerk.

70 MY REMINISCENCES

tion without any need for further worry. It is
hardly necessary to mention that, Mahananda
being considerably older than myself, these letters
never reached the Himalayan hill-tops.

When, after his long absences, my father came
home even for a few days, the whole house seemed
filled with the weight of his presence. We would
see our elders at certain hours, formally robed in
their chogas, passing to his rooms with restrained
gait and sobered mien, casting away any pan l
they might have been chewing. Everyone seemed
on the alert. To make sure of nothing going
wrong, my mother would superintend the cooking
herself. The old mace-bearer, Kinu, with his white
livery and crested turban, on guard at my father's
door, would warn us not to be boisterous in the
verandah in front of his rooms during his midday
siesta. We had to walk past quietly, talking in
whispers, and dared not even take a peep inside.

On one occasion my father came home to invest
the three of us with the sacred thread. With the
help of Pandit Vedantavagish he had collected the
old Vedic rites for the purpose. For days together
we were taught to chant in correct accents the
selections from the Upanishads, arranged by my
father under the name of "Brahma Dharma,"
seated in the prayer hall with Becharam Babu.

1 Spices wrapped in betel leaf.

MY REMINISCENCES 71

Finally, with shaven heads and gold rings in our
ears, we three budding Brahmins went into a
three-days' retreat in a portion of the third storey.

It was great fun. The earrings gave us a good
handle to pull each other's ears with. We found a
little drum lying in one of the rooms; taking this
we would stand out in the verandah, and, when
we caught sight of any servant passing alone in
the storey below, we would rap a tattoo on it.
This would make the man look up, only to beat
a hasty retreat the next moment with averted
eyes.1 In short we cannot claim that these days
of our retirement were passed in ascetic medita-
tion.

I am however persuaded that boys like ourselves
could not have been rare in the hermitages of old.
And if some ancient document has it that the ten
or twelve-year old Saradwata or Sarngarava 2 is
spending the whole of the days of his boyhood
offering oblations and chanting mantras, we are
not compelled to put unquestioning faith in the
statement; because the book of Boy Nature is
even older and also more authentic.

After we had attained full brahminhood I be-

1 It is considered sinful for non-brahmins to cast glances on neo-
phytes during the process of their sacred-thread investiture, before
the ceremony is complete.

1 Two novices in the hermitage of the sage Kanva, mentioned in the
Sanskrit drama, Sakuntala.

72 MY REMINISCENCES

came very keen on repeating the gayatri.1 I would
meditate on it with great concentration. It is
hardly a text the full meaning of which I could
have grasped at that age. I well remember what
efforts I made to extend the range of my con-
sciousness with the help of the initial invocation
of "Earth, firmament and heaven." How I felt
or thought it is difficult to express clearly, but this
much is certain that to be clear about the meaning
of words is not the most important function of the
human understanding.

The main object of teaching is not to explain
meanings, but to knock at the door of the mind.
If any boy is asked to give an account of what is
awakened in him at such knocking, he will prob-
ably say something very silly. For what happens
within is much bigger than what he can express
in words. Those who pin their faith on University
examinations as a test of all educational results
take no account of this fact.

I can recollect many things which I did not
understand, but which stirred me deeply. Once,
on the roof terrace of our river-side villa, my eldest
brother, at the sudden gathering of clouds, repeated
aloud some stanzas from Kalidas's "Cloud Mes-
senger." I could not, nor had I the need to, under-
stand a word of the Sanskrit. His ecstatic dec-

1 The text for self-realisation.

MY REMINISCENCES 73

lamation of the sonorous rhythm was enough for
me.

Then, again, before I could properly understand
English, a profusely illustrated edition of "The
Old Curiosity Shop" fell into my hands. I went
through the whole of it, though at least nine-tenths
of the words were unknown to me. Yet, with the
vague ideas I conjured up from the rest, I spun
out a variously coloured thread on which to string
the illustrations. Any university examiner would
have given me a great big zero, but the reading
of the book had not proved for me quite so empty
as all that.

Another time I had accompanied my father on
a trip on the Ganges in his houseboat. Among
the books he had with him was an old Fort William
edition of Jayadeva's Gita Govinda. It was in the
Bengali character. The verses were not printed in
separate lines, but ran on like prose. I did not
then know anything of Sanskrit, yet because of
my knowledge of Bengali many of the words were
familiar. I cannot tell how often I read that Gita
Govinda. I can well remember this line :

The night that was passed in the lonely forest
cottage.

It spread an atmosphere of vague beauty over
my mind. That one Sanskrit word, Nibhrita-

74 MY REMINISCENCES

nikunja-griham, meaning "the lonely forest cot-
tage" was quite enough for me.

I had to discover for myself the intricate metre
of Jayadeva, because its divisions were lost in the
clumsy prose form of the book. And this discovery
gave me very great delight. Of course I did not
fully comprehend Jayadeva's meaning. It would
hardly be correct to aver that I had got it even
partly. But the sound of the words and the lilt
of the metre filled my mind with pictures of won-
derful beauty, which impelled me to copy out the
whole of the book for my own use.

The same thing happened, when I was a little
older, with a verse from Kalidas's "Birth of the
War God." The verse moved me greatly, though
the only words of which I gathered the sense,
were "the breeze carrying the spray-mist of the
falling waters of the sacred Mandakini and shak-
ing the deodar leaves." These left me pining to
taste the beauties of the whole. When, later, a
Pandit explained to me that in the next two lines
the breeze went on "splitting the feathers of the
peacock plume on the head of the eager deer-
hunter," the thinness of this last conceit disap-
pointed me. I was much better off when I had
relied only upon my imagination to complete the
verse.

Whoever goes back to his early childhood will

MY REMINISCENCES 75

agree that his greatest gains were not in propor-
tion to the completeness of his understanding. Our
Kathakas l know this truth well. So their narra-
tives always have a good proportion of ear-filling
Sanskrit words and abstruse remarks not cal-
culated to be fully understood by their simple
hearers, but only to be suggestive.

The value of such suggestion is by no means to
be despised by those who measure education in
terms of material gains and losses. These insist on
trying to sum up the account and find out exactly
how much of the lesson imparted can be rendered
up. But children, and those who are not over-
educated, dwell in that primal paradise where men
can come to know without fully comprehending
each step. And only when that paradise is lost
comes the evil day when everything needs must
be understood. The road which leads to knowl-
edge, without going through the dreary process of
understanding, that is the royal road. If that
be barred, though the world's marketing may yet
go on as usual, the open sea and the mountain top
cease to be possible of access.

So, as I was saying, though at that age I could

not realise the full meaning of the Gayatri, there

was something in me which could do without a

complete understanding. I am reminded of a day

1 Bards or reciters.

76 MY REMINISCENCES

when, as I was seated on the cement floor in a
corner of our schoolroom meditating on the text,
my eyes overflowed with tears. Why those tears
came I knew not; and to a strict cross-questioner
I would probably have given some explanation
having nothing to do with the Gayatri. The fact
of the matter is that what is going on in the inner
recesses of consciousness is not always known to
the dweller on the surface.

(14) A journey with my Father

My shaven head after the sacred thread cere-
mony caused me one great anxiety. However
partial Eurasian lads may be to things appertain-
ing to the Cow, their reverence for the Brahmin 1
is notoriously lacking. So that, apart from other
missiles, our shaven heads were sure to be pelted
with jeers. While I was worrying over this possi-
bility I was one day summoned upstairs to my
father. How would I like to go with him to the
Himalayas, I was asked. Away from the Bengal
Academy and off to the Himalayas! Would I like
it? O that I could have rent the skies with a shout,
that might have given some idea of the How!

On the day of our leaving home my father, as

irThe Cow and the Brahmin are watchwords of modern Hindu
Orthodoxy.

MY REMINISCENCES 77

was his habit, assembled the whole family in the
prayer hall for divine service. After I had taken
the dust of the feet of my elders I got into the
carriage with my father. This was the first time
in my life that I had a full suit of clothes made
for me. My father himself had selected the pat-
tern and colour. A gold embroidered velvet cap
completed my costume. This I carried in my
hand, being assailed with misgivings as to its ef-
fect in juxtaposition to my hairless head. As I
got into the carriage my father insisted on my
wearing it, so I had to put it on. Every time he
looked another way I took it off. Every time I
caught his eye it had to resume its proper place.

My father was very particular in all his arrange-
ments and orderings. He disliked leaving things
vague or undetermined and never allowed sloven-
liness or makeshifts. He had a well-defined code
to regulate his relations with others and theirs
with him. In this he was different from the gen-
erality of his countrymen. With the rest of us a
little carelessness this way or that did not signify;
so in our dealings with him we had to be anxiously
careful. It was not so much the little less or more
that he objected to as the failure to be up to the
standard.

My father had also a way of picturing to him-
self every detail of what he wanted done. On

78 MY REMINISCENCES

the occasion of any ceremonial gathering, at
which he could not be present, he would think
out and assign the place for each thing, the duty
for each member of the family, the seat for each
guest; nothing would escape him. After it was
all over he would ask each one for a separate
account and thus gain a complete impression of
the whole for himself. So, while I was with him
on his travels, though nothing would induce him
to put obstacles in the way of my amusing my-
self as I pleased, he left no loophole in the strict
rules of conduct which he prescribed for me in
other respects.

Our first halt was to be for a few days at Bolpur.
Satya had been there a short time before with his
parents. No self-respecting nineteenth century
infant would have credited the account of his
travels which he gave us on his return. But we
were different, and had had no opportunity of
learning to determine the line between the pos-
sible and the impossible. Our Mahabharata and
Ramayana gave us no clue to it. Nor had we
then any children's illustrated books to guide us
in the way a child should go. All the hard and
fast laws which govern the world we learnt by
knocking up against them.

Satya had told us that, unless one was very
very expert, getting into a railway carriage was a

MY REMINISCENCES 79

terribly dangerous affair — the least slip, and it
was all up. Then, again, a fellow had to hold on
to his seat with all his might, otherwise the jolt
at starting was so tremendous there was no telling
where one would get thrown off to. So when we
got to the railway station I was all a-quiver. So
easily did we get into our compartment, however,
that I felt sure the worst was yet to come. And
when, at length, we made an absurdly smooth
start, without any semblance of adventure, I
felt woefully disappointed.

The train sped on; the broad fields with their
blue-green border trees, and the villages nestling
in their shade flew past in a stream of pictures
which melted away like a flood of mirages. It was
evening when we reached Bolpur. As I got into
the palanquin I closed my eyes. I wanted to
preserve the whole of the wonderful vision to be
unfolded before my waking eyes in the morning
light. The freshness of the experience would be
spoilt, I feared, by incomplete glimpses caught
in the vagueness of the dusk.

When I woke at dawn my heart was thrilling
tremulously as I stepped outside. My predecessor
had told me that Bolpur had one feature which
was to be found nowhere else in the world. This
was the path leading from the main buildings to
the servants' quarters which, though not covered

8o MY REMINISCENCES

over in any way, did not allow a ray of the sun
or a drop of rain to touch anybody passing along
it. I started to hunt for this wonderful path,
but the reader will perhaps not wonder at my
failure to find it to this day.

Town bred as I was, I had never seen a rice-
field, and I had a charming portrait of the cow-
herd boy, of whom we had read, pictured on the
canvas of my imagination. I had heard from
Satya that the Bolpur house was surrounded by
fields of ripening rice, and that playing in these
with cowherd boys was an everyday affair, of
which the plucking, cooking and eating of the
rice was the crowning feature. I eagerly looked
about me. But where, oh, where was the rice-
field on all that barren heath? Cowherd boys
there might have been somewhere about, yet
how to distinguish them from any other boys,
that was the question!

However it did not take me long to get over
what I could not see, — what I did see was quite
enough. There was no servant rule here, and the
only ring which encircled me was the blue of the
horizon which the presiding goddess of these
solitudes had drawn round them. Within this
I was free to move about as I chose.

Though I was yet a mere child my father did
not place any restriction on my wanderings. In

MY REMINISCENCES 81

the hollows of the sandy soil the rainwater had
ploughed deep furrows, carving out miniature
mountain ranges full of red gravel and pebbles of
various shapes through which ran tiny streams,
revealing the geography of Lilliput. From this
region I would gather in the lap of my tunic many
curious pieces of stone and take the collection
to my father. He never made light of my labours.
On the contrary he waxed enthusiastic.

"How wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Wherever
did you get all these?"

"There are many many more, thousands and
thousands!" I burst out. "I could bring as many
every day."

"That would be nice!" he replied. "Why not
decorate my little hill with them?"

An attempt had been made to dig a tank in
the garden, but the subsoil water proving too low,
it had been abandoned, unfinished, with the ex-
cavated earth left piled up into a hillock. On the
top of this height my father used to sit for his
morning prayer, and as he sat the sun would rise
at the edge of the undulating expanse which
stretched away to the eastern horizon in front of
him. This was the hill he asked me to decorate.

I was very troubled, on leaving Bolpur, that I
could not carry away with me my store of stones.
It is still difficult for me to realise that I have

82 MY REMINISCENCES

no absolute claim to keep up a close relationship
with things, merely because I have gathered
them together. If my fate had granted me the
prayer, which I had pressed with such insistence,
and undertaken that I should carry this load of
stones about with me for ever, then I should
scarcely have had the hardihood to laugh at it
to-day.

In one of the ravines I came upon a hollow full
of spring water which overflowed as a little rivulet,
where sported tiny fish battling their way up the
current.

"I've found such a lovely spring," I told my
father. "Couldn't we get our bathing and drink-
ing water from there?"

"The very thing," he agreed, sharing my rap-
ture, and gave orders for our water supply to be
drawn from that spring.

I was never tired of roaming about among
those miniature hills and dales in hopes of lighting
on something never known before. I was the
Livingstone of this undiscovered land which looked
as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Everything there, the dwarf date palms, the
scrubby wild plums and the stunted jambolans,
was in keeping with the miniature mountain
ranges, the little rivulet and the tiny fish I had
discovered.

Singing to My Father

MY REMINISCENCES 83

Probably in order to teach me to be careful
my father placed a little small change in my
charge and required me to keep an account of it.
He also entrusted me with the duty of winding his
valuable gold watch for him. He overlooked the
risk of damage in his desire to train me to a sense
of responsibility. When we went out together
for our morning walk he would ask me to give
alms to any beggars we came across. But I never
could render him a proper account at the end of it.
One day my balance was larger than the account
warranted.

"I really must make you my cashier," observed
my father. "Money seems to have a way of grow-
ing in your hands!"

That watch of his I wound up with such in-
defatigable zeal that it had very soon to be sent
to the watchmaker's in Calcutta.

I am reminded of the time when, later in life,
I was appointed to manage the estate and had
to lay before my father, owing to his failing eye-
sight, a statement of accounts on the second or
third of every month. I had first to read out the
totals under each head, and if he had any doubts
on any point he would ask for the details. If
I made any attempt to slur over or keep out of
sight any item which I feared he would not like,
it was sure to come out. So these first few

84 MY REMINISCENCES

days of the month were very anxious ones for
me.

As I have said, my father had the habit of
keeping everything clearly before his mind, —
whether figures of accounts, or ceremonial ar-
rangements, or additions or alterations to prop-
erty. He had never seen the new prayer hall
built at Bolpur, and yet he was familiar with every
detail of it from questioning those who came to
see him after a visit to Bolpur. He had an extraor-
dinary memory, and when once he got hold of a
fact it never escaped him.

My father had marked his favourite verses in
his copy of the Bhagavadgita. He asked me to
copy these out, with their translation, for him.
At home, I had been a boy of no account, but
here, when these important functions were en-
trusted to me, I felt the glory of the situation.

By this time I was rid of my blue manuscript
book and had got hold of a bound volume of one
of Lett's diaries. I now saw to it that my poetising
should not lack any of the dignity of outward
circumstance. It was not only a case of writing
poems, but of holding myself forth as a poet
before my own imagination. So when I wrote
poetry at Bolpur I loved to do it sprawling under
a young coconut palm. This seemed to me the
true poetic way. Resting thus on the hard un-

MY REMINISCENCES 85

turfed gravel in the burning heat of the day I
composed a martial ballad on the "Defeat of
King Prithwi." In spite of the superabundance
of its martial spirit, it could not escape an early
death. That bound volume of Lett's diary has
now followed the way of its elder sister, the blue
manuscript book, leaving no address behind.

We left Bolpur and making short halts on the
way at Sahebganj, Dinapore, Allahabad and
Cawnpore we stopped at last at Amritsar.

An incident on the way remains engraved on
my memory. The train had stopped at some
big station. The ticket examiner came and
punched our tickets. He looked at me curiously
as if he had some doubt which he did not care to
express. He went off and came back with a com-
panion. Both of them fidgetted about for a time
near the door of our compartment and then again
retired. At last came the station master himself.
He looked at my half-ticket and then asked:

"Is not the boy over twelve?"

"No," said my father.

I was then only eleven, but looked older than
my age.

"You must pay the full fare for him," said the
station master.

My father's eyes flashed as, without a word,
he took out a currency note from his box and

86 MY REMINISCENCES

handed it to the station master. When they brought
my father his change he flung it disdainfully back
at them, while the station master stood abashed at
this exposure of the meanness of his implied doubt.

The golden temple of Amritsar comes back to
me like a dream. Many a morning have I accom-
panied my father to this Gurudarbar of the Sikhs
in the middle of the lake. There the sacred chant-
ing resounds continually. My father, seated
amidst the throng of worshippers, would some-
times add his voice to the hymn of praise, and
finding a stranger joining in their devotions they
would wax enthusiastically cordial, and we would
return loaded with the sanctified offerings of sugar
crystals and other sweets.

One day my father invited one of the chanting
choir to our place and got him to sing us some of
their sacred songs. The man went away prob-
ably more than satisfied with the reward he re-
ceived. The result was that we had to take stern
measures of self-defence, — such an insistent army
of singers invaded us. When they found our
house impregnable, the musicians began to way-
lay us in the streets. And as we went out for our
walk in the morning, every now and then would
appear a Tambura,1 slung over a shoulder, at

1 An instrument on which the keynote is strummed to accompany1
singing.

MY REMINISCENCES 87

which we felt like game birds at the sight of the
muzzle of the hunter's gun. Indeed, so wary
did we become that the twang of the Tambura,
from a distance, scared us away and utterly failed
to bag us.

When evening fell, my father would sit out in
the verandah facing the garden. I would then be
summoned to sing to him. The moon has risen; its
beams, passing though the trees, have fallen on the
verandah floor; I am singing in the Behaga mode:

0 Companion in the darkest passage of life . . .
My father with bowed head and clasped hands

is intently listening. I can recall this evening
scene even now.

1 have told of my father's amusement on hear-
ing from Srikantha Babu of my maiden attempt
at a devotional poem. I am reminded how, later,
I had my recompense. On the occasion of one
of our Magh festivals several of the hymns were
of my composition. One of them was

"The eye sees thee not, who art the pupil of
every eye ..."

My father was then bed-ridden at Chinsurah.
He sent for me and my brother Jyoti. He asked
my brother to accompany me on the harmonium
and got me to sing all my hymns one after the
other, — some of them I had to sing twice over.
When I had finished he said:

88 MY REMINISCENCES

"If the king of the country had known the
language and could appreciate its literature, he
would doubtless have rewarded the poet. Since
that is not so, I suppose I must do it." With
which he handed me a cheque.

My father had brought with him some volumes
of the Peter Parley series from which to teach me.
He selected the life of Benjamin Franklin to begin
with. He thought it would read like a story book
and be both entertaining and instructive. But
he found out his mistake soon after we began it.
Benjamin Franklin was much too business-like a
person. The narrowness of his calculated morality
disgusted my father. In some cases he would
get so impatient at the worldly prudence of Frank-
lin that he could not help using strong words of
denunciation. Before this I had nothing to do
with Sanskrit beyond getting some rules of gram-
mar by rote. My father started me on the second
Sanskrit reader at one bound, leaving me to learn
the declensions as we went on. The advance I
had made in Bengali 1 stood me in good stead.
My father also encouraged me to try Sanskrit
composition from the very outset. With the
vocabulary acquired from my Sanskrit reader I
built up grandiose compound words with a pro-

1 A large proportion of words in the literary Bengali are derived
unchanged from the Sanskrit.

MY REMINISCENCES 89

fuse sprinkling of sonorous *m's and 'n's making
altogether a most diabolical medley of the language
of the gods. But my father never scoffed at my
temerity.

Then there were the readings from Proctor's
Popular Astronomy which my father explained
to me in easy language and which I then rendered
into Bengali.

Among the books which my father had brought
for his own use, my attention would be mostly
attracted by a ten or twelve volume edition of
Gibbon's Rome. They looked remarkably dry.
"Being a boy," I thought, "I am helpless and
read many books because I have to. But why
should a grown up person, who need not read
unless he pleases, bother himself so?"

(15) At the Himalayas

We stayed about a month in Amritsar, and,
towards the middle of April, started for the Dal-
housie Hills. The last few days at Amritsar
seemed as if they would never pass, the call of the
Himalayas was so strong upon me.

The terraced hill sides, as we went up in a
jhampan, were all aflame with the beauty of the
flowering spring crops. Every morning we would
make a start after our bread and milk, and before

90 MY REMINISCENCES

sunset take shelter for the night in the next stag-
ing bungalow. My eyes had no rest the livelong
day, so great was my fear lest anything should
escape them. Wherever, at a turn of the road into
a gorge, the great forest trees were found cluster-
ing closer, and from underneath their shade a
little waterfall trickling out, like a little daughter
of the hermitage playing at the feet of hoary sages
wrapt in meditation, babbling its way over the
black moss-covered rocks, there the jhampan
bearers would put down their burden, and take a
rest. Why, oh why, had we to leave such spots
behind, cried my thirsting heart, why could we
not stay on there for ever?

This is the great advantage of the first vision:
the mind is not then aware that there are many
more such to come. When this comes to be known
to that calculating organ it promptly tries to make
a saving in its expenditure of attention. It is
only when it believes something to be rare that
the mind ceases to be miserly in assigning values.
So in the streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine
myself a foreigner, and only then do I discover
how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its
full value in attention is not paid. It is the hunger
to really see which drives people to travel to
strange places.

My father left his little cash-box in my charge.

MY REMINISCENCES 91

He had no reason to imagine that I was the fittest
custodian of the considerable sums he kept in it
for use on the way. He would certainly have
felt safer with it in the hands of Kishori, his
attendant. So I can only suppose he wanted
to train me to the responsibility. One day as we
reached the staging bungalow, I forgot to make it
over to him and left it lying on a table. This
earned me a reprimand.

Every time we got down at the end of a stage,
my father had chairs placed for us outside the
bungalow and there we sat. As dusk came on
the stars blazed out wonderfully through the
clear mountain atmosphere, and my father showed
me the constellations or treated me to an astro-
nomical discourse.

The house we had taken at Bakrota was on
the highest hill-top. Though it was nearing May
it was still bitterly cold there, so much so that
on the shady side of the hill the winter frosts had
not yet melted.

My father was not at all nervous about allowing
me to wander about freely even here. Some way
below our house there stretched a spur thickly
wooded with Deodars. Into this wilderness I
would venture alone with my iron-spiked staff.
These lordly forest trees, with their huge shadows,
towering there like so many giants — what im-

92 MY REMINISCENCES

mense lives had they lived through the centuries!
And yet this boy of only the other day was crawling
round about their trunks unchallenged. I seemed
to feel a presence, the moment I stepped into
their shade, as of the solid coolness of some old-
world saurian, and the checkered light and shade
on the leafy mould seemed like its scales.

My room was at one end of the house. Lying
on my bed I could see, through the uncurtained
windows, the distant snowy peaks shimmering
dimly in the starlight. Sometimes, at what hour
I could not make out, I, half awakened, would
see my father, wrapped in a red shawl, with a
lighted lamp in his hand, softly passing by to the
glazed verandah where he sat at his devotions.
After one more sleep I would find him at my bed-
side, rousing me with a push, before yet the dark-
ness of night had passed. This was my appointed
hour for memorising Sanscrit declensions. What
an excruciatingly wintry awakening from the
caressing warmth of my blankets !

By the time the sun rose, my father, after his
prayers, finished with me our morning milk, and
then, I standing at his side, he would once more
hold communion with God, chanting the Upa-
nishads.

Then we would go out for a walk. But how
should I keep pace with him? Many an older

MY REMINISCENCES 93

person could not! So, after a while, I would give
it up and scramble back home through some short
cut up the mountain side.

After my father's return I had an hour of
English lessons. After ten o'clock came the bath
in icy-cold water; it was no use asking the servants
to temper it with even a jugful of hot water with-
out my father's permission. To give me courage
my father would tell of the unbearably freezing
baths he had himself been through in his younger
days.

Another penance was the drinking of milk.
My father was very fond of milk and could take
quantities of it. But whether it was a failure to
inherit this capacity, or that the unfavourable
environment of which I have told proved the
stronger, my appetite for milk was grievously
wanting. Unfortunately we used to have our
milk together. So I had to throw myself on
the mercy of the servants; and to their human
kindness (or frailty) I was indebted for my
goblet being thenceforth more than half full of
foam.

After our midday meal lessons began again.
But this was more than flesh and blood could
stand. My outraged morning sleep would have
its revenge and I would be toppling over with
uncontrollable drowsiness. Nevertheless, no

94 MY REMINISCENCES

sooner did my father take pity on my plight and
let me off, than my sleepiness was off likewise.
Then ho! for the mountains.

Staff in hand I would often wander away from
one peak to another, but my father did not object.
To the end of his life, I have observed, he never
stood in the way of our independence. Many a
time have I said or done things repugnant alike
to his taste and his judgment; with a word he
could have stopped me; but he preferred to wait
till the prompting to refrain came from within.
A passive acceptance by us of the correct and the
proper did not satisfy him; he wanted us to love
truth with our whole hearts; he knew that mere
acquiescence without love is empty. He also
knew that truth, if strayed from, can be found
again, but a forced or blind acceptance of it from
the outside effectually bars the way in.

In my early youth I had conceived a fancy to
journey along the Grand Trunk Road, right up
to Peshawar, in a bullock cart. No one else sup-
ported the scheme, and doubtless there was much
to be urged against it as a practical proposition.
But when I discoursed on it to my father he was
sure it was a splendid idea — travelling by rail-
road was not worth the name! With which ob-
servation he proceeded to recount to me his own
adventurous wanderings on foot and horseback.

MY REMINISCENCES 95

Of any chance of discomfort or peril he had not
a word to say.

Another time, when I had just been appointed
Secretary of the Adi Brahma Samaj, I went over
to my father, at his Park Street residence, and
informed him that I did not approve of the prac-
tice of only Brahmins conducting divine service
to the exclusion of other castes. He unhesitatingly
gave me permission to correct this if I could.
When I got the authority I found I lacked the
power. I was able to discover imperfections but
could not create perfection! Where were the
men? Where was the strength in me to attract
the right man? Had I the means to build in
the place of what I might break? Till the right
man comes any form is better than none — this,
I felt, must have been my father's view of the
existing order. But he did not for a moment try
to discourage me by pointing out the difficulties.

As he allowed me to wander about the moun-
tains at my will, so in the quest for truth he left
me free to select my path. He was not deterred
by the danger of my making mistakes, he was not
alarmed at the prospect of my encountering sor-
row. He held up a standard, not a disciplinary
rod.

I would often talk to my father of home. When-
ever I got a letter from anyone at home I hastened

96 MY REMINISCENCES

to show it to him. I verily believe I was thus the
means of giving him many a picture he could have
got from none else. My father also let me read
letters to him from my elder brothers. This was
his way of teaching me how I ought to write to
him; for he by no means underrated the impor-
tance of outward forms and ceremonial.

I am reminded of how in one of my second
brother's letters he was complaining in somewhat
sanscritised phraseology of being worked to death
tied by the neck to his post of duty. My father
asked me to explain the sentiment. I did it in my
way, but he thought a different explanation would
fit better. My overweening conceit made me stick
to my guns and argue the point with him at length.
Another would have shut me up with a snub, but
my father patiently heard me out and took pains
to justify his view to me.

My father would sometimes tell me funny
stories. He had many an anecdote of the gilded
youth of his time. There were some exquisites for
whose delicate skins the embroidered borders of
even Dacca muslins were too coarse, so that to
wear muslins with the border torn off became, for
a time, the tip-top thing to do.

I was also highly amused to hear from my father
for the first time the story of the milkman who
was suspected of watering his milk, and the more

MY REMINISCENCES 97

men one of his customers detailed to look after
his milking the bluer the fluid became, till, at last,
when the customer himself interviewed him and
asked for an explanation, the milkman avowed that
if more superintendents had to be satisfied it would
only make the milk fit to breed fish!

After I had thus spent a few months with him
my father sent me back home with his attendant
Kishori.

PART IV

(i6) My Return

THE chains of the rigorous regime which
had bound me snapped for good when I
set out from home. On my return I
gained an accession of rights. In my case my
very nearness had so long kept me out of mind;
now that I had been out of sight I came back
into view.

I got a foretaste of appreciation while still on
the return journey. Travelling alone as I was,
with an attendant, brimming with health and
spirits, and conspicuous with my gold-worked cap,
all the English people I came across in the train
made much of me.

When I arrived it was not merely a home-coming
from travel, it was also a return from my exile in
the servants' quarters to my proper place in the
inner apartments. Whenever the inner household
assembled in my mother's room I now occupied a
seat of honour. And she who was then the young-
est bride of our house lavished on me a wealth of
affection and regard.

In infancy the loving care of woman is to be had
without the asking, and, being as much a necessity
as light and air, is as simply accepted without any
conscious response; rather does the growing child

101

102 MY REMINISCENCES

often display an eagerness to free itself from the
encircling web of woman's solicitude. But the un-
fortunate creature who is deprived of this in its
proper season is beggared indeed. This had been
my plight. So after being brought up in the serv-
ants' quarters when I suddenly came in for a pro-
fusion of womanly affection, I could hardly remain
unconscious of it.

In the days when the inner apartments were as
yet far away from me, they were the elysium of my
imagination. The zenana, which from an outside
view is a place of confinement, for me was the
abode of all freedom. Neither school nor Pandit
were there; nor, it seemed to me, did anybody
have to do what they did not want to. Its secluded
leisure had something mysterious about it; one
played about, or did as one liked and had not to
render an account of one's doings. Specially so
with my youngest sister, to whom, though she
attended Nilkamal Pandit's class with us, it seemed
to make no difference in his behaviour whether
she did her lessons well or ill. Then again, while,
by ten o'clock, we had to hurry through our break-
fast and be ready for school, she, with her queue
dangling behind, walked unconcernedly away,
withinwards, tantalising us to distraction.

And when the new bride, adorned with her
necklace of gold, came into our house, the mystery

MY REMINISCENCES 103

of the inner apartments deepened. She, who came
from outside and yet became one of us, who was
unknown and yet our own, attracted me strangely
— with her I burned to make friends. But if by
much contriving I managed to draw near, my
youngest sister would hustle me off with: "What
d'you boys want here — get away outside." The
insult added to the disappointment cut me to the
quick. Through the glass doors of their cabinets
one could catch glimpses of all manner of curious
playthings — creations of porcelain and glass — gor-
geous in colouring and ornamentation. We were
not deemed worthy even to touch them, much less
could we muster up courage to ask for any to play
with. Nevertheless these rare and wonderful ob-
jects, as they were to us boys, served to tinge with
an additional attraction the lure of the inner
apartments.

Thus had I been kept at arm's length with re-
peated rebuffs. As the outer world, so, for me,
the interior, was unattainable. Wherefore the
impressions of it that I did get appeared to me like
pictures.

After nine in the evening, my lessons with Aghore
Babu over, I am retiring within for the night. A
murky flickering lantern is hanging in the long
Venetian-screened corridor leading from the outer
to the inner apartments. At its end this passage

io4 MY REMINISCENCES

turns into a flight of four or five steps, to which
the light does not reach, and down which I pass
into the galleries running round the first inner
quadrangle. A shaft of moonlight slants from the
eastern sky into the western angle of these veran-
dahs, leaving the rest in darkness. In this patch
of light the maids have gathered and are squatting
close together, with legs outstretched, rolling cot-
ton waste into lamp-wicks, and chatting in under-
tones of their village homes. Many such pictures
are indelibly printed on my memory.

Then after our supper, the washing of our hands
and feet on the verandah before stretching our-
selves on the ample expanse of our bed; whereupon
one of the nurses Tinkari or Sankari comes and
sits by our heads and softly croons to us the
story of the prince travelling on and on over the
lonely moor, and, as it comes to an end, silence
falls on the room. With my face to the wall I gaze
at the black and white patches, made by the
plaster of the walls fallen off here and there, show-
ing faintly in the dim light; and out of these I
conjure up many a fantastic image as I drop off to
.sleep. And sometimes, in the middle of the night,
I hear through my half-broken sleep the shouts
of old Swarup, the watchman, going his rounds
from verandah to verandah.

Then came the new order, when I got in pro-

MY REMINISCENCES 105

fusion from this inner unknown dreamland of my
fancies the recognition for which I had all along
been pining; when that which naturally should
have come day by day was suddenly made good
to me with accumulated arrears. I cannot say
that my head was not turned.

The little traveller was full of the story of his
travels, and, with the strain of each repetition, the
narrative got looser and looser till it utterly refused
to fit into the facts. Like everything else, alas, a
story also gets stale and the glory of the teller
suffers likewise; that is why he has to add fresh
colouring every time to keep up its freshness.

After my return from the hills I was the principal
speaker at my mother's open air gatherings on the
roof terrace in the evenings. The temptation to
become famous in the eyes of one's mother is as
difficult to resist as such fame is easy to earn.
While I was at the Normal School, when I first
came across the information in some reader that
the Sun was hundreds and thousands of times as
big as the Earth, I at once disclosed it to my
mother. It served to prove that he who was small
to look at might yet have a considerable amount of
bigness about him. I used also to recite to her
the scraps of poetry used as illustrations in the
chapter on prosody or rhetoric of our Bengali
grammar. Now I retailed at her evening gather-

106 MY REMINISCENCES

ings the astronomical tit-bits I had gleaned from
Proctor.

My father's follower Kishori belonged at one
time to a band of reciters of Dasarathi's jingling
versions of the Epics. While we were together in
the hills he often said to me: "Oh, my little
brother,1 if I only had had you in our troupe we
could have got up a splendid performance." This
would open up to me a tempting picture of
wandering as a minstrel boy from place to place,
reciting and singing. I learnt from him many of
the songs in his repertoire and these were in even
greater request than my talks about the photo-
sphere of the Sun or the many moons of Saturn.

But the achievement of mine which appealed
most to my mother was that while the rest of the
inmates of the inner apartments had to be content
with Krittivasa's Bengali rendering of the Ram-
ayana, I had been reading with my father the
original of Maharshi Valmiki himself, Sanscrit
metre and all. "Read me some of that Ramayana,
do!" she said, overjoyed at this news which I had
given her.

Alas, my reading of Valmiki had been limited
to the short extract from his Ramayana given in
my Sanskrit reader, and even that I had not fully

1 Servants call the master and mistress father, and mother, and
the children brothers and sisters.

The Servant-maids in the Verandah

MY REMINISCENCES 107

mastered. Moreover, on looking over it now, I
found that my memory had played me false and
much of what I thought I knew had become hazy.
But I lacked the courage to plead "I have for-
gotten" to the eager mother awaiting the display
of her son's marvellous talents; so that, in the
reading I gave, a large divergence occurred between
Valmiki's intention and my explanation. That
tender-hearted sage, from his seat in heaven, must
have forgiven the temerity of the boy seeking the
glory of his mother's approbation, but not so
Madhusudan,1 the taker down of Pride.

My mother, unable to contain her feelings at
my extraordinary exploit, wanted all to share her
admiration. " You must read this to Dwijendra,"
(my eldest brother), she said.

"In for it!" thought I, as I put forth all the
excuses I could think of, but my mother would
have none of them. She sent for my brother
Dwijendra, and, as soon as he arrived, greeted him,
with: "Just hear Rabi read Valmiki's Ramayan,
how splendidly he does it."

It had to be done! But Madhusudan relented
and let me off with just a taste of his pride-reducing
power. My brother must have been called away
while busy with some literary work of his own.

1 Name of Vishnu in his aspect of slayer of the proud demon,
Madhu.

io8 MY REMINISCENCES

He showed no anxiety to hear me render the San-
scrit into Bengali, and as soon as I had read out a
few verses he simply remarked "Very good" and
walked away.

After my promotion to the inner apartments I
felt it all the more difficult to resume my school
life. I resorted to all manner of subterfuges to
escape the Bengal Academy. Then they tried
putting me at St. Xavier's. But the result was
no better.

My elder brothers, after a few spasmodic efforts,
gave up all hopes of me — they even ceased to scold
me. One day my eldest sister said: "We had all
hoped Rabi would grow up to be a man, but he
has disappointed us the worst." I felt that my
value in the social world was distinctly depreciat-
ing; nevertheless I could not make up my mind
to be tied to the eternal grind of the school mill
which, divorced as it was from all life and beauty,
seemed such a hideously cruel combination of
hospital and gaol.

One precious memory of St. Xavier's I still hold
fresh and pure — the memory of its teachers. Not
that they were all of the same excellence. In par-
ticular, in those who taught in our class I could
discern no reverential resignation of spirit. They
were in nowise above the teaching-machine variety
of school masters. As it is, the educational engine

MY REMINISCENCES 109

is remorselessly powerful; when to it is coupled
the stone mill of the outward forms of religion the
heart of youth is crushed dry indeed. This power-
propelled grindstone type we had at St. Xavier's.
Yet, as I say, I possess a memory which elevates my
impression of the teachers there to an ideal plane.

This is the memory of Father DePeneranda.
He had very little to do with us — if I remember
right he had only for a while taken the place of
one of the masters of our class. He was a Spaniard
and seemed to have an impediment in speaking
English. It was perhaps for this reason that the
boys paid but little heed to what he was saying.
It seemed to me that this inattentiveness of his
pupils hurt him, but he bore it meekly day after
day. I know not why, but my heart went out to
him in sympathy. His features were not hand-
some, but his countenance had for me a strange
attraction. Whenever I looked on him his spirit
seemed to be in prayer, a deep peace to pervade
him within and without.

We had half-an-hour for writing our copybooks;
that was a time when, pen in hand, I used to be-
come absent-minded and my thoughts wandered
hither and thither. One day Father DePeneranda
was in charge of this class. He was pacing up and
down behind our benches. He must have noticed
more than once that my pen was not moving.

no MY REMINISCENCES

All of a sudden he stopped behind my seat. Bend-
ing over me he gently laid his hand on my shoulder
and tenderly inquired: "Are you not well, Ta-
gore?" It was only a simple question, but one I
have never been able to forget.

I cannot speak for the other boys but I felt in
him the presence of a great soul, and even to-day
the recollection of it seems to give me a passport
into the silent seclusion of the temple of God.

There was another old Father whom all the boys
loved. This was Father Henry. He taught in
the higher classes; so I did not know him well.
But one thing about him I remember. He knew
Bengali. He once asked Nirada, a boy in his class,
the derivation of his name. Poor Nirada 1 had so
long been supremely easy in mind about himself—
the derivation of his name, in particular, had never
troubled him in the least; so that he was utterly
unprepared to answer this question. And yet,
with so many abstruse and unknown words in the
dictionary, to be worsted by one's own name would
have been as ridiculous a mishap as getting run
over by one's own carriage, so Nirada unblushingly
replied: "Ni — privative, rode — sun-rays; thence
Nirode — that which causes an absence of the
sun's rays!"

1 Nirada is a Sanscrit word meaning cloud, being a compound of
nir a = water and da = giver. In Bengali it is pronounced nirode.

MY REMINISCENCES in

(17) Home Studies

Cyan Babu, son of Pandit Vedantavagish, was
now our tutor at home. When he found he could
not secure my attention for the school course, he
gave up the attempt as hopeless and went on a
different tack. He took me through Kalidas's
" Birth of the War-god," translating it to me as
we went on. He also read Macbeth to me, first
explaining the text in Bengali, and then confining
me to the school room till I had rendered the day's
reading into Bengali verse. In this way he got
me to translate the whole play. I was fortunate
enough to lose this translation and so am relieved
to that extent of the burden of my karma.

It was Pandit Ramsarvaswa's duty to see to
the progress of our Sanskrit. He likewise gave
up the fruitless task of teaching grammar to his
unwilling pupil, and read Sakuntala with me
instead. One day he took it into his head to show
my translation of Macbeth to Pandit Vidyasagar
and took me over to his house.

Rajkrishna Mukherji had called at the time
and was seated with him. My heart went pit-a-
pat as I entered the great Pandit's study, packed
full of books; nor did his austere visage assist
in reviving my courage. Nevertheless, as this

ii2 MY REMINISCENCES

was the first time I had had such a distinguished
audience, my desire to win renown was strong
within me. I returned home, I believe, with some
reason for an access of enthusiasm. As for Raj-
krishna Babu, he contented himself with admon-
ishing me to be careful to keep the language and
metre of the Witches' parts different from that
of the human characters.

During my boyhood Bengali literature was
meagre in body, and I think I must have finished
all the readable and unreadable books that there
were at the time. Juvenile literature in those
days had not evolved a distinct type of its own-
but that I am sure did me no harm. The watery
stuff into which literary nectar is now diluted
for being served up to the young takes full ac-
count of their childishness, but none of them as
growing human beings. Children's books should
be such as can partly be understood by them and
partly not. In our childhood we read every
available book from one end to the other; and
both what we understood, and what we did not,
went on working within us. That is how the
world itself reacts on the child consciousness.
The child makes its own what it understands,
while that which is beyond leads it on a step
forward.

When Dinabandhu Mitra's satires came out I

MY REMINISCENCES 113

was not of an age for which they were suitable.
A kinswoman of ours was reading a copy, but
no entreaties of mine could induce her to lend it
to me. She used to keep it under lock and key.
Its inaccessibility made me want it all the more
and I threw out the challenge that read the book
I must and would.

One afternoon she was playing cards, and her
keys, tied to a corner of her sari, hung over her
shoulder. I had never paid any attention to cards,
in fact I could not stand card games. But my
behaviour that day would hardly have borne this
out, so engrossed was I in their playing. At last,
in the excitement of one side being about to make
a score, I seized my opportunity and set about
untying the knot which held the keys. I was not
skilful, and moreover excited and hasty and so got
caught. The owner of the sari and of the keys
took the fold off her shoulder with a smile, and
laid the keys on her lap as she went on with the
game.

Then I hit on a stratagem. My kinswoman
was fond of pan,1 and I hastened to place some
before her. This entailed her rising later on to
get rid of the chewed pan, and, as she did so, her
keys fell off her lap and were replaced over her
shoulder. This time they got stolen, the culprit

1 Betel-leaf and spices.

ii4 MY REMINISCENCES

got off, and the book got read! Its owner tried
to scold me, but the attempt was not a success,
we both laughed so.

Dr. Rajendralal Mitra used to edit an illus-
trated monthly miscellany. My third brother
had a bound annual volume of it in his bookcase.
This I managed to secure and the delight of read-
ing it through, over and over again, still comes
back to me. Many a holiday noontide has passed
with me stretched on my back on my bed, that
square volume on my breast, reading about the
Narwhal whale, or the curiosities of justice as
administered by the Kazis of old, or the romantic
story of Krishna-kumari.

Why do we not have such magazines now-a-
days? We have philosophical and scientific
articles on the one hand, and insipid stories and
travels on the other, but no such unpretentious
miscellanies which the ordinary person can read
in comfort — such as Chambers's or Cassell's or
the Strand in England — which supply the general
reader with a simple, but satisfying fare and are
of the greatest use to the greatest number.

I came across another little periodical in my
young days called the Abodhabandhu (ignorant
man's friend). I found a collection of its monthly
numbers in my eldest brother's library and de-
voured them day after day, seated on the doorsill

MY REMINISCENCES 115

of his study, facing a bit of terrace to the South.
It was in the pages of this magazine that I made
my first acquaintance with the poetry of Viharilal
Chakravarti. His poems appealed to me the
most of all that I read at the time. The artless
flute-strains of his lyrics awoke within me the
music of fields and forest-glades.

Into these same pages I have wept many a
tear over a pathetic translation of Paul and Vir-
ginie. That wonderful sea, the breeze-stirred
cocoanut forests on its shore, and the slopes be-
yond lively with the gambols of mountain goats, —
a delightfully refreshing mirage they conjured
up on that terraced roof in Calcutta. And oh! the
romantic courting that went on in the forest paths
of that secluded island, between the Bengali boy
reader and little Virginie with the many-coloured
kerchief round her head!

Then came Bankim's Bangadarsan, taking the
Bengali heart by storm. It was bad enough to
have to wait till the next monthly number was
out, but to be kept waiting further till my elders
had done with it was simply intolerable! Now
he who will may swallow at a mouthful the whole
of Chandrashekhar or Bishabriksha but the process
of longing and anticipating, month after month;
of spreading over the long intervals the concen-
trated joy of each short reading, revolving every

ii6 MY REMINISCENCES

instalment over and over in the mind while watch-
ing and waiting for the next; the combination
of satisfaction with unsatisfied craving, of burn-
ing curiosity with its appeasement; these long
drawn out delights of going through the original
serial none will ever taste again.

The compilations from the old poets by Sarada
Mitter and Akshay Sarkar were also of great
interest to me. Our elders were subscribers, but
not very regular readers, of these series, so that
it was not difficult for me to get at them. Vidya-
pati's quaint and corrupt Maithili language at-
tracted me all the more because of its unintelligi-
bility. I tried to make out his sense without the
help of the compiler's notes, jotting down in my
own note book all the more obscure words with
their context as many times as they occurred.
I also noted grammatical peculiarities according
to my lights.

(18) My Home Environment

One great advantage which I enjoyed in my
younger days was the literary and artistic atmos-
phere which pervaded our house. I remember
how, when I was quite a child, I would be leaning
against the verandah railings which overlooked
the detached building comprising the reception

MY REMINISCENCES 117

rooms. These rooms would be lighted up every
evening. Splendid carriages would draw up
under the portico, and visitors would be con-
stantly coming and going. What was happening
I could not very well make out, but would keep
staring at the rows of lighted casements from
my place in the darkness. The intervening
space was not great but the gulf between
my infant world and these lights was im-
mense.

My elder cousin Ganendra had just got a
drama written by Pandit Tarkaratna and was
having it staged in the house. His enthusiasm
for literature and the fine arts knew no bounds.
He was the centre of the group who seem to have
been almost consciously striving to bring about
from every side the renascence which we see to-
day. A pronounced nationalism in dress, litera-
ture, music, art and the drama had awakened
in and around him. He was a keen student of
the history of different countries and had begun
but could not complete a historical work in Ben-
gali. He had translated and published the San-
skrit drama, Vikramorvasi, and many a well-
known hymn is his composition. He may be
said to have given us the lead in writing patriotic
poems and songs. This was in the days when the
Hindu Mela was an annual institution and there

n8 MY REMINISCENCES

his song "Ashamed am I to sing of India's glories"
used to be sung.

I was still a child when my cousin Ganendra
died in the prime of his youth, but for those who
have once beheld him it is impossible to forget
his handsome, tall and stately figure. He had an
irresistible social influence. He could draw men
round him and keep them bound to him; while
his powerful attraction was there, disruption was
out of the question. He was one of those — a type
peculiar to our country — who, by their personal
magnetism, easily establish themselves in the
centre of their family or village. In any other
country, where large political, social or commer-
cial groups are being formed, such would as nat-
urally become national leaders. The power of
organising a large number of men into a corporate
group depends on a special kind of genius. Such
genius in our country runs to waste, a waste, as
pitiful, it seems to me, as that of pulling down
a star from the firmament for use as a lucifer
match.

I remember still better his younger brother,
my cousin Gunendra.1 He likewise kept the house
filled with his personality. His large, gracious
heart embraced alike relatives, friends, guests
and dependants. Whether in his broad south
1 Father of the well-known artists Gaganendra and Abanindra. Ed.

MY REMINISCENCES 119

verandah, or on the lawn by the fountain, or at
the tank-edge on the fishing platform, he pre-
sided over self-invited gatherings, like hospitality
incarnate. His wide appreciation of art and talent
kept him constantly radiant with enthusiasm.
New ideas of festivity or frolic, theatricals or
other entertainments, found in him a ready pa-
tron, and with his help would flourish and find
fruition.

We were too young then to take any part in
these doings, but the waves of merriment and
life to which they gave rise came and beat at
the doors of our curiosity. I remember how a
burlesque composed by my eldest brother was
once being rehearsed in my cousin's big drawing
room. From our place against the verandah
railings of our house we could hear, through the
open windows opposite, roars of laughter mixed
with the strains of a comic song, and would also
occasionally catch glimpses of Akshay Mazum-
dar's extraordinary antics. We could not gather
exactly what the song was about, but lived in
hopes of being able to find that out sometime.

I recall how a trifling circumstance earned for
me the special regard of cousin Gunendra. Never
had I got a prize at school except once for good
conduct. Of the three of us my nephew Satya
was the best at his lessons. He once did well at

120 MY REMINISCENCES

some examination and was awarded a prize. As
we came home I jumped off the carriage to give
the great news to my cousin who was in the garden.
"Satya has got a prize" I shouted as I ran to
him. He drew me to his knees with a smile.
"And haveyou not got a prize?" he asked. "No,"
said I, "not I, it's Satya." My genuine pleasure
at Satya's success seemed to touch my cousin
particularly. He turned to his friends and re-
marked on it as a very creditable trait. I well
remember how mystified I felt at this, for I had
not thought of my feeling in that light. This
prize that I got for not getting a prize did not do
me good. There is no harm in making gifts to
children, but they should not be rewards. It is
not healthy for youngsters to be made self-
conscious.

After the mid-day meal cousin Gunendra would
attend the estate offices in our part of the house.
The office room of our elders was a sort of club
where laughter and conversation were freely
mixed with matters of business. My cousin
would recline on a couch, and I would seize some
opportunity of edging up to him.

He usually told me stories from Indian History.
I still remember the surprise with which I heard
how Clive, after establishing British rule in India,
went back home and cut his own throat. On the

777

My Eldest Brother

MY REMINISCENCES 121

one hand new history being made, on the other a
tragic chapter hidden away in the mysterious
darkness of a human heart. How could there be
such dismal failure within and such brilliant suc-
cess outside? This weighed heavily on my mind
the whole day.

Some days cousin Gunendra would not be
allowed to remain in any doubt as to the contents
of my pocket. At the least encouragement out
would come my manuscript book, unabashed.
I need hardly state that my cousin was not a
severe critic; in point of fact the opinions he ex-
pressed would have done splendidly as advertise-
ments. None the less, when in any of my poetry
my childishness became too obtrusive, he could
not restrain his hearty "Ha! Ha!"

One day it was a poem on "Mother India"
and as at the end of one line the only rhyme I
could think of meant a cart, I had to drag in that
cart in spite of there not being the vestige of a
road by which it could reasonably arrive, — the
insistent claims of rhyme would not hear of any
excuses mere reason had to offer. The storm of
laughter with which cousin Gunendra greeted it
blew away the cart back over the same impossible
path it had come by, and it has not been heard of
since.

My eldest brother was then busy with his mas-

122 MY REMINISCENCES

terpiece "The Dream Journey," his cushion seat
placed in the south verandah, a low desk before
him. Cousin Gunendra would come and sit there
for a time every morning. His immense capacity
for enjoyment, like the breezes of spring, helped
poetry to sprout. My eldest brother would go on
alternately writing and reading out what he had
written, his boisterous mirth at his own conceits
making the verandah tremble. My brother wrote
a great deal more than he finally used in his fin-
ished work, so fertile was his poetic inspiration.
Like the superabounding mango flowerets which
carpet the shade of the mango topes in spring
time, the rejected pages of his "Dream Journey"
were to be found scattered all over the house.
Had anyone preserved them they would have
been to-day a basketful of flowers adorning our
Bengali literature.

Eavesdropping at doors and peeping round
corners, we used to get our full share of this feast
of poetry, so plentiful was it, with so much to spare.
My eldest brother was then at the height of his
wonderful powers; and from his pen surged, in un-
tiring wave after wave, a tidal flood of poetic fancy,
rhyme and expression, filling and overflowing its
banks with an exuberantly joyful paean of triumph.
Did we quite understand "The Dream Journey"?
But then did we need absolutely to understand in

MY REMINISCENCES 123

order to enjoy it? We might not have got at the
wealth in the ocean depths — what could we have
done with it if we had? — but we revelled in the
delights of the waves on the shore; and how gaily,
at their buffettings, did our life-blood course
through every vein and artery!

The more I think of that period the more I
realise that we have no longer the thing called a
mujlis.1 In our boyhood we beheld the dying rays
of that intimate sociability which was character-
istic of the last generation. Neighbourly feelings
were then so strong that the mujlis was a necessity,
and those who could contribute to its amenities
were in great request. People now-a-days call on
each other on business, or as a matter of social
duty, but not to foregather by way of mujlis. They
have not the time, nor are there the same intimate
relations! What goings and comings we used to
see, how merry were the rooms and verandahs
with the hum of conversation and the snatches of
laughter! The faculty our predecessors had of
becoming the centre of groups and gatherings, of
starting and keeping up animated and amusing
gossip, has vanished. Men still come and go, but
those same verandahs and rooms seem empty and
deserted.

1 In Bengali this word has come to mean an informal uninvited
gathering.

i24 MY REMINISCENCES

In those days everything from furniture to fes-
tivity was designed to be enjoyed by the many, so
that whatever of pomp or magnificence there might
have been did not savour of hauteur. These ap-
pendages have since increased in quantity, but
they have become unfeeling, and know not the
art of making high and low alike feel at home.
The bare-bodied, the indigently clad, no longer
have the right to use and occupy them, without a
permit, on the strength of their smiling faces alone.
Those whom we now-a-days seek to imitate in our
house-building and furnishing, they have their own
society, with its wide hospitality. The mischief
with us is that we have lost what we had, but have
not the means of building up afresh on the Euro-
pean standard, with the result that our home-life
has become joyless. We still meet for business or
political purposes, but never for the pleasure of
simply meeting one another. We have ceased to
contrive opportunities to bring men together sim-
ply because we love our fellow-men. I can imagine
nothing more ugly than- this social miserliness; and,
when I look back on those whose ringing laughter,
coming straight from their hearts, used to lighten
for us the burden of household cares, they seem to
have been visitors from some other world.

MY REMINISCENCES 125

(19) Literary Companions

There came to me in my boyhood a friend whose
help in my literary progress was invaluable. Ak-
shay Chowdhury was a school-fellow of my fourth
brother. He was an M. A. in English Literature
for which his love was as great as his proficiency
therein. On the other hand he had an equal fond-
ness for our older Bengali authors and Vaishnava
Poets. He knew hundreds of Bengali songs of un-
known authorship, and on these he would launch,
with voice uplifted, regardless of tune, or conse-
quence, or of the express disapproval of his hearers.
Nor could anything, within him or without, pre-
vent his loudly beating time to his own music, for
which the nearest table or book served his nimble
fingers to rap a vigorous tattoo on, to help to en-
liven the audience.

He was also one of those with an inordinate
capacity for extracting enjoyment from all and
sundry. He was as ready to absorb every bit of
goodness in a thing as he was lavish in singing its
praises. He had an extraordinary gift as a light-
ning composer of lyrics and songs of no mean
merit, but in which he himself had no pride of
authorship. He took no further notice of the heaps
of scattered scraps of paper on which his pencil

126 MY REMINISCENCES

writings had been indited. He was as indifferent
to his powers as they were prolific.

One of his longer poetic pieces was much appre-
ciated when it appeared in the Bangadarsan, and
I have heard his songs sung by many who knew
nothing at all about their composer.

A genuine delight in literature is much rarer
than erudition, and it was this enthusiastic enjoy-
ment in Akshay Babu which used to awaken my
own literary appreciation. He was as liberal in
his friendships as in his literary criticisms. Among
strangers he was as a fish out of water, but among
friends discrepancies in wisdom or age made no
difference to him. With us boys he was a boy.
When he took his leave, late in the evening, from
the mujlis of our elders, I would buttonhole and
drag him to our school room. There, with un-
diminished geniality he would make himself the
life and soul of our little gathering, seated on the
top of our study table. On many such occasions I
have listened to him going into a rapturous dis-
sertation on some English poem; engaged him in
some appreciative discussion, critical inquiry, or
hot dispute; or read to him some of my own writ-
ings and been rewarded in return with praise un-
sparing.

My fourth brother Jyotirindra was one of the
chief helpers in my literary and emotional training.

MY REMINISCENCES 127

He was an enthusiast himself and loved to evoke
enthusiasm in others. He did not allow the dif-
ference between our ages to be any bar to my free
intellectual and sentimental intercourse with him.
This great boon of freedom which he allowed me,
none else would have dared to do; many even
blamed him for it. His companionship made it
possible for me to shake off my shrinking sensitive-
ness. It was as necessary for my soul after its
rigorous repression during my infancy as are the
monsoon clouds after a fiery summer.

But for such snapping of my shackles I might
have become crippled for life. Those in authority
are never tired of holding forth the possibility of
the abuse of freedom as a reason for withholding
it, but without that possibility freedom would not
be really free. And the only way of learning how
to use properly a thing is through its misuse. For
myself, at least, I can truly say that what little
mischief resulted from my freedom always led the
way to the means of curing mischief. I have never
been able to make my own anything which they
tried to compel me to swallow by getting hold of
me, physically or mentally, by the ears. Nothing
but sorrow have I ever gained except when left
freely to myself.

My brother Jyotirindra unreservedly let me go
my own way to self-knowledge, and only since then

128 MY REMINISCENCES

could my nature prepare to put forth its thorns,
it may be, but likewise its flowers. This experience
of mine has led me to dread, not so much evil itself,
as tyrannical attempts to create goodness. Of
punitive police, political or moral, I have a whole-
some horror. The state of slavery which is thus
brought on is the worst form of cancer to which
humanity is subject.

My brother at one time would spend days at
his piano engrossed in the creation of new tunes.
Showers of melody would stream from under his
dancing fingers, while Akshay Babu and I, seated
on either side, would be busy fitting words to the
tunes as they grew into shape to help to hold them
in our memories.1 This is how I served my ap-
prenticeship in the composition of songs.

While we were growing to boyhood music was
largely cultivated in our family. This had the
advantage of making it possible for me to imbibe
it, without an effort, into my whole being. It
had also the disadvantage of not giving me that
technical mastery which the effort of learning
step by step alone can give. Of what may be
called proficiency in music, therefore, I acquired
none.

1 Systems of notation were not then in use. One of the most popu-
lar of the present-day systems was subsequently devised by the
writer's brother here mentioned. Tr.

MY REMINISCENCES 129

Ever since my return from the Himalayas it
was a case of my getting more freedom, more and
more. The rule of the servants came to an end;
I saw to it with many a device that the bonds of
my school life were also loosened; nor to my home
tutors did I give much scope. Gyan Babu, after
taking me through uThe Birth of the War-god"
and one or two other books in a desultory fashion,
went off to take up a legal career. Then came
Braja Babu. The first day he put me on to trans-
late "The Vicar of Wakefield." I found that I
did not dislike the book; but when this encouraged
him to make more elaborate arrangements for the
advancement of my learning I made myself al-
together scarce.

As I have said, my elders gave me up. Neither
I nor they were troubled with any more hopes of
my future. So I felt free to devote myself to filling
up my manuscript book. And the writings which
thus filled it were no better than could have been
expected. My mind had nothing in it but hot
vapour, and vapour-filled bubbles frothed and
eddied round a vortex of lazy fancy, aimless and
unmeaning. No forms were evolved, there was
only the distraction of movement, a bubbling up,
a bursting back into froth. What little of matter
there was in it was not mine, but borrowed from
other poets. What was my own was the restless-

i3o MY REMINISCENCES

ness, the seething tension within me. When
motion has been born, while yet the balance of
forces has not matured, then is there blind chaos
indeed.

My sister-in-law * was a great lover of literature.
She did not read simply to kill time, but the Ben-
gali books which she read filled her whole mind.
I was a partner in her literary enterprises. She
was a devoted admirer of "The Dream Journey."
So was I; the more particularly as, having been
brought up in the atmosphere of its creation, its
beauties had become intertwined with every fibre
of my heart. Fortunately it was entirely beyond
my power of imitation, so it never occurred to me
to attempt anything like it.

"The Dream Journey" may be likened to a
superb palace of Allegory, with innumerable halls,
chambers, passages, corners and niches full of
statuary and pictures, of wonderful design and
workmanship; and in the grounds around gardens,
bowers, fountains and shady nooks in profusion.
Not only do poetic thought and fancy abound, but
the richness and variety of language and expression
is also marvellous. It is not a small thing, this
creative power which can bring into being so
magnificent a structure complete in all its artistic

1 The new bride of the house, wife of the writer's fourth brother,
above-mentioned. TV.

MY REMINISCENCES 131

detail, and that is perhaps why the idea of at-
tempting an imitation never occurred to me.

At this time Viharilal Chakravarti's series of
songs called Sarada Mangal were coming out in
the Arya Darsan. My sister-in-law was greatly
taken with the sweetness of these lyrics. Most of
them she knew by heart. She used often to invite
the poet to our house and had embroidered for
him a cushion-seat with her own hands. This gave
me the opportunity of making friends with him.
He came to have a great affection for me, and I
took to dropping in at his house at all times of the
day, morning, noon or evening. His heart was as
large as his body, and a halo of fancy used to sur-
round him like a poetic astral body which seemed
to be his truer image. He was always full of true
artistic joy, and whenever I have been to him I
have breathed in my share of it. Often have I
come upon him in his little room on the third
storey, in the heat of noonday, sprawling on the
cool polished cement floor, writing his poems.
Mere boy though I was, his welcome was always
so genuine and hearty that I never felt the least
awkwardness in approaching him. Then, wrapt
in his inspiration and forgetful of all surroundings,
he would read out his poems or sing his songs to
me. Not that he had much of the gift of song in
his voice; but then he was not altogether tuneless,

i32 MY REMINISCENCES

and one could get a fair idea of the intended mel-
ody.1 When with eyes closed he raised his rich
deep voice, its expressiveness made up for what
it lacked in execution. I still seem to hear some
of his songs as he sang them. I would also some-
times set his words to music and sing them to him.

He was a great admirer of Valmiki and Kalidas.
I remember how once after reciting a description
of the Himalayas from Kalidas with the full
strength of his voice, he said: "The succession of
long a sounds here is not an accident. The poet
has deliberately repeated this sound all the way
from Devatatma down to Nagadhiraja as an as-
sistance in realising the glorious expanse of the
Himalayas."

At the time the height of my ambition was to
become a poet like Vihari Babu. I might have
even succeeded in working myself up to the belief
that I was actually writing like him, but for my
sister-in-law, his zealous devotee, who stood in the
way. She would keep reminding me of a Sanskrit
saying that the unworthy aspirant after poetic
fame departs in jeers ! Very possibly she knew that
if my vanity was once allowed to get the upper
hand it would be difficult afterwards to bring it

1 It may be helpful to the foreign reader to explain that the expert
singer of Indian music improvises more or less on the tune outline
made over to him by the original composer, so that the latter need not
necessarily do more than give a correct idea of such outline. Tr.

MY REMINISCENCES 133

under control. So neither my poetic abilities nor
my powers of song readily received any praise from
her; rather would she never let slip an opportunity
of praising somebody else's singing at my expense;
with the result that I gradually became quite con-
vinced of the defects of my voice. Misgivings
about my poetic powers also assailed me; but, as
this was the only field of activity left in which I
had any chance of retaining my self-respect, I
could not allow the judgment of another to deprive
me of all hope; moreover, so insistent was the spur
within me that to stop my poetic adventure was
a matter of sheer impossibility.

(20) Publishing

My writings so far had been confined to the
family circle. Then was started the monthly called
the Gyanankur, Sprouting Knowledge, and, as be-
fitted its name it secured an embryo poet as one
of its contributors. It began to publish all my
poetic ravings indiscriminately, and to this day I
have, in a corner of my mind, the fear that, when
the day of judgment comes for me, some en-
thusiastic literary police-agent will institute a
search in the inmost zenana of forgotten literature,
regardless of the claims of privacy, and bring these
out before the pitiless public gaze.

i34 MY REMINISCENCES

My first prose writing also saw the light in the
pages of the Gyanankur. It was a critical essay
and had a bit of a history.

A book of poems had been published entitled
Bhubanmohini Pratibha.1 Akshay Babu in the
Sadharani and Bhudeb Babu in the Education
Gazette hailed this new poet with effusive acclama-
tion. A friend of mine, older than myself, whose
friendship dates from then, would come and show
me letters he had received signed Bhubanmohini.
He was one of those whom the book had captivated
and used frequently to send reverential offerings
of books or cloth 2 to the address of the reputed
authoress.

Some of these poems were so wanting in restraint
both of thought and language that I could not
bear the idea of their being written by a woman.
The letters that were shown to me made it still less
possible for me to believe in the womanliness of
the writer. But my doubts did not shake my
friend's devotion and he went on with the worship
of his idol.

Then I launched into a criticism of the work of
this writer. I let myself go, and eruditely held

1 This would mean "the genius of Bhubanmohini" if that be taken
as the author's name.

2 Gifts of cloth for use as wearing apparel are customary by
way of ceremonial offerings of affection, respect or seasonable greet-
ing.

MY REMINISCENCES 135

forth on the distinctive features of lyrics and other
short poems, my great advantage being that
printed matter is so unblushing, so impassively
unbetraying of the writer's real attainments. My
friend turned up in a great passion and hurled at
me the threat that a B. A. was writing a reply. A
B. A.! I was struck speechless. I felt the same as
in my younger days when my nephew Satya had
shouted for a policeman. I could see the triumphal
pillar of argument, erected upon my nice distinc-
tions, crumbling before my eyes at the merciless
assaults of authoritative quotations; and the door
effectually barred against my ever showing my
face to the reading public again. Alas, my critique,
under what evil star wert thou born ! I spent day
after day in the direst suspense. But, like Satya's
policeman, the B. A. failed to appear.

(21) Bhanu Singha

As I have said I was a keen student of the series
of old Vaishnava poems which were being collected
and published by Babus Akshay Sarkar and
Saroda Mitter. Their language, largely mixed
with Maithili, I found difficult to understand; but
for that very reason I took all the more pains to
get at thejr meaning. My feeling towards them
was that same eager curiosity with which I re-

136 MY REMINISCENCES

garded the ungerminated sprout within the seed,
or the undiscovered mystery under the dust cover-
ing of the earth. My enthusiasm was kept up with
the hope of bringing to light some unknown
poetical gems as I went deeper and deeper into
the unexplored darkness of this treasure-house.

While I was so engaged, the idea got hold of me
of enfolding my own writings in just such a wrap-
ping of mystery. I had heard from Akshay Chowd-
hury the story of the English boy-poet Chatterton.
What his poetry was like I had no idea, nor per-
haps had Akshay Babu himself. Had we known,
the story might have lost its charm. As it hap-
pened the melodramatic element in it fired my
imagination; for had not so many been deceived
by his successful imitation of the classics? And
at last the unfortunate youth had died by his own
hand. Leaving aside the suicide part I girded up
my loins to emulate young Chatterton's exploits.

One noon the clouds had gathered thickly. Re-
joicing in the grateful shade of the cloudy midday
rest-hour, I lay prone on the bed in my inner room
and wrote on a slate the imitation MaithiU poem
Gahana kusuma kunja majhe. I was greatly
pleased with it and lost no time in reading it out
to the first one I came across; of whose under-
standing a word of it there happened to be not the
slightest danger, and who consequently could not

MY REMINISCENCES 137

but gravely nod and say, "Good, very good
indeed!"

To my friend mentioned a while ago I said one
day: "A tattered old manuscript has been dis-
covered while rummaging in the Adi Brahma
Samaj library and from this I have copied some
poems by an old Vaishnava Poet named Bhanu
Singha; 1 with which I read some of my imitation
poems to him. He was profoundly stirred. "These
could not have been written even by Fidyapati or
Chandidas!" he rapturously exclaimed. "I really
must have that MS. to make over to Akshay Babu
for publication."

Then I showed him my manuscript book and
conclusively proved that the poems could not have
been written by either Fidyapati or Chandidas be-
cause the author happened to be myself. My
friend's face fell as he muttered, "Yes, yes, they're
not half bad."

When these Bhanu Singha poems were coming
out in the Bharati, Dr. Nishikanta Chatterjee was
in Germany. He wrote a thesis on the lyric poetry
of our country comparing it with that of Europe.
Bhanu Singha was given a place of honour as one
of the old poets such as no modern writer could

1 The old Vaishnava poets used to bring their name into the last
stanza of the poem, this serving as their signature. Bhanu and Rabi
both mean the Sun. Tr.

i38 MY REMINISCENCES

have aspired to. This was the thesis on which
Nishikanta Chatterjee got his Ph. D.!

Whoever Bhanu Singha might have been, had
his writings fallen into the hands of latter-day me,
I swear I would not have been deceived. The
language might have passed muster; for that
which the old poets wrote in was not their mother
tongue, but an artificial language varying in the
hands of different poets. But there was nothing
artificial about their sentiments. Any attempt to
test Bhanu Singha's poetry by its ring would have
shown up the base metal. It had none of the
ravishing melody of our ancient pipes, but only
the tinkle of a modern, foreign barrel organ.

(22) Patriotism

From an outside point of view many a foreign
custom would appear to have gained entry into
our family, but at its heart flames a national pride
which has never flickered. The genuine regard
which my father had for his country never forsook
him through all the revolutionary vicissitudes of
his life, and this in his descendants has taken shape
as a strong patriotic feeling. Love of country was,
however, by no means a characteristic of the times
of which I am writing. Our educated men then
kept at arms' length both the language and thought

MY REMINISCENCES 139

of their native land. Nevertheless my elder
brothers had always cultivated Bengali literature.
When on one occasion some new connection by
marriage wrote my father an English letter it was
promptly returned to the writer.

The Hindu Mela was an annual fair which had
been instituted with the assistance of our house.
Babu Nabagopal Mitter was appointed its man-
ager. This was perhaps the first attempt at a
reverential realisation of India as our motherland.
My second brother's popular national anthem
" Bharater Jay a" was composed, then. The sing-
ing of songs glorifying the motherland, the recita-
tion of poems of the love of country, the exhibition
of indigenous arts and crafts and the encourage-
ment of national talent and skill were the features
of this Mela.

On the occasion of Lord Curzon's Delhi durbar
I wrote a prose-paper — at the time of Lord Lyt-
ton's it was a poem. The British Government
of those days feared the Russians it is true, but
not the pen of a 1 4-year old poet. So, though
my poem lacked none of the fiery sentiments ap-
propriate to my age, there were no signs of any
consternation in the ranks of the authorities from
Commander-in-chief down to Commissioner of
Police. Nor did any lachrymose letter in the
Times predict a speedy downfall of the Empire

i4o MY REMINISCENCES

for this apathy of its local guardians. I recited
my poem under a tree at the Hindu Mela
and one of my hearers was Nabin Sen, the poet.
He reminded me of this after I had grown
up.

My fourth brother, Jyotirindra, was responsible
for a political association of which old Rajnarain
Bose was the president. It held its sittings in a
tumbledown building in an obscure Calcutta lane.
Its proceedings were enshrouded in mystery. This
mystery was its only claim to be awe-inspiring,
for as a matter of fact there was nothing in our
deliberations or doings of which government or
people need have been afraid. The rest of our
family had no idea where we were spending our
afternoons. Our front door would be locked, the
meeting room in darkness, the watchword a Vedic
mantra, our talk in whispers. These alone pro-
vided us with enough of a thrill, and we wanted
nothing more. Mere child as I was, I also was a
member. We surrounded ourselves with such an
atmosphere of pure frenzy that we always seemed
to be soaring aloft on the wings of our enthusiasm.
Of bashfulness, diffidence or fear we had none,
our main object being to bask in the heat of our
own fervour.

Bravery may sometimes have its drawbacks;
but it has always maintained a deep hold on the

MY REMINISCENCES 141

reverence of mankind. In the literature of all
countries we find an unflagging endeavour to
keep alive this reverence. So in whatever state a
particular set of men in a particular locality may
be, they cannot escape the constant impact of
these stimulating shocks. We had to be content
with responding to such shocks, as best we could,
by letting loose our imagination, coming together,
talking tall and singing fervently.

There can be no doubt that closing up all out-
lets and barring all openings to a faculty so deep-
seated in the nature of man, and moreover so
prized by him, creates an unnatural condition
favourable to degenerate activity. It is not enough
to keep open only the avenues to clerical employ-
ment in any comprehensive scheme of Imperial
Government — if no road be left for adventurous
daring the soul of man will pine for deliverance,
and secret passages still be sought, of which the
pathways are tortuous and the end unthinkable.
I firmly believe that if in those days Govern-
ment had paraded a frightfulness born of suspicion,
then the comedy which the youthful members of
this association had been at might have turned
into grim tragedy. The play, however, is over,
not a brick of Fort-William is any the worse,
and we are now smiling at its memory.

My brother Jyotirindra began to busy himself

i42 MY REMINISCENCES

with a national costume for all India, and sub-
mitted various designs to the association. The
Dhoti was not deemed business-like; trousers were
too foreign; so he hit upon a compromise which
considerably detracted from the dhoti while
failing to improve the trousers. That is to say,
the trousers were decorated with the addition
of a false dhoti-fold in front and behind. The
fearsome thing that resulted from combining a
turban with a Sola-topee our most enthusiastic
member would not have had the temerity to call
ornamental. No person of ordinary courage
could have dared it, but my brother unflinchingly
wore the complete suit in broad day-light, passing
through the house of an afternoon to the carriage
waiting outside, indifferent alike to the stare
of relation or friend, door-keeper or coachman.
There may be many a brave Indian ready to
die for his country, but there are but few, I
am sure, who even for the good of the nation
would face the public streets in such pan-Indian
garb.

Every Sunday my brother would get up a
Shikar party. Many of those who joined in it,
uninvited, we did not even know. There was a
carpenter, a smith and others from all ranks of
society. Bloodshed was the only thing lacking in
this shikar, at least I cannot recall any. Its other

MY REMINISCENCES 143

appendages were so abundant and satisfying that
we felt the absence of dead or wounded game to
be a trifling circumstance of no account. As we
were out from early morning, my sister-in-law
furnished us with a plentiful supply of luchis
with appropriate accompaniments; and as these
did not depend upon the fortunes of our chase we
never had to return empty.

The neighbourhood of Maniktola is not want-
ing in Villa-gardens. We would turn into any
one of these at the end, and high- and low-born
alike, seated on the bathing platform of a tank,
would fling ourselves on the luchis in right good
earnest, all that was left of them being the vessels
they were brought in.

Braja Babu was one of the most enthusiastic
of these blood-thirstless shikaris. He was the
Superintendent of the Metropolitan Institution
and had also been our private tutor for a time. One
day he had the happy idea of accosting the mail
(gardener) of a villa-garden into which we had
thus trespassed with: "Hallo, has uncle been here
lately!" The mail lost no time in saluting him
respectfully before he replied: "No, Sir, the master
hasn't been lately." "All right, get us some green
cocoanuts off the trees." We had a fine drink
after our luchis that day.

A Zamindar in a small way was among our

144 MY REMINISCENCES

party. He owned a villa on the river side. One
day we had a picnic there together, in defiance
of caste rules. In the afternoon there was a tre-
mendous storm. We stood on the river-side stairs
leading into the water and shouted out songs to
its accompaniment. I cannot truthfully assert
that all the seven notes of the scale could properly
be distinguished in Rajnarain Babu's singing,
nevertheless he sent forth his voice and, as in the
old Sanskrit works the text is drowned by the
notes, so in Rajnarain Babu's musical efforts the
vigorous play of his limbs and features over-
whelmed his feebler vocal performance; his head
swung from side to side marking time, while the
storm played havoc with his flowing beard. It was
late in the night when we turned homewards in a
hackney carriage. By that time the storm clouds
had dispersed and the stars twinkled forth. The
darkness had become intense, the atmosphere
silent, the village roads deserted, and the thickets
on either side filled with fireflies like a carnival of
sparks scattered in some noiseless revelry.

One of the objects of our association was to
encourage the manufacture of lucifer matches,
and similar small industries. For this purpose
each member had to contribute a tenth of his
income. Matches had to be made, but match-
wood was difficult to get; for though we all know

MY REMINISCENCES 145

with what fiery energy a bundle of khangras l
can be wielded in capable hands, the thing that
burns at its touch is not a lamp wick. After many
experiments we succeeded in making a boxful of
matches. The patriotic enthusiasm which was
thus evidenced did not constitute their only value,
for the money that was spent in their making
might have served to light the family hearth for
the space of a year. Another little defect was that
these matches could not be got to burn unless
there was a light handy to touch them up with.
If they could only have inherited some of the
patriotic flame of which they were born they
might have been marketable even to-day.

News came to us that some young student
was trying to make a power loom. Off we went
to see it. None of us had the knowledge with
which to test its practical usefulness, but in our
capacity for believing and hoping we were in-
ferior to none. The poor fellow had got into a bit
of debt over the cost of his machine which we
repaid for him. Then one day we found Braja
Babu coming over to our house with a flimsy

1 The dried and stripped centre-vein of a cocoanut leaf gives a long
tapering stick of the average thickness of a match stick, and a bundle
of these goes to make the common Bengal household broom which
in the hands of the housewife is popularly supposed to be useful in
keeping the whole household in order from husband downwards. Its
effect on a bare back is here alluded to. — TV.

146 MY REMINISCENCES

country towel tied round his head. "Made in
our loom!" he shouted as with hands uplifted he
executed a war-dance. The outside of Braja
Babu's head had then already begun to ripen into
grey!

At last some worldly-wise people came and
joined our society, made us taste of the fruit of
knowledge, and broke up our little paradise.

When I first knew Rajnarain Babu, I was not
old enough to appreciate his many-sidedness. In
him were combined many opposites. In spite of
his hoary hair and beard he was as young as the
youngest of us, his venerable exterior serving only
as a white mantle for keeping his youth perpetually
fresh. Even his extensive learning had not been
able to do him any damage, for it left him abso-
lutely simple. To the end of his life the incessant
flow of his hearty laughter suffered no check,
neither from the gravity of age, nor ill-health,
nor domestic affliction, nor profundity of thought,
nor variety of knowledge, all of which had been
his in ample measure. He had been a favourite
pupil of Richardson and brought up in an at-
mosphere of English learning, nevertheless he
flung aside all obstacles due to his early habit and
gave himself up lovingly and devotedly to Ben-
gali literature. Though the meekest of men, he
was full of fire which flamed its fiercest in his

MY REMINISCENCES 147

patriotism, as though to burn to ashes the short-
comings and destitution of his country. The
memory of this smile-sweetened fervour-illumined
lifelong-youthful saint is one that is worth cherish-
ing by our countrymen.

(23) The Bharati

On the whole the period of which I am writing
was for me one of ecstatic excitement. Many a
night have I spent without sleep, not for any
particular reason but from a mere desire to do
the reverse of the obvious. I would keep up read-
ing in the dim light of our school room all alone;
the distant church clock would chime every
quarter as if each passing hour was being put up
to auction; and the loud Haribols of the bearers of
the dead, passing along Chitpore Road on their
way to the Nimtollah cremation ground, would
now and then resound. Through some summer
moonlight nights I would be wandering about
like an unquiet spirit among the lights and shad-
ows of the tubs and pots on the garden of the
roof-terrace.

Those who would dismiss this as sheer poetising
would be wrong. The very earth in spite of its
having aged considerably surprises us occasionally
by its departure from sober stability; in the days

i48 MY REMINISCENCES

of its youth, when it had not become hardened
and crusty, it was effusively volcanic and in-
dulged in many a wild escapade. In the days of
man's first youth the same sort of thing happens.
So long as the materials which go to form his life
have not taken on their final shape they are apt
to be turbulent in the process of their formation.

This was the time when my brother Jyotirindra
decided to start the Bharati with our eldest brother
as editor, giving us fresh food for enthusiasm.
I was then just sixteen, but I was not left out
of the editorial staff. A short time before, in all
the insolence of my youthful vanity, I had written
a criticism of the Meghanadabadha. As acidity
is characteristic of the unripe mango so is abuse
of the immature critic. When other powers are
lacking, the power of pricking seems to be at its
sharpest. I had thus sought immortality by
leaving my scratches on that immortal epic. This
impudent criticism was my first contribution to
the Bharati.

In the first volume I also published a long
poem called Kavikahini, The Poet's Story. It
was the product of an age when the writer had
seen practically nothing of the world except an
exaggerated image of his own nebulous self. So
the hero of the story was naturally a poet, not the
writer as he was, but as he imagined or desired

MY REMINISCENCES 149

himself to seem. It would hardly be correct to
say that he desired to be what he portrayed;
that represented more what he thought was
expected of him, what would make the world
admiringly nod and say: "Yes, a poet indeed,
quite the correct thing." In it was a great parade
of universal love, that pet subject of the budding
poet, which sounds as big as it is easy to talk
about. While yet any truth has not dawned
upon one's own mind, and others' words are one's
only stock-in-trade, simplicity and restraint in ex-
pression are not possible. Then, in the endeavour
to display magnified that which is really big in
itself, it becomes impossible to avoid a grotesque
and ridiculous exhibition.

When I blush to read these effusions of my
boyhood I am also struck with the fear that very
possibly in my later writings the same distortion,
wrought by straining after effect, lurks in a less
obvious form. The loudness of my voice, I doubt
not, often drowns the thing I would say; and some
day or other Time will find me out.

The Kavikahini was the first work of mine to
appear in book form. When I went with my
second brother to Ahmedabad, some enthusiastic
friend of mine took me by surprise by printing
and publishing it and sending me a copy. I can-
not say that he did well, but the feeling that was

i5o MY REMINISCENCES

roused in me at the time did not resemble that
of an indignant judge. He got his punishment,
however, not from the author, but from the public
who hold the purse strings. I have heard that
the dead load of the books lay, for many a long
day, heavy on the shelves of the booksellers and
the mind of the luckless publisher.

Writings of the age at which I began to con-
tribute to the Bharati cannot possibly be fit for
publication. There is no better way of ensuring
repentance at maturity than to rush into print
too early. But it has one redeeming feature: the
irresistible impulse to see one's writings in print
exhausts itself during early life. Who are the
readers, what do they say, what printers' errors
have remained uncorrected, these and the like
worries run their course as infantile maladies
and leave one leisure in later life to attend to one's
literary work in a healthier frame of mind.

Bengali literature is not old enough to have
elaborated those internal checks which can serve
to control its votaries. As experience in writing
is gained the Bengali writer has to evolve the
restraining force from within himself. This makes
it impossible for him to avoid the creation of a
great deal of rubbish during a considerable length
of time. The ambition to work wonders with the
modest gifts at one's disposal is bound to be an

MY REMINISCENCES 151

obsession in the beginning, so that the effort to
transcend at every step one's natural powers,
and therewith the bounds of truth and beauty, is
always visible in early writings. To recover one's
normal self, to learn to respect one's powers as
they are, is a matter of time.

However that may be, I have left much of youth-
ful folly to be ashamed of, besmirching the pages
of the Bharati; and this shames me not for its
literary defects alone but for its atrocious im-
pudence, its extravagant excesses and its high-
sounding artificiality. At the same time I am
free to recognise that the writings of that period
were pervaded with an enthusiasm the value of
which cannot be small. It was a period to which,
if error was natural, so was the boyish faculty of
hoping, believing and rejoicing. And if the fuel
of error was necessary for feeding the flame of
enthusiasm then while that which was fit to be
reduced to ashes will have become ash, the good
work done by the flame will not have been in
vain in my life.

PART V

(24) Akmeddbad

WHEN the Bharati entered upon its second
year, my second brother proposed to
take me to England; and when my
father gave his consent, this further unasked fa-
vour of providence came on me as a surprise.

As a first step I accompanied my brother to
Ahmedabad where he was posted as judge. My
sister-in-law with her children was then in Eng-
land, so the house was practically empty.

The Judge's house is known as Shahibagh and
was a palace of the Badshahs of old. At the foot
of the wall supporting a broad terrace flowed
the thin summer stream of the Savarmati river
along one edge of its ample bed of sand. My
brother used to go off to his court, and I would be
left all alone in the vast expanse of the palace,
with only the cooing of the pigeons to break the
midday stillness; and an unaccountable curiosity
kept me wandering about the empty rooms.

Into the niches in the wall of a large chamber
my brother had put his books. One of these was
a gorgeous edition of Tennyson's works, with
big print and numerous pictures. The book,
for me, was as silent as the palace, and, much in
the same way I wandered among its picture plates.

156 MY REMINISCENCES

Not that I could not make anything of the text,
but it spoke to me more like inarticulate cooings
than words. In my brother's library I also found
a book of collected Sanskrit poems edited by Dr.
Haberlin and printed at the old Serampore press.
This was also beyond my understanding but the
sonorous Sanskrit words, and the march of the
metre, kept me tramping among the Amaru
Shataka poems to the mellow roll of their drum-
call.

In the upper room of the palace tower was my
lonely hermit cell, my only companions being a
nest of wasps. In the unrelieved darkness of the
night I slept there alone. Sometimes a wasp or
two would drop off the nest on to my bed, and
if perchance I happened to roll on one, the meet-
ing was unpleasing to the wasp and keenly dis-
comforting to me.

On moonlight nights pacing round and round
the extensive terrace overlooking the river was
one of my caprices. It was while so doing that I
first composed my own tunes for my songs. The
song addressed to the Rose-maiden was one of
these, and it still finds a place in my published
works.

Finding how imperfect was my knowledge of
English I set to work reading through some Eng-
lish books with the help of a dictionary. From

MY REMINISCENCES 157

my earliest years it was my habit not to let any
want of complete comprehension interfere with
my reading on, quite satisfied with the structure
which my imagination reared on the bits which
I understood here and there. I am reaping even
to-day both the good and bad effects of this habit.

(25) England

After six months thus spent in Ahmedabad
we started for England. In an unlucky moment
I began to write letters about my journey to my
relatives and to the Bharati. Now it is beyond
my power to call them back. These were nothing
but the outcome of youthful bravado. At that
age the mind refuses to admit that its greatest
pride is in its power to understand, to accept, to
respect; and that modesty is the best means of
enlarging its domain. Admiration and praise are
looked upon as a sign of weakness or surrender,
and the desire to cry down and hurt and demolish
with argument gives rise to this kind of intellectual
fireworks. These attempts of mine to establish
my superiority by revilement might have occa-
sioned me amusement to-day, had not their want
of straightness and common courtesy been too
painful.

From my earliest years I had had practically no

158 MY REMINISCENCES

commerce with the outside world. To be plunged
in this state, at the age of 17, into the midst of
the social sea of England would have justified
considerable misgiving as to my being able to
keep afloat. But as my sister-in-law happened
to be in Brighton with her children I weathered
the first shock of it under her shelter.

Winter was then approaching. One evening
as we were chatting round the fireside, the children
came running to us with the exciting news that
it had been snowing. We at once went out. It
was bitingly cold, the sky filled with white moon-
light, the earth covered with white snow. It was
not the face of Nature familiar to me, but some-
thing quite different — like a dream. Everything
near seemed to have receded far away, leaving
the still white figure of an ascetic steeped in deep
meditation. The sudden revelation, on the mere
stepping outside a door, of such wonderful, such
immense beauty had never before come upon me.

My days passed merrily under the affectionate
care of my sister-in-law and in boisterous romp-
ings with the children. They were greatly tickled
at my curious English pronunciation, and though
in the rest of their games I could whole-heartedly
join, this I failed to see the fun of. How could I
explain to them that there was no logical means
of distinguishing between the sound of a in warm

MY REMINISCENCES 159-

and o in worm. Unlucky that I was, I had to bear
the brunt of the ridicule which was more properly
the due of the vagaries of English spelling.

I became quite an adept in inventing new ways
of keeping the children occupied and amused.
This art has stood me in good stead many a time
thereafter, and its usefulness for me is not yet
over. But I no longer feel in myself the same
unbounded profusion of ready contrivance. That
was the first opportunity I had for giving my heart
to children, and it had all the freshness and over-
flowing exuberance of such a first gift.

But I had not set out on this journey to ex-
change a home beyond the seas for the one on
this side. The idea was that I should study Law
and come back a barrister. So one day I was put
into a public school in Brighton. The first thing
the Headmaster said after scanning my features
was: "What a splendid head you have!" This
detail lingers in my memory because she, who
at home was an enthusiast in her self-imposed
duty of keeping my vanity in check, had impressed
on me that my cranium 1 and features generally,
compared with that of many another were barely
of a medium order. I hope the reader will not
fail to count it to my credit that I implicitly
believed her, and inwardly deplored the parsimony

1 There was a craze for phrenology at the time. Tr.

160 MY REMINISCENCES

of the Creator in the matter of my making. On
many another occasion, finding myself estimated
by my English acquaintances differently from
what I had been accustomed to be by her, I was
led to seriously worry my mind over the diver-
gence in the standard of taste between the two
countries!

One thing in the Brighton school seemed very
wonderful: the other boys were not at all rude to
me. On the contrary they would often thrust
oranges and apples into my pockets and run
away. I can only ascribe this uncommon be-
haviour of theirs to my being a foreigner.

I was not long in this school either — but that
was no fault of the school. Mr. Tarak Palit 1
was then in England. He could see that this
was not the way for me to get on, and prevailed
upon my brother to allow him to take me to
London, and leave me there to myself in a lodging
house. The lodgings selected faced the Regent
Gardens. It was then the depth of winter. There
was not a leaf on the row of trees in front which
stood staring at the sky with their scraggy snow-
covered branches — a sight which chilled my very
bones.

For the newly arrived stranger there can hardly

1 Latterly Sir Tarak Palit, a life-long friend of the writer's second
brother. TV.

MY REMINISCENCES 161

be a more cruel place than London in winter. I
knew no one near by, nor could I find my way
about. The days of sitting alone at a window,
gazing at the outside world, came back into my
life. But the scene in this case was not attractive.
There was a frown on its countenance; the sky
turbid; the light lacking lustre like a dead man's
eye; the horizon shrunk upon itself; with never an
inviting smile from a broad hospitable world. The
room was but scantily furnished, but there hap-
pened to be a harmonium which, after the daylight
came to its untimely end, I used to play upon
according to my fancy. Sometimes Indians would
come to see me; and, though my acquaintance with
them was but slight, when they rose to leave I felt
inclined to hold them back by their coat-tails.

While living in these rooms there was one who
came to teach me Latin. His gaunt figure with
its worn-out clothing seemed no more able than
the naked trees to withstand the winter's grip. I
do not know what his age was but he clearly looked
older than his years. Some days in the course of
our lessons he would suddenly be at a loss for some
word and look vacant and ashamed. His people
at home counted him a crank. He had become
possessed of a theory. He believed that in each
age some one dominant idea is manifested in every
human society in all parts of the world; and though

162 MY REMINISCENCES

it may take different shapes under different degrees
of civilisation, it is at bottom one and the same;
nor is such idea taken from one by another by
any process of adoption, for this truth holds good
even where there is no intercourse. His great pre-
occupation was the gathering and recording of
facts to prove this theory. And while so engaged
his home lacked food, his body clothes. His
daughters had but scant respect for his theory and
were perhaps constantly upbraiding him for his
infatuation. Some days one could see from his
face that he had lighted upon some new proof, and
that his thesis had correspondingly advanced. On
these occasions I would broach the subject, and
wax enthusiastic at his enthusiasm. On other days
he would be steeped in gloom, as if his burden was
too heavy to bear. Then would our lessons halt
at every step; his eyes wander away into empty
space; and his mind refuse to be dragged into the
pages of the first Latin Grammar. I felt keenly
for the poor body-starved theory-burdened soul,
and though I was under no delusion as to the as-
sistance I got in my Latin, I could not make up
my mind to get rid of him. This pretence of
learning Latin lasted as long as I was at these lodg-
ings. When on the eve of leaving them I offered
to settle his dues he said piteously: "I have done
nothing, and only wasted your time, I cannot ac-

MY REMINISCENCES 163

cept any payment from you." It was with great
difficulty that I got him at last to take his fees.

Though my Latin tutor had never ventured to
trouble me with the proofs of his theory, yet up to
this day I do not disbelieve it. I am convinced
that the minds of men are connected through some
deep-lying continuous medium, and that a dis-
turbance in one part is by it secretly communicated
to others.

Mr. Palit next placed me in the house of a coach
named Barker. He used to lodge and prepare
students for their examinations. Except his mild
little wife there was not a thing with any preten-
sions to attractiveness about this household. One
can understand how such a tutor can get pupils,
for these poor creatures do not often get the chance
of making a choice. But it is painful to think of
the conditions under which such men get wives.
Mrs. Barker had attempted to console herself with
a pet dog, but when Barker wanted to punish his
wife he tortured the dog. So that her affection for
the unfortunate animal only made for an enlarge-
ment of her field of sensibility.

From these surroundings, when my sister-in-law
sent for me to Torquay in Devonshire, I was only
too glad to run off to her. I cannot tell how happy
I was with the hills there, the sea, the flower-
covered meadows, the shade of the pine woods,

i64 MY REMINISCENCES

and my two little restlessly playful companions.
I was nevertheless sometimes tormented with
questionings as to why, when my eyes were so
surfeited with beauty, my mind saturated with
joy, and my leisure-filled days crossing over the
limitless blue of space freighted with unalloyed
happiness, there should be no call of poetry to me.
So one day off I went along the rocky shore, armed
with MS. book and umbrella, to fulfil my poet's
destiny. The spot I selected was of undoubted
beauty, for that did not depend on my rhyme or
fancy. There was a flat bit of overhanging rock
reaching out as with a perpetual eagerness over
the waters; rocked on the foam-flecked waves of
the liquid blue in front, the sunny sky slept smil-
ingly to its lullaby; behind, the shade of the fringe
of pines lay spread like the slipped off garment of
some languorous wood nymph. Enthroned on
that seat of stone I wrote a poem Magnatari (the
sunken boat). I might have believed to-day that
it was good, had I taken the precaution of sinking
it then in the sea. But such consolation is not
open to me, for it happens to be existing in the
body; and though banished from my published
works, a writ might yet cause it to be produced.

The messenger of duty however was not idle.
Again came its call and I returned to London.
This time I found a refuge in the household of

MY REMINISCENCES 165

Dr. Scott. One fine evening with bag and baggage
I invaded his home. Only the white haired Doctor,
his wife and their eldest daughter were there. The
two younger girls, alarmed at this incursion of an
Indian stranger had gone off to stay with a relative.
I think they came back home only after they got
the news of my not being dangerous.

In a very short time I became like one of the
family. Mrs. Scott treated me as a son, and the
heartfelt kindness I got from her daughters is rare
even from one's own relations.

One thing struck me when living in this family —
that human nature is everywhere the same. We
are fond of saying, and I also believed, that the
devotion of an Indian wife to her husband is some-
thing unique, and not to be found in Europe. But
I at least was unable to discern any difference
between Mrs. Scott and an ideal Indian wife. She
was entirely wrapped up in her husband. With
their modest means there was no fussing about
of too many servants, and Mrs. Scott attended to
every detail of her husband's wants herself. Be-
fore he came back home from his work of an even-
ing, she would arrange his arm-chair and woollen
slippers before the fire with her own hands. She
would never allow herself to forget for a moment
the things he liked, or the behaviour which pleased
him. She would go over the house every morning,

i66 MY REMINISCENCES

with their only maid, from attic to kitchen, and
the brass rods on the stairs and the door knobs and
fittings would be scrubbed and polished till they
shone again. Over and above this domestic routine
there were the many calls of social duty. After
getting through all her daily duties she would join
with zest in our evening readings and music, for
it is not the least of the duties of a good housewife
to make real the gaiety of the leisure hour.

Some evenings I would join the girls in a table-
turning seance. We would place our fingers on a
small tea table and it would go capering about the
room. It got to be so that whatever we touched
began to quake and quiver. Mrs. Scott did not
quite like all this. She would sometimes gravely
shake her head and say she had her doubts about
its being right. She bore it bravely, however, not
liking to put a damper on our youthful spirits.
But one day when we put our hands on Dr. Scott's
chimneypot to make it turn, that was too much
for her. She rushed up in a great state of mind
and forbade us to touch it. She could not bear
the idea of Satan having anything to do, even for a
moment, with her husband's head-gear.

In all her actions her reverence for her husband
was the one thing that stood out. The memory of
her sweet self-abnegation makes it clear to me that
the ultimate perfection of all womanly love is to

MY REMINISCENCES 167

be found in reverence; that where no extraneous
cause has hampered its true development woman's
love naturally grows into worship. Where the
appointments of luxury are in profusion, and
frivolity tarnishes both day and night, this love
is degraded, and woman's nature finds not the joy
of its perfection.

I spent some months here. Then it was time
for my brother to return home, and my father
wrote to me to accompany him. I was delighted
at the prospect. The light of my country, the sky
of my country, had been silently calling me. When
I said good bye Mrs. Scott took me by the hand
and wept. "Why did you come to us," she said,
"if you must go so soon?" That household no
longer exists in London. Some of the members of
the Doctor's family have departed to the other
world, others are scattered in places unknown to
me. But it will always live in my memory.

One winter's day, as I was passing through a
street in Tunbridge Wells, I saw a man standing
on the road side. His bare toes were showing
through his gaping boots, his breast was partly
uncovered. He said nothing to me, perhaps be-
cause begging was forbidden, but he looked up at
my face just for a moment. The coin I gave him
was perhaps more valuable than he expected, for,
after I had gone on a bit, he came after me and

168 MY REMINISCENCES

said: "Sir, you have given me a gold piece by
mistake," with which he offered to return it to
me. I might not have particularly remembered
this, but for a similar thing which happened on
another occasion. When I first reached the Tor-
quay railway station a porter took my luggage to
the cab outside. After searching my purse for
small change in vain, I gave him half-a-crown as
the cab started. After a while he came running
after us, shouting to the cabman to stop. I thought
to myself that finding me to be such an innocent
he had hit upon some excuse for demanding more.
As the cab stopped he said: "You must have mis-
taken a half-crown piece for a penny, Sir!"

I cannot say that I have never been cheated
while in England, but not in any way which it
would be fair to hold in remembrance. What grew
chiefly upon me, rather, was the conviction that
only those who are trustworthy know how to
trust. I was an unknown foreigner, and could
have easily evaded payment with impunity, yet
no London shopkeeper ever mistrusted me.

During the whole period of my stay in England
I was mixed up in a farcical comedy which I had
to play out from start to finish. I happened to get
acquainted with the widow of some departed high
Anglo-Indian official. She was good enough to
call me by the pet-name Ruby. Some Indian

MY REMINISCENCES 169

friend of hers had composed a doleful poem in
English in memory of her husband. It is needless
to expatiate on its poetic merit or felicity of dic-
tion. As my ill-luck would have it, the composer
had indicated that the dirge was to be chanted to
the mode Behaga. So the widow one day en-
treated me to sing it to her thus. Like the silly
innocent that I was, I weakly acceded. There
was unfortunately no one there but I who could
realise the atrociously ludicrous way in which the
Behaga mode combined with those absurd verses.
The widow seemed intensely touched to hear the
Indian's lament for her husband sung to its native
melody. I thought that there the matter ended,
but that was not to be.

I frequently met the widowed lady at different
social gatherings, and when after dinner we joined
the ladies in the drawing room, she would ask me
to sing that Behaga. Everyone else would antici-
pate some extraordinary specimen of Indian music
and would add their entreaties to hers. Then
from her pocket would come forth printed copies
of that fateful composition, and my ears begin to
redden and tingle. And at last, with bowed head
and quavering voice I would have to make a be-
ginning— but too keenly conscious that to none
else in the room but me was this performance suffi-
ciently heartrending. At the end, amidst much

170 MY REMINISCENCES

suppressed tittering, there would come a chorus
of "Thank you very much!" "How interesting!"
And in spite of its being winter I would perspire all
over. Who would have predicted at my birth or
at his death what a severe blow to me would be
the demise of this estimable Anglo-Indian!

Then, for a time, while I was living with Dr.
Scott and attending lectures at the University
College, I lost touch with the widow. She was
in a suburban locality some distance away from
London, and I frequently got letters from her
inviting me there. But my dread of that dirge
kept me from accepting these invitations. At
length I got a pressing telegram from her. I was
on my way to college when this telegram reached
me and my stay in England was then about to
come to its close. I thought to myself I ought to
see the widow once more before my departure, and
so yielded to her importunity.

Instead of coming home from college I went
straight to the railway station. It was a horrible
day, bitterly cold, snowing and foggy. The station
I was bound for was the terminus of the line. So
I felt quite easy in mind and did not think it worth
while to inquire about the time of arrival.

All the station platforms were coming on the
right hand side, and in the right hand corner seat
I had ensconced myself reading a book. It had

MY REMINISCENCES 171

already become so dark that nothing was visible
outside. One by one the other passengers got
down at their destinations. We reached and left
the station just before the last one. Then the
train stopped again, but there was nobody to be
seen, nor any lights or platform. The mere pas-
senger has no means of divining why trains should
sometimes stop at the wrong times and places, so,
giving up the attempt, I went on with my reading.
Then the train began to move backwards. There
seems to be no accounting for railway eccentricity,
thought I as I once more returned to my book.
But when we came right back to the previous sta-
tion, I could remain indifferent no longer. "When
are we getting to— " I inquired at the sta-
tion. "You are just coming from there," was the
reply. "Where are we going now, then?" I asked,
thoroughly flurried. "To London." I thereupon
understood that this was a shuttle train. On in-
quiring about the next train to I was in-
formed that there were no more trains that night.
And in reply to my next question I gathered that
there was no inn within five miles.

I had left home after breakfast at ten in the
morning, and had had nothing since. When ab-
stinence is the only choice, an ascetic frame of
mind comes easy. I buttoned up my thick over-
coat to the neck and seating myself under a plat-

172 MY REMINISCENCES

form lamp went on with my reading. The book
I had with me was Spencer's Data of Ethics, then
recently published. I consoled myself with the
thought that I might never get another such op-
portunity of concentrating my whole attention on
such a subject.

After a short time a porter came and informed
me that a special was running and would be in in
half an hour. I felt so cheered up by the news
that I could not go on any longer with the Data of
Ethics. Where I was due at seven I arrived at
length at nine. "What is this, Ruby?" asked my
hostess. "Whatever have you been doing with
yourself?" I was unable to take much pride in
the account of my wonderful adventures which I
gave her. Dinner was over; nevertheless, as my
misfortune was hardly my fault, I did not expect
condign punishment, especially as the dispenser
was a woman. But all that the widow of the high
Anglo-Indian official said to me was: "Come along,
Ruby, have a cup of tea."

I never was a tea-drinker, but in the hope that
it might be of some assistance in allaying my con-
suming hunger I managed to swallow a cup of
strong decoction with a couple of dry biscuits.
When I at length reached the drawing room I found
a gathering of elderly ladies and among them one
pretty young American who was engaged to a

MY REMINISCENCES 173

nephew of my hostess and seemed busy going
through the usual premarital love passages.

"Let's have some dancing," said my hostess. I
was neither in the mood nor bodily condition for
that exercise. But it is the docile who achieve the
most impossible things in this world; so, though
the dance was primarily got up for the benefit of
the engaged couple, I had to dance with the ladies
of considerably advanced age, with only the tea
and biscuits between myself and starvation.

But my sorrows did not end here. "Where are
you putting up for the night?" asked my hostess.
This was a question for which I was not prepared.
While I stared at her, speechless, she explained
that as the local inn would close at midnight I had
better betake myself thither without further delay.
Hospitality, however, was not entirely wanting for
I had not to find the inn unaided, a servant show-
ing me the way there with a lantern. At first I
thought this might prove a blessing in disguise,
and at once proceeded to make inquiries for food:
flesh, fish or vegetable, hot or cold, anything! I
was told that drinks I could have in any variety
but nothing to eat. Then I looked to slumber for
forgetfulness, but there seemed to be no room
even in her world-embracing lap. The sand-stone
floor of the bed-room was icy cold, an old bedstead
and worn-out wash-stand being its only furniture.

174 MY REMINISCENCES

In the morning the Anglo-Indian widow sent
for me to breakfast. I found a cold repast spread
out, evidently the remnants of last night's dinner.
A small portion of this, lukewarm or cold, offered
to me last night could not have hurt anyone, while
my dancing might then have been less like the
agonised wrigglings of a landed carp.

After breakfast my hostess informed me that
the lady for whose delectation I had been invited
to sing was ill in bed, and that I would have to
serenade her from her bed-room door. I was made
to stand up on the staircase landing. Pointing to
a closed door the widow said: "That's where she
is." And I gave voice to that Behaga dirge facing
the mysterious unknown on the other side. Of
what happened to the invalid as the result I have
yet received no news.

After my return to London I had to expiate in
bed the consequences of my fatuous complaisance.
Dr. Scott's girls implored me, on my conscience,
not to take this as a sample of English hospitality.
It was the effect of India's salt, they protested.

MY REMINISCENCES 175

(26) Loken Palit

While I was attending lectures on English litera-
ture at the University College, Loken Palit was
my class fellow. He was about 4 years younger
than I. At the age I am writing these reminis-
cences a difference of 4 years is not perceptible.
But it is difficult for friendship to bridge the gulf
between 17 and 13. Lacking the weight of years
the boy is always anxious to keep up the dignity
of seniority. But this did not raise any barrier
in my mind in the case of the boy Loken, for
I could not feel that he was in any way my
junior.

Boy and girl students sat together in the College
library for study. This was the place for our tete-a-
tete. Had we been fairly quiet about it none need
have complained, but my young friend was so sur-
charged with high spirits that at the least provo-
cation they would burst forth as laughter. In all
countries girls have a perverse degree of applica-
tion to their studies, and I feel repentant as I recall
the multitude of reproachful blue eyes which vainly
showered disapprobation on our unrestrained mer-
riment. But in those days I felt not the slightest
sympathy with the distress of disturbed studious-
ness. By the grace of Providence I have never

i76 MY REMINISCENCES

had a headache in my life, nor a moment of com-
punction for interrupted school studies.

With our laughter as an almost unbroken ac-
companiment we managed also to do a bit of lit-
erary discussion, and, though Loken's reading of
Bengali literature was less extensive than mine, he
made up for that by the keenness of his intellect.
Among the subjects we discussed was Bengali
orthography.

The way it arose was this. One of the Scott girls
wanted me to teach her Bengali. When taking her
through the alphabet I expressed my pride that
Bengali spelling has a conscience, and does not
delight in overstepping rules at every step. I made
clear to her how laughable would have been the
waywardness of English spelling but for the tragic
compulsion we were under to cram it for our ex-
aminations. But my pride had a fall. It trans-
pired that Bengali spelling was quite as impatient
of bondage, but that habit had blinded me to its
transgressions.

Then I began to search for the laws regulating
its lawlessness. I was quite surprised at the won-
derful assistance which Loken proved to be in this
matter.

After Loken had got into the Indian Civil Serv-
ice, and returned home, the work, which had in
the University College library had its source in

MY REMINISCENCES 177

rippling merriment, flowed on in a widening stream.
Loken's boisterous delight in literature was as the
wind in the sails of my literary adventure. And
when at the height of my youth I was driving the
tandem of prose and poetry at a furious rate,
Loken's unstinted appreciation kept my energies
from flagging for a moment. Many an extraor-
dinary prose or poetical flight have I taken in his
bungalow in the mofFussil. On many an occasion
did our literary and musical gatherings assemble
under the auspices of the evening star to disperse,
as did the lamplights at the breezes of dawn, under
the morning star.

Of the many lotus flowers at Saraswatfjt * feet
the blossom of friendship must be her favorite.
I have not come across much of golden pollen in
her lotus bank, but have nothing to complain of
as regards the profusion of the sweet savour of
good-fellowship.

(27) The Broken Heart

While in England I began another poem, which
I went on with during my journey home, and
finished after my return. This was published
under the name of Bhagna Hriday, The Broken

1 Saraswati, the goddess of learning, is depicted in Bengal as clad
in white and seated among a mass of lotus flowers. Tr.

178 MY REMINISCENCES

Heart. At the time I thought it very good. There
was nothing strange in the writer's thinking so;
but it did not fail to gain the appreciation of the
readers of the time as well. I remember how,
after it came out, the chief minister of the late
Raja of Tipperah called on me solely to deliver
the message that the Raja admired the poem
and entertained high hopes of the writer's future
literary career.

About this poem of my eighteenth year let me
set down here what I wrote in a letter when I was
thirty:

When I began to write the Bhagna Hriday I was
eighteen — neither in my childhood nor my youth.
This borderland age is not illumined with the direct
rays of Truth; — its reflection is seen here and there,
and the rest is shadow. And like twilight shades, its
imaginings are long-drawn and vague, making the
real world seem like a world of phantasy. The curious
part of it is that not only was I eighteen, but everyone
around me seemed to be eighteen likewise; and we all
flitted about in the same baseless, substanceless world
of imagination, where even the most intense joys and
sorrows seemed like the joys and sorrows of dreamland.
There being nothing real to weigh them against, the
trivial did duty for the great.

This period of my life, from the age of fifteen
or sixteen to twenty-two or twenty-three, was
one of utter disorderliness.

MY REMINISCENCES 179

When, in the early ages of the Earth, land and
water had not yet distinctly separated, huge mis-
shapen amphibious creatures walked the trunk-
less forests growing on the oozing silt. Thus do
the passions of the dim ages of the immature
mind, as disproportionate and curiously shaped,
haunt the unending shades of its trackless, name-
less wildernesses. They know not themselves,
nor the aim of their wanderings; and, because
they do not, they are ever apt to imitate some-
thing else. So, at this age of unmeaning activity,
when my undeveloped powers, unaware of and
unequal to their object, were jostling each other
for an outlet, each sought to assert superiority
through exaggeration.

When milk-teeth are trying to push their way
through, they work the infant into a fever. All
this agitation finds no justification till the teeth
are out and have begun assisting in the absorp-
tion of food. In the same way do our early pas-
sions torment the mind, like a malady, till they
realise their true relationship with the outer world.

The lessons I learnt from my experiences at
that stage are to be found in every moral text-
book, but are not therefore to be despised. That
which keeps our appetities confined within us,
and checks their free access to the outside, poisons
our life. Such is selfishness which refuses to give

i8o MY REMINISCENCES

free play to our desires, and prevents them from
reaching their real goal, and that is why it is al-
ways accompanied by festering untruths and
extravagances. When our desires find unlimited
freedom in good work they shake off their dis-
eased condition and come back to their own na-
ture;— that is their true end, there also is the joy
of their being.

The condition of my immature mind which I
have described was fostered both by the example
and precept of the time, and I am not sure that
the effects of these are not lingering on to the
present day. Glancing back at the period of
which I tell, it strikes me that we had gained
more of stimulation than of nourishment out of
English Literature. Our literary gods then were
Shakespeare, Milton and Byron; and the quality
in their work which stirred us most was strength
of passion. In the social life of Englishmen pas-
sionate outbursts are kept severely in check, for
which very reason, perhaps, they so dominate their
literature, making its characteristic to be the
working out of extravagantly vehement feelings
to an inevitable conflagration. At least this un-
controlled excitement was what we learnt to look
on as the quintessence of English literature.

In the impetuous declamation of English poetry
by Akshay Chowdhury, our initiator into English

Moonlight

MY REMINISCENCES 181

literature, there was the wildness of intoxication.
The frenzy of Romeo's and Juliet's love, the fury
of King Lear's impotent lamentation, the all-
consuming fire of Othello's jealousy, these were
the things that roused us to enthusiastic admira-
tion. Our restricted social life, our narrower
field of activity, was hedged in with such monot-
onous uniformity that tempestuous feelings found
no entrance; — all was as calm and quiet as could
be. So our hearts naturally craved the life-
bringing shock of the passionate emotion in
English literature. Ours was not the aesthetic
enjoyment of literary art, but the jubilant wel-
come by stagnation of a turbulent wave, even
though it should stir up to the surface the slime
of the bottom.

Shakespeare's contemporary literature repre-
sents the war-dance of the day when the Renas-
cence came to Europe in all the violence of its
reaction against the severe curbing and cramping
of the hearts of men. The examination of good
and evil, beauty and ugliness, was not the main
object, — man then seemed consumed with the
anxiety to break through all barriers to the in-
most sanctuary of his being, there to discover
the ultimate image of his own violent desire.
That is why in this literature we find such poign-
ant, such exuberant, such unbridled expression.

182 MY REMINISCENCES

The spirit of this bacchanalian revelry of Europe
found entrance into our demurely well-behaved
social world, woke us up, and made us lively.
We were dazzled by the glow of unfettered life
which fell upon our custom-smothered heart,
pining for an opportunity to disclose itself.

There was another such day in English literature
when the slow-measure of Pope's common time
gave place to the dance-rhythm of the French
revolution. This had Byron for its poet. And
the impetuosity of his passion also moved our
veiled heart-bride in the seclusion of her corner.

In this wise did the excitement of the pursuit
of English literature come to sway the heart of
the youth of our time, and at mine the waves of
this excitement kept beating from every side.
The first awakening is the time for the play of
energy, not its repression.

And yet our case was so different from that of
Europe. There the excitability and impatience
of bondage was a reflection from its history into
its literature. Its expression was consistent with
its feeling. The roaring of the storm was heard
because a storm was really raging. The breeze
therefrom that ruffled our little world sounded
in reality but little above a murmur. Therein it
failed to satisfy our minds, so that our attempts
to imitate the blast of a hurricane led us easily

MY REMINISCENCES 183

into exaggeration, — a tendency which still per-
sists and may not prove easy of cure.

And for this, the fact that in English literature
the reticence of true art has not yet appeared,
is responsible. Human emotion is only one of
the ingredients of literature and not its end, —
which is the beauty of perfect fulness consisting
in simplicity and restraint. This is a proposi-
tion which English literature does not yet fully
admit.

Our minds from infancy to old age are being
moulded by this English literature alone. But
other literatures of Europe, both classical and
modern, of which the art-form shows the well-
nourished development due to a systematic culti-
vation of self-control, are not subjects of our
study; and so, as it seems to me, we are yet unable
to arrive at a correct perception of the true aim
and method of literary work.

Akshay Babu, who had made the passion in
English literature living to us, was himself a
votary of the emotional life. The importance of
realising truth in the fulness of its perfection
seemed less apparent to him than that of feeling
it in the heart. He had no intellectual respect
for religion, but songs of Shydma, the dark Mother,
would bring tears to his eyes. He felt no call to
search for ultimate reality; whatever moved his

184 MY REMINISCENCES

heart served him for the time as the truth, even
obvious coarseness not proving a deterrent.

Atheism was the dominant note of the English
prose writings then in vogue, — Bentham, Mill
and Comte being favourite authors. Theirs was
the reasoning in terms of which our youths argued.
The age of Mill constitutes a natural epoch in
English History. It represents a healthy reaction
of the body politic; these destructive forces having
been brought in, temporarily, to rid it of accumu-
lated thought-rubbish. In our country we re-
ceived these in the letter, but never sought to
make practical use of them, employing them only
as a stimulant to incite ourselves to moral revolt.
Atheism was thus for us a mere intoxication.

For these reasons educated men then fell mainly
into two classes. One class would be always
thrusting themselves forward with unprovoked
argumentation to cut to pieces all belief in God.
Like the hunter whose hands itch, no sooner he
spies a living creature on the top or at the foot
of a tree, to kill it, whenever these came to learn
of a harmless belief lurking anywhere in fancied
security, they felt stirred up to sally forth and
demolish it. We had for a short time a tutor of
whom this was a pet diversion. Though I was a
mere boy, even I could not escape his onslaughts.
Not that his attainments were of any account,

MY REMINISCENCES 185

or that his opinions were the result of any en-
thusiastic search for the truth, being mostly
gathered from others' lips. But though I fought
him with all my strength, unequally matched in
age as we were, I suffered many a bitter defeat.
Sometimes I felt so mortified I almost wanted
to cry.

The other class consisted not of believers, but
religious epicureans, who found comfort and
solace in gathering together, and steeping them-
selves in pleasing sights, sounds and scents galore,
under the garb of religious ceremonial; they
luxuriated in the paraphernalia of worship. In
neither of these classes was doubt or denial the
outcome of the travail of their quest.

Though these religious aberrations pained me,
I cannot say I was not at all influenced by them.
With the intellectual impudence of budding youth
this revolt also found a place. The religious serv-
ices which were held in our family I would have
nothing to do with, I had not accepted them for
my own. I was busy blowing up a raging flame
with the bellows of my emotions. It was only
the worship of fire, the giving of oblations to in-
crease its flame — with no other aim. And be-
cause my endeavour had no end in view it was
measureless, always reaching beyond any assigned
limit.

i86 MY REMINISCENCES

As with religion, so with my emotions, I felt
no need for any underlying truth, my excitement
being an end in itself. I call to mind some lines of
a poet of that time:

My heart is mine

I have sold it to none,
Be it tattered and torn and worn away,
My heart is mine!

From the standpoint of truth the heart need
not worry itself so; for nothing compels it to wear
itself to tatters. In truth sorrow is not desirable,
but taken apart its pungency may appear savoury.
This savour our poets often made much of; leaving
out the god in whose worship they were indulging.
This childishness our country has not yet suc-
ceeded in getting rid of. So even to-day, when
we fail to see the truth of religion, we seek in its
observance an artistic gratification. So, also,
much of our patriotism is not service of the
mother-land, but the luxury of bringing our-
selves into a desirable attitude of mind toward
the country.

PART VI

(28) European Music

WHEN I was in Brighton I once went to hear
some Prima Donna. I forget her name. It
may have been Madame Neilson or Ma-
dame Albani. Never before had I come across such
an extraordinary command over the voice. Even
our best singers cannot hide their sense of effort; nor
are they ashamed to bring out, as best they can, top
notes or bass notes beyond their proper register.
In our country the understanding portion of the
audience think no harm in keeping the perform-
ance up to standard by dint of their own imagina-
tion, For the same reason they do not mind any
harshness of voice or uncouthness of gesture in the
exponent of a perfectly formed melody; on the
contrary, they seem sometimes to be of opinion
that such minor external defects serve better to
set off the internal perfection of the composition, —
as with the outward poverty of the Great Ascetic,
Mahadeva, whose divinity shines forth naked.

This feeling seems entirely wanting in Europe.
There, outward embellishment must be perfect
in every detail, and the least defect stands shamed
and unable to face the public gaze. In our musical
gatherings nothing is thought of spending half-

an-hour in tuning up the Tanpuras, or hammering

189

MY REMINISCENCES

into tone the drums, little and big. In Europe
such duties are performed beforehand, behind the
scenes, for all that comes in front must be faultless.
There is thus no room for any weak spot in the
singer's voice. In our country a correct and
artistic exposition 1 of the melody is the main
object, thereon is concentrated all the effort. In
Europe the voice is the object of culture, and
with it they perform impossibilities. In our
country the virtuoso is satisfied if he has heard
the song; in Europe, they go to hear the singer.

That is what I saw that day in Brighton. To
me it was as good as a circus. But, admire the
performance as I did, I could not appreciate the
song. I could hardly keep from laughing when
some of the cadenzas imitated the warbling of
birds. I felt all the time that it was a misapplica-
tion of the human voice. When it came to the
turn of a male singer I was considerably relieved.
I specially liked the tenor voices which had more
of human flesh and blood in them, and seemed
less like the disembodied lament of a forlorn
spirit.

After this, as I went on hearing and learning
more and more of European music, I began to get

1 With Indian music it is not a mere question of correctly rendering
a melody exactly as composed, but the theme of the original composi-
tion is the subject of an improvised interpretative elaboration by the
expounding Artist. Tr.

MY REMINISCENCES 191

into the spirit of it; but up to now I am con-
vinced that our music and theirs abide in alto-
gether different apartments, and do not gain entry
to the heart by the self-same door.

European music seems to be intertwined with
its material life, so that the text of its songs may
be as various as that life itself. If we attempt
to put our tunes to the same variety of use they
tend to lose their significance, and become ludi-
crous; for our melodies transcend the barriers of
everyday life, and only thus can they carry us so
deep into Pity, so high into Aloofness; their func-
tion being to reveal a picture of the inmost in-
expressible depths of our being, mysterious and
impenetrable, where the devotee may find his
hermitage ready, or even the epicurean his bower,
but where there is no room for the busy man of
the world.

I cannot claim that I gained admittance to
the soul of European music. But what little of it
I came to understand from the outside attracted
me greatly in one way. It seemed to me so roman-
tic. It is somewhat difficult to analyse what I
mean by that word. What I would refer to is the
aspect of variety, of abundance, of the waves on
the sea of life, of the ever-changing light and
shade on their ceaseless undulations. There is
the opposite aspect — of pure extension, of the

i92 MY REMINISCENCES

unwinking blue of the sky, of the silent hint of
immeasureability in the distant circle of the hori-
zon. However that may be, let me repeat, at
the risk of not being perfectly clear, that when-
ever I have been moved by European music I
have said to myself: it is romantic, it is translating
into melody the evanescence of life.

Not that we wholly lack the same attempt in
some forms of our music; but it is less pronounced,
less successful. Our melodies give voice to the
star-spangled night, to the first reddening of dawn.
They speak of the sky-pervading sorrow which
lowers in the darkness of clouds; the speechless
deep intoxication of the forest-roaming spring.

(29) Valmiki Pratibha

We had a profusely decorated volume of Moore's
Irish Melodies: and often have I listened to the
enraptured recitation of these by Akshay Babu.
The poems combined with the pictorial designs
to conjure up for me a dream picture of the Ireland
of old. I had not then actually heard the original
tunes, but had sung these Irish Melodies to my-
self to the accompaniment of the harps in the
pictures. I longed to hear the real tunes, to learn
them, and sing them to Akshay Babu. Some
longings unfortunately do get fulfilled in this life,

MY REMINISCENCES 193

and die in the process. When I went to England
I did hear some of the Irish Melodies sung, and
learnt them too, but that put an end to my keen-
ness to learn more. They were simple, mournful
and sweet, but they somehow did not fit in with
the silent melody of the harp which filled the
halls of the Old Ireland of my dreams.

When I came back home I sung the Irish melo-
dies I had learnt to my people. "What is the
matter with Rabi's voice?" they exclaimed.
"How funny and foreign it sounds!" They even
felt my speaking voice had changed its tone.

From this mixed cultivation of foreign and
native melody was born the Valmiki Pratibha.1
The tunes in this musical drama are mostly Indian,
but they have been dragged out of their classic
dignity; that which soared in the sky was taught
to run on the earth. Those who have seen and
heard it performed will, I trust, bear witness that
the harnessing of Indian melodic modes to the
service of the drama has proved neither derogatory
nor futile. This conjunction is the only special
feature of Valmiki Pratibha. The pleasing task of
loosening the chains of melodic forms and making

1 Valmiki Pratibha means the genius of Valmiki. The plot is based
on the story of Valmiki, the robber chief, being moved to pity and
breaking out into a metrical lament on witnessing the grief of one of
a pair of cranes whose mate was killed by a hunter. In the metre
which so came to him he afterwards composed his Ramayana. TV.

194 MY REMINISCENCES

them adaptable to a variety of treatment com-
pletely engrossed me.

Several of the songs of Falmiki Pratibha were
set to tunes originally severely classic in mode;
some of the tunes were composed by my brother
Jyotirindra; a few were adapted from European
sources. The Telena 1 style of Indian modes
specially lends itself to dramatic purposes and has
been frequently utilized in this work. Two Eng-
lish tunes served for the drinking songs of the
robber band, and an Irish melody for the lament
of the wood nymphs.

Falmiki Pratibha is not a composition which
will bear being read. Its significance is lost if it
is not heard sung and seen acted. It is not what
Europeans call an Opera, but a little drama set
to music. That is to say, it is not primarily a
musical composition. Very few of the songs are
important or attractive by themselves; they all
serve merely as the musical text of the play.

Before I went to England we occasionally used
to have gatherings of literary men in our house,
at which music, recitations and light refreshments

1 Some Indian classic melodic compositions are designed on a
scheme of accentuation, for which purpose the music is set, not to
words, but to unmeaning notation-sounds representing drum-beats
or plectrum-impacts which in Indian music are of a considerable
variety of tone, each having its own sound-symbol. The Telena is
one such style of composition. Tr.

MY REMINISCENCES 195

were served up. After my return one more such
gathering was held, which happened to be the last.
It was for an entertainment in this connection
that the Falmiki Pratibha was composed. I
played Falmiki and my niece, Pratibha, took
the part of Saraszvati — which bit of history re-
mains recorded in the name.

I had read in some work of Herbert Spencer's
that speech takes on tuneful inflexions whenever
emotion comes into play. It is a fact that the
tone or tune is as important to us as the spoken
word for the expression of anger, sorrow, joy and
wonder. Spencer's idea that, through a develop-
ment of these emotional modulations of voice, man
found music, appealed to me. Why should it not
do, I thought to myself, to act a drama in a kind
of recitative based on this idea. The Kathakas 1
of our country attempt this to some extent, for
they frequently break into a chant which, how-
ever, stops short of full melodic form. As blank
verse is more elastic than rhymed, so such chant-
ing, though not devoid of rhythm, can more freely
adapt itself to the emotional interpretation of
the text, because it does not attempt to conform
to the more rigorous canons of tune and time
required by a regular melodic composition. The
expression of feeling being the object, these de-

1 Reciters of Puranic legendary lore. TV.

i96 MY REMINISCENCES

ficiencies in regard to form do not jar on the
hearer.

Encouraged by the success of this new line
taken in the Falmiki Pratibha, I composed another
musical play of the same class. It was called the
Kal Mrigaya, The Fateful Hunt. The plot was
based on the story of the accidental killing of the
blind hermit's only son by King Dasaratha. It
was played on a stage erected on our roof-terrace,
and the audience seemed profoundly moved by
its pathos. Afterwards, much of it was, with
slight changes, incorporated in the Valmiki Prati-
bha, and this play ceased to be separately pub-
lished in my works.

Long afterwards, I composed a third muscial
play, Mayar Khela, the Play of Maya, an operetta
of a different type. In this the songs were im-
portant, not the drama. In the others a series of
dramatic situations were strung on a thread of
melody; this was a garland of songs with just
a thread of dramatic plot running through. The
play of feeling, and not action, was its special
feature. In point of fact I was, while composing
it, saturated with the mood of song.

The enthusiasm which went to the making of Val-
miki Pratibha and Kal Mrigaya I have never felt for
any other work of mine. In these two the creative
musical impulse of the time found expression.

MY REMINISCENCES 197

My brother, Jyotirindra, was engaged the live-
long day at his piano, refashioning the classic melo-
dic forms at his pleasure. And, at every turn of his
instrument, the old modes took on unthought-of
shapes and expressed new shades of feeling.
The melodic forms which had become habituated
to their pristine stately gait, when thus com-
pelled to march to more lively unconventional
measures, displayed an unexpected agility and
power; and moved us correspondingly. We could
plainly hear the tunes speak to us while Akshay
Babu and I sat on either side fitting words to
them as they grew out of my brother's nimble
fingers. I do not claim that our libretto was good
poetry but it served as a vehicle for the tunes.

In the riotous joy of this revolutionary activity
were these two musical plays composed, and so
they danced merrily to every measure, whether
or not technically correct, indifferent as to the
tunes being homelike or foreign.

On many an occasion has the Bengali reading
public been grievously exercised over some opin-
ion or literary form of mine, but it is curious to
find that the daring with which I had played havoc
with accepted musical notions did not rouse any
resentment; on the contrary those who came to
hear departed pleased. A few of Akshay Babu's
compositions find place in the Valmiki Pratibha

i98 MY REMINISCENCES

and also adaptations from Vihari Chakravarti's
Sarada Mangal series of songs.

I used to take the leading part in the perform-
ance of these musical dramas. From my early
years I had a taste for acting, and firmly believed
that I had a special aptitude for it. I think I
proved that my belief was not ill-founded. I had
only once before done the part of Aleek Babu
in a farce written by my brother Jyotirindra.
So these were really my first attempts at acting.
I was then very young and nothing seemed to
fatigue or trouble my voice.

In our house, at the time, a cascade of musical
emotion was gushing forth day after day, hour
after hour, its scattered spray reflecting into our
being a whole gamut of rainbow colours. Then,
with the freshness of youth, our new-born energy,
impelled by its virgin curiosity, struck out new
paths in every direction. We felt we would try
and test everything, and no achievement seemed
impossible. We wrote, we sang, we acted, we
poured ourselves out on every side. This was
how I stepped into my twentieth year.

Of these forces which so triumphantly raced our
lives along, my brother Jyotirindra was the char-
ioteer. He was absolutely fearless. Once, when
I was a mere lad, and had never ridden a horse
before, he made me mount one and gallop by

MY REMINISCENCES 199

his side, with no qualms about his unskilled com-
panion. When at the same age, while we were at
Shelidah, (the head-quarters of our estate,) news
was brought of a tiger, he took me with him on
a hunting expedition. I had no gun, — it would
have been more dangerous to me than to the
tiger if I had. We left our shoes at the outskirts
of the jungle and crept in with bare feet. At last
we scrambled up into a bamboo thicket, partly
stripped of its thorn-like twigs, where I somehow
managed to crouch behind my brother till the
deed was done; with no means of even administer-
ing a shoe-beating to the unmannerly brute had
he dared lay his offensive paws on me!

Thus did my brother give me full freedom
both internal and external in the face of all dan-
gers. No usage or custom was a bondage for
him, and so was he able to rid me of my shrinking
diffidence.

(30) Evening Songs

In the state of being confined within myself,
of which I have been telling, I wrote a number of
poems which have been grouped together, under
the title of the Heart-Wilderness, in Mohita Babu's
edition of my works. In one of the poems sub-
sequently published in a volume called Morning
Songs, the following lines occur:

200 MY REMINISCENCES

There is a vast wilderness whose name is Heart;
Whose interlacing forest branches dandle and rock dark-
ness like an infant.
I lost my way in its depths.

from which came the idea of the name for this
group of poems.

Much of what I wrote, when thus my life had
no commerce with the outside, when I was en-
grossed in the contemplation of my own heart,
when my imaginings wandered in many a disguise
amidst causeless emotions and aimless longings,
has been left out of that edition; only a few of the
poems originally published in the volume entitled
Evening Songs finding a place there, in the Heart-
Wilderness group.

My brother Jyotirindra and his wife had left
home travelling on a long journey, and their rooms
on the third storey, facing the terraced-roof, were
empty. I took possession of these and the terrace,
and spent my days in solitude. While thus left in
communion with my self alone, I know not how I
slipped out of the poetical groove into which I
had fallen. Perhaps being cut off from those whom
I sought to please, and whose taste in poetry
moulded the form I tried to put my thoughts into,
I naturally gained freedom from the style they had
imposed on me.

I began to use a slate for my writing. That also

MY REMINISCENCES 201

helped in my emancipation. The manuscript
books in which I had indulged before seemed to
demand a certain height of poetic flight, to work
up to which I had to find my way by a comparison
with others. But the slate was clearly fitted for
my mood of the moment. "Fear not," it seemed
to say. "Write just what you please, one rub will
wipe all away!"

As I wrote a poem or two, thus unfettered, I felt
a great joy well up within me. "At last," said my
heart, "what I write is my own!" Let no one
mistake this for an accession of pride. Rather did
I feel a pride in my former productions, as being
all the tribute I had to pay them. But I refuse
to call the realisation of self, self-sufficiency. The
joy of parents in their first-born is not due to any
pride in its appearance, but because it is their very
own. If it happens to be an extraordinary child
they may also glory in that — but that is different.

In the first flood-tide of that joy I paid no heed
to the bounds of metrical form, and as the stream
does not flow straight on but winds about as it
lists, so did my verse. Before, I would have held
this to be a crime, but now I felt no compunction.
Freedom first breaks the law and then makes laws
which brings it under true Self-rule.

The only listener I had for these erratic poems
of mine was Akshay Babu. When he heard them

202 MY REMINISCENCES

for the first time he was as surprised as he was
pleased, and with his approbation my road to
freedom was widened.

The poems of Vihari Chakravarti were in a
3-beat metre. This triple time produces a rounded-
off globular effect, unlike the square-cut multiple
of 2. It rolls on with ease, it glides as it dances to
the tinkling of its anklets. I was once very fond
of this metre. It felt more like riding a bicycle
than walking. And to this stride I had got accus-
tomed. In the Evening Songs, without thinking
of it, I somehow broke off this habit. Nor did I
come under any other particular bondage. I felt
entirely free and unconcerned. I had no thought
or fear of being taken to task.

The strength I gained by working, freed from
the trammels of tradition, led me to discover that
I had been searching in impossible places for that
which I had within myself. Nothing but want of
self-confidence had stood in the way of my coming
into my own. I felt like rising from a dream of
bondage to find myself unshackled. I cut extraor-
dinary capers just to make sure I was free to move.

To me this is the most memorable period of my
poetic career. As. poems my Evening Songs may
not have been worth much, in fact as such they
are crude enough. Neither their metre, nor lan-
guage, nor thought had taken definite shape. Their

MY REMINISCENCES 203

only merit is that for the first time I had come to
write what I really meant, just according to my
pleasure. What if those compositions have no
value, that pleasure certainly had.

(31) An Essay on Music

I had been proposing to study for the bar when
my father had recalled me home from England.
Some friends concerned at this cutting short of my
career pressed him to send me off once again. This
led to my starting on a second voyage towards
England, this time with a relative as my com-
panion. My fate, however, had so strongly vetoed
my being called to the bar that I was not even to
reach England this time. For a certain reason we
had to disembark at Madras and return home to
Calcutta. The reason was by no means as grave
as its outcome, but as the laugh was not against
me, I refrain from setting it down here. From both
my attempted pilgrimages to Lakshmi's 1 shrine I
had thus to come back repulsed. I hope, however,
that the Law-god, at least, will look on me with a
favourable eye for that I have not added to the
encumbrances on the Bar-library premises.

My father was then in the Mussoorie hills. I

i The Goddess of Wealth.

204 MY REMINISCENCES

went to him in fear and trembling. But he showed
no sign of irritation, he rather seemed pleased.
He must have seen in this return of mine the bless-
ing of Divine Providence.

The evening before I started on this voyage I
read a paper at the Medical College Hall on the
invitation of the Bethune Society. This was my
first public reading. The Reverend K. M. Banerji
was the president. The subject was Music.
Leaving aside instrumental music, I tried to make
out that to bring out better what the words sought
to express was the chief end and aim of vocal
music. The text of my paper was but meagre. I
sang and acted songs throughout illustrating my
theme. The only reason for the flattering eulogy
which the President bestowed on me at the end
must have been the moving effect of my young
voice together with the earnestness and variety of
its efforts. But I must make the confession to-day
that the opinion I voiced with such enthusiasm
that evening was wrong.

The art of vocal music has its own special func-
tions and features. And when it happens to be
set to words the latter must not presume too much
on their opportunity and seek to supersede the mel-
ody of which they are but the vehicle. The song
being great in its own wealth, why should it wait
upon the words? Rather does it begin where mere

MY REMINISCENCES 205

words fail. Its power lies in the region of the
inexpressible; it tells us what the words cannot.

So the less a song is burdened with words the
better. In the classic style of Hindustan 1 the
words are of no account and leave the melody to
make its appeal in its own way. Vocal music
reaches its perfection when the melodic form is
allowed to develop freely, and carry our conscious-
ness with it to its own wonderful plane. In Bengal,
however, the words have always asserted them-
selves so, that our provincial song has failed to
develop her full musical capabilities, and has re-
mained content as the handmaiden of her sister
art of poetry. From the old Faishnava songs down
to those of Nidhu Babu she has displayed her
charms from the background. But as in our coun-
try the wife rules her husband through acknowl-
edging her dependence, so our music, though pro-
fessedly in attendance only, ends by dominating
the song.

I have often felt this while composing my songs.
As I hummed to myself and wrote the lines:

Do not keep your secret to yourself, my love,
But whisper it gently to me, only to me.

I found that the words had no means of reaching
by themselves the region into which they were

xAs distinguished generally from different provincial styles, but
chiefly from the Dravidian style prevalent in the South. Tr.

206 MY REMINISCENCES

borne away by the tune. The melody told me that
the secret, which I was so importunate to hear,
had mingled with the green mystery of the forest
glades, was steeped in the silent whiteness of moon-
light nights, peeped out of the veil of the illimitable
blue behind the horizon — and is the one intimate
secret of Earth, Sky and Waters.

In my early boyhood I heard a snatch of a song:

Who dressed you, love, as a foreigner?

This one line painted such wonderful pictures
in my mind that it haunts me still. One day I
sat down to set to words a composition of my own
while full of this bit of song. Humming my tune
I wrote to its accompaniment:

I know you, O Woman from the strange land!
Your dwelling is across the Sea.

Had the tune not been there I know not what
shape the rest of the poem might have taken; but
the magic of the melody revealed to me the
stranger in all her loveliness. It is she, said my
soul, who comes and goes, a messenger to this world
from the other shore of the ocean of mystery. It is
she, of whom we now and again catch glimpses in
the dewy Autumn mornings, in the scented nights
of Spring, in the inmost recesses of our hearts—
and sometimes we strain skywards to hear her

MY REMINISCENCES 207

song. To the door of this world-charming stranger
the melody, as I say, wafted me, and so to her
were the rest of the words addressed.

Long after this, in a street in Bolpur, a mendi-
cant Baul was singing as he walked along:

How does the unknown bird flit in and out of the cage!
Ah, could I but catch it, I'd ring its feet with my love!

I found this Baul to be saying the very same
thing. The unknown bird sometimes surrenders
itself within the bars of the cage to whisper tidings
of the bondless unknown beyond. The heart
would fain hold it near to itself for ever, but can-
not. What but the melody of song can tell us of
the goings and comings of the unknown bird?

That is why I am always reluctant to publish
books of the words of songs, for therein the soul
must needs be lacking.

(32) The River-side

When I returned home from the outset of my
second voyage to England, my brother Jyotirindra
and sister-in-law were living in a river-side villa at
Chandernagore, and there I went to stay with
them.

The Ganges again! Again those ineffable days
and nights, languid with joy, sad with longing, at-

208 MY REMINISCENCES

tuned to the plaintive babbling of the river along
the cool shade of its wooded banks. This Bengal
sky-full of light, this south breeze, this flow of the
river, this right royal laziness, this broad leisure
stretching from horizon to horizon and from green
earth to blue sky, all these were to me as food and
drink to the hungry and thirsty. Here it felt in-
deed like home, and in these I recognised the minis-
trations of a Mother.

That was not so very long ago, and yet time has
wrought many changes. Our little river-side nests,
clustering under their surrounding greenery, have
been replaced by mills which now, dragon-like,
everywhere rear their hissing heads, belching forth
black smoke. In the midday glare of modern life
even our hours of mental siesta have been nar-
rowed down to the lowest limit, and hydra-headed
unrest has invaded every department of life.
Maybe, this is for the better, but I, for one, cannot
account it wholly to the good.

These lovely days of mine at the riverside passed
by like so many dedicated lotus blossoms floating
down the sacred stream. Some rainy afternoons I
spent in a veritable frenzy, singing away old Faish-
nava songs to my own tunes, accompanying myself
on a harmonium. On other afternoons, we would
drift along in a boat, my brother Jyotirindra ac-
companying my singing with his violin. And as,

The Ganges Again

MY REMINISCENCES 209

beginning with the Puravi? we went on varying
the mode of our music with the declining day, we
saw, on reaching the Behaga,1 the western sky
close the doors of its factory of golden toys, and
the moon on the east rise over the fringe of trees.

Then we would row back to the landing steps of
the villa and seat ourselves on a quilt spread on
the terrace facing the river. By then a silvery
peace rested on both land and water, hardly any
boats were about, the fringe of trees on the bank
was reduced to a deep shadow, and the moonlight
glimmered over the smooth flowing stream.

The villa we were living in was known as
'Moran's Garden'. A flight of stone-flagged
steps led up from the water to a long, broad
verandah which formed part of the house. The
rooms were not regularly arranged, nor all on the
same level, and some had to be reached by short
flights of stairs. The big sitting room overlook-
ing the landing steps had stained glass windows
with coloured pictures.

One of the pictures was of a swing hanging from
a branch half-hidden in dense foliage, and in the
checkered light and shade of this bower, two per-
sons were swinging; and there was another of a
broad flight of steps leading into some castle-like

1 Many of the Hindustani classic modes are supposed to be best in
keeping with particular seasons of the year, or times of the day. Tr.

210 MY REMINISCENCES

palace, up and down which men and women in
festive garb were going and coming. When the
light fell on the windows, these pictures shone
wonderfully, seeming to fill the river-side atmos-
phere with holiday music. Some far-away long-
forgotten revelry seemed to be expressing itself
in silent words of light; the love thrills of the swing-
ing couple making alive with their eternal story
the woodlands of the river bank.

The topmost room of the house was in a round
tower with windows opening to every side. This
I used as my room for writing poetry. Nothing
could be seen from thence save the tops of the
surrounding trees, and the open sky. I was then
busy with the Evening Songs and of this room I
wrote :

There, where in the breast of limitless space clouds are

laid to sleep,
I have built my house for thee, O Poesy!

(33) More About the Evening Songs

At this time my reputation amongst literary
critics was that of being a poet of broken cadence
and lisping utterance. Everything about my
work was dubbed misty, shadowy. However
little I might have relished this at the time, the
charge was not wholly baseless. My poetry did

MY REMINISCENCES 211

in fact lack the backbone of worldly reality. How,
amidst the ringed-in seclusion of my early years,
was I to get the necessary material?

But one thing I refuse to admit. Behind this
charge of vagueness was the sting of the insinua-
tion of its being a deliberate affectation — for the
sake of effect. The fortunate possessor of good
eye-sight is apt to sneer at the youth with glasses,
as if he wears them for ornament. While a re-
flection on the poor fellow's infirmity may be
permissible, it is too bad to charge him with pre-
tending not to see.

The nebula is not an outside creation — it merely
represents a phase; and to leave out all poetry
which has not attained definiteness would not
bring us to the truth of literature. If any phase
of man's nature has found true expression, it is
worth preserving — it may be cast aside only if
not expressed truly. There is a period in man's
life when his feelings are the pathos of the inex-
pressible, the anguish of vagueness. The poetry
which attempts its expression cannot be called
baseless — at worst it may be worthless; but it is
not necessarily even that. The sin is not in the
thing expressed, but in the failure to express it.

There is a duality in man. Of the inner person,
behind the outward current of thoughts, feelings
and events, but little is known or recked; but for

212 MY REMINISCENCES

all that, he cannot be got rid of as a factor in life's
progress. When the outward life fails to harmonise
with the inner, the dweller within is hurt, and
his pain manifests itself in the outer consciousness
in a manner to which it is difficult to give a name,
or even to describe, and of which the cry is more
akin to an inarticulate wail than words with more
precise meaning.

The sadness and pain which sought expression
in the Evening Songs had their roots in the depths
of my being. As one's sleep-smothered con-
sciousness wrestles with a nightmare in its efforts
to awake, so the submerged inner self struggles
to free itself from its complexities and come out
into the open. These Songs arc the history of
that struggle. As in all creation, so in poetry,
there is the opposition of forces. If the divergence
is too wide, or the unison too close, there is, it
seems to me, no room for poetry. Where the pain
of discord strives to attain and express its resolu-
tion into harmony, there does poetry break forth
into music, as breath through a flute.

When the Evening Songs first saw the light they
were not hailed with any flourish of trumpets,
but none the less they did not lack admirers. I
have elsewhere told the story of how at the wedding
of Mr. Ramesh Chandra Dutt's eldest daughter,
Bankim Babu was at the door, and the host was

MY REMINISCENCES 213

welcoming him with the customary garland of
flowers. As I came up Bankim Babu eagerly
took the garland and placing it round my neck
said: "The wreath to him, Ramesh, have you not
read his Evening Songs?" And when Mr. Dutt
avowed he had not yet done so, the manner in
which Bankim Babu expressed his opinion of
some of them amply rewarded me.

The Evening Songs gained for me a friend whose
approval, like the rays of the sun, stimulated
and guided the shoots of my newly sprung efforts.
This was Babu Priyanath Sen. Just before this
the Broken Heart had led him to give up all hopes
of me. I won him back with these Evening Songs.
Those who are acquainted with him know him
as an expert navigator of all the seven seas 1 of
literature, whose highways and byways, in al-
most all languages, Indian and foreign, he is
constantly traversing. To converse with him is to
gain glimpses of even the most out of the way
scenery in the world of ideas. This proved of the
greatest value to me.

He was able to give his literary opinions with
the fullest confidence, for he had not to rely on
his unaided taste to guide his likes and dislikes.
This authoritative criticism of his also assisted

1 The world, as the Indian boy knows it from fairy tale and folk-
lore, has seven seas and thirteen rivers. TV.

2i4 MY REMINISCENCES

me more than I can tell. I used to read to him
everything I wrote, and but for the timely showers
of his discriminate appreciation it is hard to say
whether these early ploughings of mine would
have yielded as they have done.

(34) Morning Songs

At the river-side I also did a bit of prose writing,
not on any definite subject or plan, but in the
spirit that boys catch butterflies. When spring
comes within, many-coloured short-lived fancies
are born and flit about in the mind, ordinarily
unnoticed. In these days of my leisure, it was
perhaps the mere whim to collect them which
had come upon me. Or it may have been only
another phase of my emancipated self which had
thrown out its chest and decided to write just
as it pleased; what I wrote not being the object,
it being sufficient unto itself that it was I who
wrote. These prose pieces were published later
under the name of Fividha Prabandha, Various
Topics, but they expired with the first edition
and did not get a fresh lease of life in a second.

At this time, I think, I also began my first
novel, Bauthakuranir Hat.

After we had stayed for a time by the river,
my brother Jyotirindra took a house in Calcutta,

MY REMINISCENCES 215

on Sudder Street near the Museum. I remained
with him. While I went on here with the novel
and the Evening Songs, a momentous revolution
of some kind came about within me.

One day, late in the afternoon, I was pacing
the terrace of our Jorasanko house. The glow of
the sunset combined with the wan twilight in a
way which seemed to give the approaching evening
a specially wonderful attractiveness for me. Even
the walls of the adjoining house seemed to grow
beautiful. Is this uplifting of the cover of trivial-
ity from the everyday world, I wondered, due to
some magic in the evening light? Never!

I could see at once that it was the effect of
the evening which had come within me; its shades
had obliterated my self. While the self was ram-
pant during the glare of day, everything I per-
ceived was mingled with and hidden by it. Now,
that the self was put into the background, I
could see the world in its own true aspect. And
that aspect has nothing of triviality in it, it is
full of beauty and joy.

Since this experience I tried the effect of de-
liberately suppressing my self and viewing the
world as a mere spectator, and was invariably
rewarded with a sense of special pleasure. I
remember I tried also to explain to a relative
how to see the world in its true light, and the

216 MY REMINISCENCES

incidental lightening of one's own sense of burden
which follows such vision; but, as I believe, with
no success.

Then I gained a further insight which has lasted
all my life.

The end of Sudder Street, and the trees on the
Free School grounds opposite, were visible from
our Sudder Street house. One morning I hap-
pened to be standing on the verandah looking
that way. The sun was just rising through the
leafy tops of those trees. As I continued to gaze,
all of a sudden a covering seemed to fall away from
my eyes, and I found the world bathed in a won-
derful radiance, with waves of beauty and joy
swelling on every side. This radiance pierced in a
moment through the folds of sadness and despond-
ency which had accumulated over my heart, and
flooded it with this universal light.

That very day the poem, The Awakening of the
Waterfall, gushed forth and coursed on like a
veritable cascade. The poem came to an end,
but the curtain did not fall upon the joy aspect
of the Universe. And it came to be so that no
person or thing in the world seemed to me trivial
or unpleasing. A thing that happened the next
day or the day following seemed specially as-
tonishing.

There was a curious sort of person who came

MY REMINISCENCES 217

to me now and then, with a habit of asking all
manner of silly questions. One day he had asked:
"Have you, sir, seen God with your own eyes?"
And on my having to admit that I had not, he
averred that he had. "What was it you saw?"
I asked. "He seethed and throbbed before my
eyes!" was the reply.

It can well be imagined that one would not
ordinarily relish being drawn into abstruse dis-
cussions with such a person. Moreover, I was
at the time entirely absorbed in my own writing.
Nevertheless as he was a harmless sort of fellow
I did not like the idea of hurting his suscepti-
bilities and so tolerated him as best I could.

This time, when he came one afternoon, I
actually felt glad to see him, and welcomed him
cordially. The mantle of his oddity and foolish-
ness seemed to have slipped off, and the person
I so joyfully hailed was the real man whom I felt
to be in nowise inferior to myself, and moreover
closely related. Finding no trace of annoyance
within me at sight of him, nor any sense of my
time being wasted with him^ I was filled with an
immense gladness, and felt rid of some enveloping
tissue of untruth which had been causing me so
much needless and uncalled for discomfort and
pain.

As I would stand on the balcony, the gait, the

218 MY REMINISCENCES

figure, the features of each one of the passers-by,
whoever they might be, seemed to me all so ex-
traordinarily wonderful, as they flowed past, —
waves on the sea of the universe. From infancy
I had seen only with my eyes, I now began to see
with the whole of my consciousness. I could not
look upon the sight of two smiling youths, non-
chalantly going their way, the arm of one on the
other's shoulder, as a matter of small moment;
for, through it I could see the fathomless depths
of the eternal spring of Joy from which number-
less sprays of laughter leap up throughout the
world.

I had never before marked the play of limbs and
lineaments which always accompanies even the
least of man's actions; now I was spell-bound by
their variety, which I came across on all sides, at
every moment. Yet I saw them not as being
apart by themselves, but as parts of that amazingly
beautiful greater dance which goes on at this very
moment throughout the world of men, in each of
their homes, in their multifarious wants and ac-
tivities.

Friend laughs with friend, the mother fondles
her child, one cow sidles up to another and licks
its body, and the*- immeasurability behind these
comes direct to my mind with a shock which almost
savours of pain.

MY REMINISCENCES 219

When of this period I wrote:

I know not how of a sudden my heart flung open its

doors,
And let the crowd of worlds rush in, greeting each

other,—

it was no poetic exaggeration. Rather I had not
the power to express all I felt.

For some time together I remained in this self-
forgetful state of bliss. Then my brother thought
of going to the Darjeeling hills. So much the bet-
ter, thought I. On the vast Himalayan tops I shall
be able to see more deeply into what has been re-
vealed to me in Sudder Street; at any rate I shall
see how the Himayalas display themselves to my
new gift of vision.

But the victory was with that little house in
Sudder Street. When, after ascending the moun-
tains, I looked around, I was at once aware I had
lost my new vision. My sin must have been in
imagining that I could get still more of truth from
the outside. However sky-piercing the king of
mountains may be, he can have nothing in his gift
for me; while He who is the Giver can vouchsafe a
vision of the eternal universe in the dingiest of
lanes, and in a moment of time.

I wandered about amongst the firs, I sat near
the falls and bathed in their waters, I gazed at the
grandeur of Kinchinjunga through a cloudless sky,

220 MY REMINISCENCES

but in what had seemed to me these likeliest of
places, I found it not. I had come to know it,
but could see it no longer. While I was admiring
the gem the lid had suddenly closed, leaving me
staring at the enclosing casket. But, for all the
attractiveness of its workmanship, there was no
longer any danger of my mistaking it for merely
an empty box.

My Morning Songs came to an end, their last
echo dying out with The Echo which I wrote at
Darjeeling. This apparently proved such an ab-
struse affair that two friends laid a wager as to its
real meaning. My only consolation was that, as
I was equally unable to explain the enigma to
them when they came to me for a solution, neither
of them had to lose any money over it. Alas ! The
days when I wrote excessively plain poems about
The Lotus and A Lake had gone forever.

But does one write poetry to explain any matter?
What is felt within the heart tries to find outside
shape as a poem. So when after listening to a poem
anyone says he has not understood, I feel non-
plussed. If someone smells a flower and says he
does not understand, the reply to him is: there is
nothing to understand, it is only a scent. If he
persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all
mean? Then one has either to change the subject,
or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent

MY REMINISCENCES 221

is the shape which the universal joy takes in the
flower.

That words have meanings is just the difficulty.
That is why the poet has to turn and twist them
in metre and verse, so that the meaning may be
held somewhat in check, and the feeling allowed a
chance to express itself.

This utterance of feeling is not the statement
of a fundamental truth, or a scientific fact, or a
useful moral precept. Like a tear or a smile it is
but a picture of what is taking place within. If
Science or Philosophy may gain anything from it
they are welcome, but that is not the reason of its
being. If while crossing a ferry you can catch a
fish you are a lucky man, but that does not make
the ferry boat a fishing boat, nor should you abuse
the ferryman if he does not make fishing his busi-
ness.

The Echo was written so long ago that it has
escaped attention and I am now no longer called
upon to render an account of its meaning. Never-
theless, whatever its other merits or defects may
be, I can assure my readers that it was not my
intention to propound a riddle, or insidiously con-
vey any erudite teaching. The fact of the matter
was that a longing had been born within my heart,
and, unable to find any other name, I had called
the thing I desired an Echo.

222 MY REMINISCENCES

When from the original fount in the depths of
the Universe streams of melody are sent forth
abroad, their echo is reflected into our heart from
the faces of our beloved and the other beauteous
things around us. It must be, as I suggested, this
Echo which we love, and not the things themselves
from which it happens to be reflected; for that
which one day we scarce deign to glance at, may
be, on another, the very thing which claims our
whole devotion.

I had so long viewed the world with external vi-
sion only, and so had been unable to see its uni-
versal aspect of joy. When of a sudden, from some
innermost depth of my being, a ray of light found
its way out, it spread over and illuminated for me
the whole universe, which then no longer appeared
like heaps of things and happenings, but was dis-
closed to my sight as one whole. This experience
seemed to tell me of the stream of melody issuing
from the very heart of the universe and spreading
over space and time, re-echoing thence as waves of
joy which flow right back to the source.

When the artist sends his song forth from the
depths of a full heart that is joy indeed. And the
joy is redoubled when this same song is wafted
back to him as hearer. If, when the creation of the
Arch-Poet is thus returning back to him in a flood
of joy, we allow it to flow over our consciousness,

MY REMINISCENCES 223

we at once, immediately, become aware, in an in-
expressible manner, of the end to which this flood
is streaming. And as we become aware our love
goes forth; and our selves are moved from their
moorings and would fain float down the stream of
joy to its infinite goal. This is the meaning of the
longing which stirs within us at the sight of Beauty.

The stream which comes from the Infinite and
flows toward the finite — that is the True, the
Good; it is subject to laws, definite in form. Its
echo which returns towards the Infinite is Beauty
and Joy; which are difficult to touch or grasp, and
so make us beside ourselves. This is what I tried
to say by way of a parable or a song in The Echo.
That the result was not clear is not to be wondered
at, for neither was the attempt then clear unto
itself.

Let me set down here part of what I wrote in a
letter, at a more advanced age, about the Morning
Songs.

"There is none in the World, all are in my heart" —
is a state of mind belonging to a particular age. When
the heart is first awakened it puts forth its arms and
would grasp the whole world, like the teething infant
which thinks everything meant for its mouth. Gradu-
ally it comes to understand what it really wants and
what it does not. Then do its nebulous emanations
shrink upon themselves, get heated, and heat in their
turn.

224 MY REMINISCENCES

To begin by wanting the whole world is to get noth-
ing. When desire is concentrated, with the whole
strength of one's being upon any one object whatsoever
it might be, then does the gateway to the Infinite be-
come visible. The morning songs were the first throw-
ing forth of my inner self outwards, and consequently
they lack any signs of such concentration.

This all-pervading joy of a first outflow, how-
ever, has the effect of leading us to an acquaintance
with the particular. The lake in its fulness seeks
an outlet as a river. In this sense the permanent
later love is narrower than first love. It is more
definite in the direction of its activities, desires to
realise the whole in each of its parts, and is thus
impelled on towards the infinite. What it finally
reaches is no longer the former indefinite extension
of the heart's own inner joy, but a merging in the
infinite reality which was outside itself, and thereby
the attainment of the complete truth of its own
longings.

In Mohita Babu's edition these Morning Songs
have been placed in the group of poems entitled
Nishkraman, The Emergence. For in these was
to be found the first news of my coming out of the
Heart Wilderness into the open world. Thereafter
did this pilgrim heart make its acquaintance with
that world, bit by bit, part by part, in many a
mood and manner. And at the end, after gliding

MY REMINISCENCES 225

past all the numerous landing steps of ever-
changing impermanence, it will reach the infinite, —
not the vagueness of indeterminate possibility,
but the consummation of perfect fulness of
Truth.

From my earliest years I enjoyed a simple and
intimate communion with Nature. Each one of
the cocoanut trees in our garden had for me a
distinct personality. When, on coming home from
the Normal School, I saw behind the skyline of
our roof-terrace blue-grey water-laden clouds
thickly banked up, the immense depth of glad-
ness which filled me, all in a moment, I can recall
clearly even now. On opening my eyes every
morning, the blithely awakening world used to
call me to join it like a playmate; the perfervid
noonday sky, during the long silent watches of
the siesta hours, would spirit me away from the
work-a-day world into the recesses of its hermit
cell; and the darkness of night would open the
door to its phantom paths, and take me over all
the seven seas and thirteen rivers, past all pos-
sibilities and impossibilities, right into its wonder-
land.

Then one day, when, with the dawn of youth,
my hungry heart began to cry out for its susten-
ance, a barrier was set up between this play of
inside and outside. And my whole being eddied

226 MY REMINISCENCES

round and round my troubled heart, creating a
vortex within itself, in the whirls of which its
consciousness was confined.

This loss of the harmony between inside and
outside, due to the over-riding claims of the heart
in its hunger, and consequent restriction of the
privilege of communion which had been mine, was
mourned by me in the Evening Songs. In the
Morning Songs I celebrated the sudden opening
of a gate in the barrier, by what shock I know not,
through which I regained the lost one, not only
as I knew it before, but more deeply, more fully,
by force of the intervening separation.

Thus did the First Book of my life come to an
end with these chapters of union, separation and
reunion. Or, rather, it is not true to say it has
come to an end. The same subject has still to be
continued through more elaborate solutions of
worse complexities, to a greater conclusion. Each
one comes here to finish but one book of life,
which, during the progress of its various parts,
grows spiral-wise on an ever-increasing radius.
So, while each segment may appear different from
the others at a cursory glance, they all really lead
back to the self-same starting centre.

The prose writings of the Evening Songs period
were published, as I have said, under the name
of Fividha Prabandha. Those others which cor-

MY REMINISCENCES 227

respond to the time of my writing the Morning
Songs came out under the title of Alochana, Dis-
cussions. The difference between the characteris-
tics of these two would be a good index of the
nature of the change that had in the meantime
taken place within me.

PART VII

(35) Rajendrahal Mitra

IT was about this time that my brother
Jyotirindra had the idea of founding a Lit-
erary Academy by bringing together all the
men of letters of repute. To compile authorita-
tive technical terms for the Bengali language and
in other ways to assist in its growth was to be its
object — therein differing but little from the lines
on which the modern Sahitya Parishat, Academy
of Literature, has taken shape.

Dr. Rajendrahal Mitra took up the idea of this
Academy with enthusiasm, and he was eventually
its president for the short time it lasted. When
I went to invite Pandit Vidyasagar to join it, he
gave a hearing to my explanation of its objects
and the names of the proposed members, then
said: "My advice to you is to leave us out — you
will never accomplish anything with big wigs;
they can never be got to agree with one another."
With which he refused to come in. Bankim Babu
became a member, but I cannot say that he took
much interest in the work.

To be plain, so long as this academy lived
Rajendrahal Mitra did everything singlehanded.
He began with Geographical terms. The draft

list was made out by Dr. Rajendrahal himself

231

232 MY REMINISCENCES

and was printed and circulated for the suggestions
of the members. We had also an idea of trans-
literating in Bengali the name of each foreign
country as pronounced by itself.

Pandit Vidyasagar's prophecy was fulfilled.
It did not prove possible to get the big wigs to do
anything. And the academy withered away
shortly after sprouting. But Rajendrahal Mitra
was an all-round expert and was an academy in
himself. My labours in this cause were more
than repaid by the privilege of his acquaintance.
I have met many Bengali men of letters in my
time but none who left the impression of such
brilliance.

I used to go and see him in the office of the
Court of Wards in Maniktala. I would go in the
mornings and always find him busy with his
studies, and with the inconsiderateness of youth,
I felt no hesitation in disturbing him. But I
have never seen him the least bit put out on that
account. As soon as he saw me he would put
aside his work and begin to talk to me. It is a
matter of common knowledge that he was some-
what hard of hearing, so he hardly ever gave me
occasion to put him any question. He would
take up some broad subject and talk away upon
it, and it was the attraction of these discourses
which drew me there. Converse with no other

MY REMINISCENCES 233

person ever gave me such a wealth of suggestive
ideas on so many different subjects. I would
listen enraptured.

I think he was a member of the text-book com-
mittee and every book he received for approval,
he read through and annotated in pencil. On
some occasions he would select one of these books
for the text of discourses on the construction of
the Bengali language in particular or Philology
in general, which were of the greatest benefit to
me. There were few subjects which he had not
studied and anything he had studied he could
clearly expound.

If we had not relied on the other members of
the Academy we had tried to found, but left every-
thing to Dr. Rajendrahal, the present Sahitya
Parishat would have doubtless found the matters
it is now occupied with left in a much more ad-
vanced state by that one man alone.

Dr. Rajendrahal Mitra was not only a profound
scholar, but he had likewise a striking personality
which shone through his features. Full of fire
as he was in his public life, he could also unbend
graciously so as to talk on the most difficult
subjects to a stripling like myself without any
trace of a patronising tone. I even took advan-
tage of his condescension to the extent of getting
a contribution, Yama's Dog, from him for the

234 MY REMINISCENCES

Bharabi. There were other great contemporaries
of his with whom I would not have ventured to
take such liberties, nor would I have met with
the like response if I had.

And yet when he was on the war path his op-
ponents on the Municipal Corporation or the
Senate of the University were mortally afraid
of him. In those days Kristo Das Pal was the
tactful politician, and Rajendrahal Mitra the
valiant fighter.

For the purposes of the Asiatic Society's pub-
lications and researches, he had to employ a num-
ber of Sanscrit Pandits to do the mechanical work
for him. I remember how this gave certain envious
and mean-minded detractors the opportunity of
saying that everything was really done by these
Pandits while Rajendrahal fraudulently appro-
priated all the credit. Even to-day we very
often find the tools arrogating to themselves the
lion's share of the achievement, imagining the
wielder to be a mere ornamental figurehead. If
the poor pen had a mind it would as certainly
have bemoaned the unfairness of its getting all
the stain and the writer all the glory!

It is curious that this extraordinary man should
have got no recognition from his countrymen
even after his death. One of the reasons may be
that the national mourning for Vidyasagar, whose

MY REMINISCENCES 235

death followed shortly after, left no room for a
recognition of the other bereavement. Another
reason may be that his main contributions being
outside the pale of Bengali literature, he had
been unable to reach the heart of the people.

(36) Karwar

Our Sudder Street party next transferred itself
to Karwar on the West Sea coast. Karwar is
the headquarters of the Kanara district in the
Southern portion of the Bombay Presidency.
It is the tract of the Malaya Hills of Sanskrit
literature where grow the cardamum creeper and
the Sandal Tree. My second brother was then
Judge there.

The little harbour, ringed round with hills, is so
secluded that it has nothing of the aspect of a
port about it. Its crescent shaped beach throws
out its arms to the shoreless open sea like the very
image of an eager striving to embrace the infinite.
The edge of the broad sandy beach is fringed with
a forest of casuarinas, broken at one end by the
Kalanadi river which here flows into the sea after
passing through a gorge flanked by rows of hills
on either side.

I remember how one moonlit evening we went
up this river in a little boat. We stopped at one

236 MY REMINISCENCES

of Shivaji's old hill forts, and stepping ashore
found our way into the clean-swept little yard
of a peasant's home. We sat on a spot where the
moonbeams fell glancing off the top of the outer
enclosure, and there dined off the eatables we
had brought with us. On our way back we let
the boat glide down the river. The night brooded
over the motionless hills and forests, and on the
silent flowing stream of this little Kalanadi,
throwing over all its moonlight spell. It took us
a good long time to reach the mouth of the river,
so, instead of returning by sea, we got off the boat
there and walked back home over the sands of the
beach. It was then far into the night, the sea
was without a ripple, even the ever-troubled
murmur of the casuarianas was at rest. The
shadow of the fringe of trees along the vast ex-
panse of sand hung motionless along its border,
and the ring of blue-grey hills around the horizon
slept calmly beneath the sky.

Through the deep silence of this illimitable
whiteness we few human creatures walked along
with our shadows, without a word. When we
reached home my sleep had lost itself in something
still deeper. The poem which I then wrote is
inextricably mingled with that night on the dis-
tant seashore. I do not know how it will appeal
to the reader apart from the memories with which

Karwar Beach

MY REMINISCENCES 237

it is entwined. This doubt led to its being left
out of Mohita Babu's edition of my works. I
trust that a place given to it among my reminis-
cences may not be deemed unfitting.

Let me sink down, losing myself in the depths of

midnight.
Let the Earth leave her hold of me, let her free me

from her obstacle of dust.
Keep your watch from afar, O stars, drunk though

you be with moonlight,

And let the horizon hold its wings still around me.
Let there be no song, no word, no sound, no touch;

nor sleep, nor awakening, —
But only the moonlight like a swoon of ecstasy

over the sky and my being.
The world seems to me like a ship with its countless

pilgrims,

Vanishing in the far-away blue of the sky,
Its sailors' song becoming fainter and fainter in

the air,

While I sink in the bosom of the endless night, fading
away from myself, dwindling into a point.

It is necessary to remark here that merely
because something has been written when feelings
are brimming over, it is not therefore necessarily
good. Such is rather a time when the utterance
is thick with emotion. Just as it does not do to
have the writer entirely removed from the feel-
ing to which he is giving expression, so also it

238 MY REMINISCENCES

does not conduce to the truest poetry to have
him too close to it. Memory is the brush which
can best lay on the true poetic colour. Nearness
has too much of the compelling about it and the
imagination is not sufficiently free unless it can
get away from its influence. Not only in poetry,
but in all art, the mind of the artist must attain a
certain degree of aloofness — the creator within
man must be allowed the sole control. If the
subject matter gets the better of the creation,
the result is a mere replica of the event, not a
reflection of it through the Artist's mind.

(37) Nature's Revenge

Here in Karwar I wrote the Prakritir Pratis-
hodha, Nature's Revenge, a dramatic poem. The
hero was a Sanyasi (hermit) who had been striving
to gain a victory over Nature by cutting away
the bonds of all desires and affections and thus
to arrive at a true and profound knowledge of
self. A little girl, however, brought him back from
his communion with the infinite to the world and
into the bondage of human affection. On so
coming back the Sanyasi realised that the great
is to be found in the small, the infinite within
the bounds of form, and the eternal freedom of

MY REMINISCENCES 239

the soul in love. It is only in the light of love
that all limits are merged in the limitless.

The sea beach of Karwar is certainly a fit place
in which to realise that the beauty of Nature is
not a mirage of the imagination, but reflects
the joy of the Infinite and thus draws us to lose
ourselves in it. Where the universe is expressing
itself in the magic of its laws it may not be strange
if we miss its infinitude; but where the heart gets
into immediate touch with immensity in the
beauty of the meanest of things, is any room left
for argument?

Nature took the Sanyasi to the presence of the
Infinite, enthroned on the finite, by the pathway
of the heart. In the Nature's Revenge there were
shown on the one side the wayfarers and the
villagers, content with their home-made triviality
and unconscious of anything beyond; and on the
other the Sanyasi busy casting away his all,
and himself, into the self-evolved infinite of his
imagination. When love bridged the gulf be-
tween the two, and the hermit and the householder
met, the seeming triviality of the finite and the
seeming emptiness of the infinite alike disappeared.

This was to put in a slightly different form the
story of my own experience, of the entrancing
ray of light which found its way into the depths
of the cave into which I had retired away from

240 MY REMINISCENCES

all touch with the outer world, and made me more
fully one with Nature again. This Nature* s Re-
venge may be looked upon as an introduction to
the whole of my future literary work; or, rather
this has been the subject on which all my writ-
ings have dwelt — the joy of attaining the Infinite
within the finite.

On our way back from Karwar I wrote some
songs for the Nature's Revenge on board ship. The
first one filled me with a great gladness as I sang,
and wrote it sitting on the deck:

Mother, leave your darling boy to us,
And let us take him to the field where we graze our
cattle.1

The sun has risen, the buds have opened, the
cowherd boys are going to the pasture; and they
would not have the sunlight, the flowers, and
their play in the grazing grounds empty. They
want their Shyam (Krishna) to be with them
there, in the midst of all these. They want to see
the Infinite in all its carefully adorned loveliness;

1 This is addressed to Yashoda, mother of Krishna, by his play-
mates. Yashoda would dress up her darling every morning in his
yellow garment with a peacock plume in his hair. But when it came
to the point, she was nervous about allowing him, young as he was,
to join the other cowherd boys at the pasturage. So it often required
a great deal of persuasion before they would be allowed to take charge
of him. This is part of the Faishnava parable of the child aspect of
Krishna's play with the world. TV.

MY REMINISCENCES 241

they have turned out so early because they want
to join in its gladsome play, in the midst of these
woods and fields and hills and dales — not to admire
from a distance, nor in the majesty of power.
Their equipment is of the slightest. A simple
yellow garment and a garland of wild-flowers are
all the ornaments they require. For where joy
reigns on every side, to hunt for it arduously,
or amidst pomp and circumstances, is to lose it.

Shortly after my return from Karwar, I was
married. I was then 22 years of age.

(38) Pictures and Songs

Chhabi o Gan, Picture and Songs, was the title
of a book of poems most of which were written
at this time.

We were then living in a house with a garden
in Lower Circular Road. Adjoining it on the
south was a large Busti.1 I would often sit near a
window and watch the sights of this populous
little settlement. I loved to see them at their
work and play and rest, and in their multifarious

1 A Busti is an area thickly packed with shabby tiled huts, with
narrow pathways running through, and connecting it with the main
street. These are inhabited by domestic servants, the poorer class
of artisans and the like. Such settlements were formerly scattered
throughout the town even in the best localities, but are now gradually
disappearing from the latter. Tr,

242 MY REMINISCENCES

goings and comings. To me it was all like a living
story.

A faculty of many-sightedness possessed me
at this time. Each little separate picture I ringed
round with the light of my imagination and the
joy of my heart; every one of them, moreover,
being variously coloured by a pathos of its own.
The pleasure of thus separately marking off each
picture was much the same as that of painting it,
both being the outcome of the desire to see with
the mind what the eye sees, and with the eye what
the mind imagines.

Had I been a painter with the brush I would
doubtless have tried to keep a permanent record
of the visions and creations of that period when
my mind was so alertly responsive. But that
instrument was not available to me. What I
had was only words and rhythms, and even with
these I had not yet learnt to draw firm strokes,
and the colours went beyond their margins. Still,
like, young folk with their first paint box, I spent
the livelong day painting away with the many
coloured fancies of my new-born youth. If these
pictures are now viewed in the light of that twenty-
second year of my life, some features may be
discerned even through their crude drawing and
blurred colouring.

I have said that the first book of my literary

MY REMINISCENCES 243

life came to an end with the Morning Songs.
The same subject was then continued under a
different rendering. Many a page at the outset
of this Book, I am sure, is of no value. In the
process of making a new beginning much in the
way of superfluous preliminary has to be gone
through. Had these been leaves of trees they
would have duly dropped off. Unfortunately,
leaves of books continue to stick fast even when
they are no longer wanted. The feature of these
poems was the closeness of attention devoted even
to trifling things. Pictures and Songs seized every
opportunity of giving value to these by colouring
them with feelings straight from the heart.

Or, rather, that was not it. When the string
of the mind is properly attuned to the universe
then at each point the universal song can awaken
its sympathetic vibrations. It was because of
this music roused within that nothing then felt
trivial to the writer. Whatever my eyes fell upon
found a response within me. Like children who
can play with sand or stones or shells or whatever
they can get (for the spirit of play is within them),
so also we, when filled with the song of youth,
become aware that the harp of the universe has
its variously tuned strings everywhere stretched,
and the nearest may serve as well as any other for
our accompaniment, there is no need to seek afar.

244 MY REMINISCENCES

(39) An Intervening Period

Between the Pictures and Songs and the Sharps
and Flats, a child's magazine called the Balaka
sprang up and ended its brief days like an annual
plant. My second sister-in-law felt the want of
an illustrated magazine for children. Her idea
was that the young people of the family would
contribute to it, but as she felt that that alone
would not be enough, she took up the editorship
herself and asked me to help with contributions.
After one or two numbers of the Balaka had come
out I happened to go on a visit to Rajnarayan
Babu at Deoghur. On the return journey the
train was crowded and as there was an unshaded
light just over the only berth I could get, I could
not sleep. I thought I might as well take this op-
portunity of thinking out a story for the Balaka.
In spite of my efforts to get hold of the story it
eluded me, but sleep came to the rescue instead.
I saw in a dream the stone steps of a temple stained
with the blood of victims of the sacrifice; — a little
girl standing there with her father asking him in
piteous accents: " Father, what is this, why all this
blood?" and the father, inwardly moved, trying
with a show of gruffness to quiet her questioning.
As I awoke I felt I had got my story. I have

MY REMINISCENCES 245

many more such dream-given stories and other
writings as well. This dream episode I worked
into the annals of King Gobinda Manikya of
Tipperah and made out of it a little serial story,
Rajarshi, for the Balaka.

Those were days of utter freedom from care.
Nothing in particular seemed to be anxious to
express itself through my life or writings. I had
not yet joined the throng of travellers on the path
of Life, but was a mere spectator from my road-
side window. Many a person hied by on many an
errand as I gazed on, and every now and then
Spring or Autumn, or the Rains would enter un-
asked and stay with me for a while.

But I had not only to do with the seasons. There
were men of all kinds of curious types who, floating
about like boats adrift from their anchorage, oc-
casionally invaded my little room. Some of them
sought to further their own ends, at the cost of my
inexperience, with many an extraordinary device.
But they need not have taken any extraordinary
pains to get the better of me. I was then entirely
unsophisticated, my own wants were few, and I
was not at all clever in distinguishing between good
and bad faith. I have often gone on imagining
that I was assisting with their school fees students
to whom fees were as superfluous as their unread
books.

246 MY REMINISCENCES

Once a long-haired youth brought me a letter
from an imaginary sister in which she asked me to
take under my protection this brother of hers who
was suffering from the tyranny of a stepmother
as imaginary as herself. The brother was not
imaginary, that was evident enough. But his
sister's letter was as unnecessary for me as expert
marksmanship to bring down a bird which cannot
fly.

Another young fellow came and informed me
that he was studying for the B. A., but could not
go up for his examination as he was afflicted with
some brain trouble. I felt concerned, but being
far from proficient in medical science, or in any
other science, I was at a loss what advice to give
him. But he went on to explain that he had seen
in a dream that my wife had been his mother in
a former birth, and that if he could but drink some
water which had touched her feet he would get
cured. "Perhaps you don't believe in such
things," he concluded with a smile. My belief,
I said, did not matter, but if he thought he could
get cured, he was welcome, with which I procured
him a phial of water which was supposed to have
touched my wife's feet. He felt immensely better,
he said. In the natural course of evolution from
water he came to solid food. Then he took up his
quarters in a corner of my room and began to hold

MY REMINISCENCES 247

smoking parties with his friends, till I had to take
refuge in flight from the smoke laden air. He
gradually proved beyond doubt that his brain
might have been diseased, but it certainly was not
weak.

After this experience it took no end of proof
before I could bring myself to put my trust in
children of previous births. My reputation must
have spread for I next received a letter from a
daughter. Here, however, I gently but firmly drew
the line.

All this time my friendship with Babu Srish
Chandra Magundar ripened apace. Every evening
he and Prija Babu would come to this little room
of mine and we would discuss literature and music
far into the night. Sometimes a whole day would
be spent in the same way. The fact is my self had
not yet been moulded and nourished into a strong
a-nd definite personality and so my life drifted
along as light and easy as an autumn cloud.

(40) Bankim Chandra

This was the time when my acquaintance with
Bankim Babu began. My first sight of him was a
matter of long before. The old students of Calcutta
University had then started an annual reunion, of
which Babu Chandranath Basu was the leading

248 MY REMINISCENCES

spirit. Perhaps he entertained a hope that at some
future time I might acquire the right to be one of
them; anyhow I was asked to read a poem on the
occasion. Chandranath Babu was then quite a
young man. I remember he had translated some
martial German poem into English which he pro-
posed to recite himself on the day, and came to
rehearse it to us full of enthusiasm. That a warrior
poet's ode to his beloved sword should at one time
have been his favourite poem will convince the
reader that even Chandranath Babu was once
young; and moreover that those times were indeed
peculiar.

While wandering about in the crush at the
Students' reunion, I suddenly came across a figure
which at once struck me as distinguished beyond
that of all the others and who could not have pos-
sibly been lost in any crowd. The features of that
tall fair personage shone with such a striking ra-
diance that I could not contain my curiosity about
him— he was the only one there whose name I felt
concerned to know that day. When I learnt he
was Bankim Babu I marvelled all the more, it
seemed to me such a wonderful coincidence that
his appearance should be as distinguished as his
writings. His sharp aquiline nose, his compressed
lips, and his keen glance all betokened immense
power. With his arms folded across his breast he

MY REMINISCENCES 249

seemed to walk as one apart, towering above the
ordinary throng — this is what struck me most
about him. Not only that he looked an intellec-
tual giant, but he had on his forehead the mark of
a true prince among men.

One little incident which occurred at this gather-
ing remains indelibly impressed on my mind. In
one of the rooms a Pandit was reciting some
Sanskrit verses of his own composition and explain-
ing them in Bengali to the audience. One of the
allusions was not exactly coarse, but somewhat
vulgar. As the Pandit was proceeding to expound
this Bankim Babu, covering his face with his hands,
hurried out of the room. I was near the door and
can still see before me that shrinking, retreating
figure.

After that I often longed to see him, but could
not get an opportunity. At last one day, when he
was Deputy Magistrate of Hawrah, I made bold to
call on him. We met, and I tried my best to make
conversation. But I somehow felt greatly abashed
while returning home, as if I had acted like a raw
and bumptious youth in thus thrusting myself
upon him unasked and unintroduced.

Shortly after, as I added to my years, I attained
a place as the youngest of the literary men of the
time; but what was to be my position in order of
merit was not even then settled. The little repu-

250 MY REMINISCENCES

tation I had acquired was mixed with plenty of
doubt and not a little of condescension. It was
then the fashion in Bengal to assign each man of
letters a place in comparison with a supposed
compeer in the West. Thus one was the Byron of
Bengal, another the Emerson and so forth. I
began to be styled by some the Bengal Shelley.
This was insulting to Shelley and only likely to get
me laughed at.

My recognised cognomen was the Lisping Poet.
My attainments were few, my knowledge of life
meagre, and both in my poetry and my prose the
sentiment exceeded the substance. So that there
was nothing there on which anyone could have
based his praise with any degree of confidence.
My dress and behaviour were of the same anoma-
lous description. I wore my hair long and indulged
probably in an ultra-poetical refinement of manner.
In a word I was eccentric and could not fit myself
into everyday life like the ordinary man.

At this time Babu Akshay Sarkar had started
his monthly review, the Nabajiban, New Life, to
which I used occasionally to contribute. Bankim
Babu had just closed the chapter of his editorship
of the Banga Darsan, the Mirror of Bengal, and
was busy with religious discussions for which pur-
pose he had started the monthly, Prachar, the
Preacher. To this also I contributed a song or

MY REMINISCENCES 251

two and an effusive appreciation of Vaishnava
lyrics.

From now I began constantly to meet Bankim
Babu. He was then living in Bhabani Dutt's
street. I used to visit him frequently, it is true,
but there was not much of conversation. I was
then of the age to listen, not to talk. I fervently
wished we could warm up into some discussion, but
my diffidence got the better of my conversational
powers. Some days Sanjib Babu 1 would be there
reclining on his bolster. The sight would gladden
me, for he was a genial soul. He delighted in talk-
ing and it was a delight to listen to his talk. Those
who have read his prose writing must have noticed
how gaily and airily it flows on like the sprightliest
of conversation. Very few have this gift of con-
versation, and fewer still the art of translating it
into writing.

This was the time when Pandit Sashadhar rose
into prominence. Of him I first heard from
Bankim Babu. If I remember right Bankim Babu
was also responsible for introducing him to the
public. The curious attempt made by Hindu
orthodoxy to revive its prestige with the help of
western science soon spread all over the country.
Theosophy for some time previously had been
preparing the ground for such a movement. Not

1 One of Bankim Babu's brothers.

252 MY REMINISCENCES

that Bankim Babu even thoroughly identified him-
self with this cult. No shadow of Sashadhar was
cast on his exposition of Hinduism as it found
expression in the Prachar — that was impossible.

I was then coming out of the seclusion of my
corner as my contributions to these controversies
will show. Some of these were satirical verses,
some farcical plays, others letters to newspapers.
I thus came down into the arena from the regions
of sentiment and began to spar in right earnest.

In the heat of the fight I happened to fall foul
of Bankim Babu. The history of this remains
recorded in the Prachar and Bharati of those days
and need not be repeated here. At the close of
this period of antagonism Bankim Babu wrote me
a letter which I have unfortunately lost. Had it
been here the reader could have seen with what
consummate generosity Bankim Babu had taken
the sting out of that unfortunate episode.

PART VIII

(41) The Steamer Hulk

ER E D by an advertisement in some
paper my brother Jyotirindra went off
one afternoon to an auction sale, and
on his return informed us that he had bought a
steel hulk for seven thousand rupees; all that
now remained being to put in an engine and
some cabins for it to become a full-fledged
steamer.

My brother must have thought it a great shame
that our countrymen should have their tongues
and pens going, but not a single line of steamers.
As I have narrated before, he had tried to light
matches for his country, but no amount of rubbing
availed to make them strike. He had also wanted
power-looms to work, but after all his travail only
one little country towel was born, and then the
loom stopped. And now that he wanted Indian
steamers to ply, he bought an empty old hulk,
which in due course, was filled, not only with
engines and cabins, but with loss and ruin as well.
And yet we should remember that all the loss
and hardship due to his endeavours fell on him
alone, while the gain of experience remained in
reserve for the whole country. It is these uncal-
culating, unbusinesslike spirits who keep the

255

256 MY REMINISCENCES

business-fields of the country flooded with their
activities. And, though the flood subsides as
rapidly as it comes, it leaves behind fertilising silt
to enrich the soil. When the time for reaping ar-
rives no one thinks of these pioneers; but those
who have cheerfully staked and lost their all,
during life, are not likely, after death, to mind this
further loss of being forgotten.

On one side was the European Flotilla Company,
on the other my brother Jyotirindra alone; and
how tremendous waxed that battle of the mercan-
tile fleets, the people of Khulna and Barisal may
still remember. Under the stress of competition
steamer was added to steamer, loss piled on loss,
while the income dwindled till it ceased to be
worth while to print tickets. The golden age
dawned on the steamer service between Khulna
and Barisal. Not only were the passengers carried
free of charge, but they were offered light refresh-
ments gratis as well! Then was formed a band of
volunteers who, with flags and patriotic songs,
marched the passengers in procession to the Indian
line of steamers. So while there was no want of
passengers to carry, every other kind of want
began to multiply apace.

Arithmetic remained uninfluenced by patriotic
fervour; and while enthusiasm flamed higher and
higher to the tune of patriotic songs, three times

My Brother Jyotirindra

MY REMINISCENCES 257

three went on steadily making nine on the wrong
side of the balance sheet.

One of the misfortunes which always pursues
the unbusinesslike is that, while they are as easy
to read as an open book, they never learn to read
the character of others. And since it takes them
the whole of their lifetime and all their resources
to find out this weakness of theirs, they never get
the chance of profiting by experience. While the
passengers were having free refreshments, the staff
showed no signs of being starved either, but never-
theless the greatest gain remained with my brother
in the ruin he so valiantly faced.

The daily bulletins of victory or disaster which
used to arrive from the theatre of action kept us
in a fever of excitement. Then one day came the
news that the steamer Swadeshi had fouled the
Howrah bridge and sunk. With this last loss my
brother completely overstepped the limits of his
resources, and there was nothing for it but to
wind up the business.

(42) Bereavements

In the meantime death made its appearance in
our family. Before this, I had never met Death
face to face. When my mother died I was quite
a child. She had been ailing for quite a long time,

258 MY REMINISCENCES

and we did not even know when her malady had
taken a fatal turn. She used all along to sleep on
a separate bed in the same room with us. Then
in the course of her illness she was taken for a boat
trip on the river, and on her return a room on the
third storey of the inner apartments was set apart
for her.

On the night she died we were fast asleep in our
room downstairs. At what hour I cannot tell, our
old nurse came running in weeping and crying:
"O my little ones, you have lost your all!" My
sister-in-law rebuked her and led her away, to save
us the sudden shock at dead of night. Half awak-
ened by her words, I felt my heart sink within me,
but could not make out what had happened.
When in the morning we were told of her death,
I could not realize all that it meant for me.

As we came out into the verandah we saw my
mother laid on a bedstead in the courtyard. There
was nothing in her appearance which showed death
to be terrible. The aspect which death wore in
that morning light was as lovely as a calm and
peaceful sleep, and the gulf between life and its
absence was not brought home to us.

Only when her body was taken out by the main
gateway, and we followed the procession to the
cremation ground, did a storm of grief pass through
me at the thought that mother would never return

MY REMINISCENCES 259

by this door and take again her accustomed place
in the affairs of her household. The day wore on,
we returned from the cremation, and as we turned
into our lane I looked up at the house towards
my father's rooms on the third storey. He was
still in the front verandah sitting motionless in
prayer.

She who was the youngest daughter-in-law of
the house took charge of the motherless little ones.
She herself saw to our food and clothing and all
other wants, and kept us constantly near, so that
we might not feel our loss too keenly. One of the
characteristics of the living is the power to heal
the irreparable, to forget the irreplaceable. And
in early life this power is strongest, so that no blow
penetrates too deeply, no scar is left permanently.
Thus the first shadow of death which fell on us
left no darkness behind; it departed as softly as
it came, only a shadow.

When, in later life, I wandered about like a
madcap, at the first coming of spring, with a hand-
ful of half-blown jessamines tied in a corner of my
muslin scarf, and as I stroked my forehead with
the soft, rounded, tapering buds, the touch of my
mother's fingers would come back to me; and I
clearly realised that the tenderness which dwelt
in the tips of those lovely fingers was the very
same as that which blossoms every day in the

26o MY REMINISCENCES

\

purity of these jessamine buds; and that whether
we know it or not, this tenderness is on the earth
in boundless measure.

The acquaintance which I made with Death at
the age of twenty-four was a permanent one, and
its blow has continued to add itself to each suc-
ceeding bereavement in an ever lengthening chain
of tears. The lightness of infant life can skip aside
from the greatest of calamities, but with age eva-
sion is not so easy, and the shock of that day I
had to take full on my breast.

That there could be any gap in the unbroken
procession of the joys and sorrows of life was a
thing I had no idea of. I could therefore see
nothing beyond, and this life I had accepted as
all in all. When of a sudden death came and in a
moment made a gaping rent in its smooth-seeming
fabric, I was utterly bewildered. All around, the
trees, the soil, the water, the sun, the moon, the
stars, remained as immovably true as before; and
yet the person who was as truly there, who, through
a thousand points of contact with life, mind, and
heart, was ever so much more true for me, had
vanished in a moment like a dream. What per-
plexing self-contradiction it all seemed to me as
I looked around! How was I ever to recon-
cile that which remained with that which had
gone ?

MY REMINISCENCES 261

The terrible darkness which was disclosed to me
through this rent, continued to attract me night
and day as time went on. I would ever and anon
return to take my stand there and gaze upon it,
wondering what there was left in place of what
had gone. Emptiness is a thing man cannot bring
himself to believe in; that which is not, is untrue;
that which is untrue, is not. So our efforts to find
something, where we see nothing, are unceasing.

Just as a young plant, surrounded by darkness,
stretches itself, as it were on tiptoe, to find its
way out into the light, so when death suddenly
throws the darkness of negation round the soul it
tries and tries to rise into the light of affirmation.
And what other sorrow is comparable to the state
wherein darkness prevents the finding of a way
out of the darkness ?

And yet in the midst of this unbearable grief,
flashes of joy seemed to sparkle in my mind, now
and again, in a way which quite surprised me.
That life was not a stable permanent fixture was
itself the sorrowful tidings which helped to lighten
my mind. That we were not prisoners for ever
within a solid stone wall of life was the thought
which unconsciously kept coming uppermost in
rushes of gladness. That which I had held I was
made to let go — this was the sense of loss which
distressed me, — but when at the same moment I

262 MY REMINISCENCES

viewed it from the standpoint of freedom gained,
a great peace fell upon me.

The all-pervading pressure of worldly existence
compensates itself by balancing life against death,
and thus it does not crush us. The terrible weight
of an unopposed life force has not to be endured
by man, — this truth came upon me that day as
a sudden, wonderful revelation.

With the loosening of the attraction of the world,
the beauty of nature took on for me a deeper
meaning. Death had given me the correct per-
spective from which to perceive the world in the
fulness of its beauty, and as I saw the picture of
the Universe against the background of Death I
found it entrancing.

At this time I was attacked with a recrudescence
of eccentricity in thought and behaviour. To be
called upon to submit to the customs and fashions
of the day, as if they were something soberly and
genuinely real, made me want to laugh. I could
not take them seriously. The burden of stopping
to consider what other people might think of me
was completely lifted off my mind. I have been
about in fashionable book shops with a coarse sheet
draped round me as my only upper garment, and
a pair of slippers on my bare feet. Through hot
and cold and wet I used to sleep out on the ver-
andah of the third storey. There the stars and

MY REMINISCENCES 263

I could gaze at each other, and no time was lost
in greeting the dawn.

This phase had nothing to do with any ascetic
feeling. It was more like a holiday spree as the
result of discovering the schoolmaster Life with
his cane to be a myth, and thereby being able to
shake myself free from the petty rules of his school.
If, on waking one fine morning we were to find
gravitation reduced to only a fraction of itself,
would we still demurely walk along the high road?
Would we not rather skip over many-storied
houses for a change, or on encountering the monu-
ment take a flying jump, rather than trouble to
walk round it? That was why, with the weight of
worldly life no longer clogging my feet, I could
not stick to the usual course of convention.

Alone on the terrace in the darkness of night I
groped all over like a blind man trying to find
upon the black stone gate of death some device or
sign. Then when I woke with the morning light
falling on that unscreened bed of mine, I felt, as
I opened my eyes, that my enveloping haze was
becoming transparent; and, as on the clearing of
the mist the hills and rivers and forests of the scene
shine forth, so the dew-washed picture of the world-
life, spread out before me, seemed to become re-
newed and ever so beautiful.

264 MY REMINISCENCES

(43) The Rains and Autumn

According to the Hindu calendar, each year is
ruled by a particular planet. So have I found that
in each period of life a particular season assumes
a special importance. When I look back to my
childhood I can best recall the rainy days. The
wind-driven rain has flooded the verandah floor.
The row of doors leading into the rooms are all
closed. Peari, the old scullery maid, is coming
from the market, her basket laden with vegetables,
wading through the slush and drenched with the
rain. And for no rhyme or reason I am careering
about the verandah in an ecstasy of joy.

This also comes back to me: — I am at school,
our class is held in a colonnade with mats as outer
screens; cloud upon cloud has come up during the
afternoon, and they are now heaped up, covering
the sky; and as we look on, the rain comes down
in close thick showers, the thunder at intervals
rumbling long and loud; some mad woman with
nails of lightning seems to be rending the sky from
end to end; the mat walls tremble under the blasts
of wind as if they would be blown in; we can hardly
see to read, for the darkness. The Pandit gives
us leave to close our books. Then leaving the
storm to do the romping and roaring for us, we
keep swinging our dangling legs; and my mind goes

MY REMINISCENCES 265

right away across the far-off unending moor
through which the Prince of the fairy tale
passes.

I remember, moreover, the depth of the Sravan l
nights. The pattering of the rain finding its way
through the gaps of my slumber, creates within a
gladsome restfulness deeper than the deepest sleep.
And in the wakeful intervals I pray that the morn-
ing may see the rain continue, our lane under
water, and the bathing platform of the tank sub-
merged to the last step.

But at the age of which I have just been telling,
Autumn is on the throne beyond all doubt. Its
life is to be seen spread under the clear trans-
parent leisure of Aswin.^ And in the molten gold
of this autumn sunshine, softly reflected from
the fresh dewy green outside, I am pacing the
verandah and composing, in the mode Jogiya,
the song:

In this morning light I do not know what it is that
my heart desires.

The autumn day wears on, the house gong
sounds 12 noon, the mode changes; though my

irThe month corresponding to July-August, the height of the
rainy season.

2 The month of Aswin corresponds to September-October, the long
vacation time for Bengal.

266 MY REMINISCENCES

mind is still filled with music, leaving no room for
call of work or duty; and I sing:

What idle play is this with yourself, my heart,
through the listless hours?

Then in the afternoon I am lying on the white
floorcloth of my little room, with a drawing book
trying to draw pictures, — by no means an arduous
pursuit of the pictorial muse, but just a toying
with the desire to make pictures. The most im-
portant part is that which remains in the mind,
and of which not a line gets drawn on the paper.
And in the meantime the serene autumn afternoon
is filtering through the walls of this little Calcutta
room filling it, as a cup, with golden intoxication.

I know not why, but all my days of that period
I see as if through this autumn sky, this autumn
light — the autumn which ripened for me my songs
as it ripens the corn for the tillers; the autumn which
filled my granary of leisure with radiance; the au-
tumn which flooded my unburdened mind with an
unreasoning joy in fashioning song and story.

The great difference which I see between the
Rainy-season of my childhood and the Autumn of
my youth is that in the former it is outer Nature
which closely hemmed me in keeping me enter-
tained with its numerous troupe, its variegated
make-up, its medley of music; while the festivity

MY REMINISCENCES 267

which goes on in the shining light of autumn is
in man himself. The play of cloud and sunshine
is left in the background, while the murmurs of
joy and sorrow occupy the mind. It is our gaze
which gives to the blue of the autumn sky its
wistful tinge and human yearning which gives
poignancy to the breath of its breezes.

My poems have now come to the doors of men.
Here informal goings and comings are not allowed.
There is door after door, chamber within chamber.
How many times have we to return with only a
glimpse of the light in the window, only the sound
of the pipes from within the palace gates lingering
in our ears. Mind has to treat with mind, will to
come to terms with will, through many tortuous
obstructions, before giving and taking can come
about. The foundation of life, as it dashes into
these obstacles, splashes and foams over in laughter
and tears, and dances and whirls through eddies
from which one cannot get a definite idea of its
course.

(44) Sharps and Flats

Sharps and Flats is a serenade from the streets
in front of the dwelling of man, a plea to be allowed
an entry and a place within that house of mystery.

This world is sweet, — I do not want to die.
I wish to dwell in the ever-living life of Man.

268 MY REMINISCENCES

This is the prayer of the individual to the universal
life.

When I started for my second voyage to Eng-
land, I made the acquaintance on board ship of
Asutosh Chaudhuri. He had just taken the M. A.
degree of the Calcutta University and was on his
way to England to join the Bar. We were together
only during the few days the steamer took from
Calcutta to Madras, but it became quite evident
that depth of friendship does not depend upon
length of acquaintance. Within this short time
he so drew me to him by his simple natural qual-
ities of heart, that the previous life-long gap in
our acquaintance seemed always to have been
filled with our friendship.

When Ashu came back from England he became
one of us.1 He had not as yet had time or op-
portunity to pierce through all the barriers with
which his profession is hedged in, and so become
completely immersed in it. The money-bags of
his clients had not yet sufficiently loosened the
strings which held their gold, and Ashu was still
an enthusiast in gathering honey from various
gardens of literature. The spirit of literature which
then saturated his being had nothing of the musti-
ness of library morocco about it, but was fragrant
with the scent of unknown exotics from over the

1 Referring to his marriage with the writer's niece, Pratibha. TV.

MY REMINISCENCES 269

seas. At his invitation I enjoyed many a picnic
amidst the spring time of those distant woodlands.

He had a special taste for the flavour of French
literature. I was then writing the poems which
came to be published in the volume entitled Kadi
o Komal, Sharps and Flats. Ashu could discern re-
semblances between many of my poems and old
French poems he knew. According to him the
common element in all these poems was the at-
traction which the play of world-life had for the
poet, and this had found varied expression in each
and every one of them. The unfulfilled desire to
enter into this larger life was the fundamental
motive throughout.

"I will arrange and publish these poems for
you," said Ashu, and accordingly that task was
entrusted to him. The poem beginning This world
is sweet was the one he considered to be the key-
note of the whole series and so he placed it at the
beginning of the volume.

Ashu was very possibly right. When in child-
hood I was confined to the house, I offered my
heart in my wistful gaze to outside nature in all
its variety through the openings in the parapet
of our inner roof-terrace. In my youth the world
of men in the same way exerted a powerful at-
traction on me. To that also I was then an out-
sider and looked out upon it from the roadside.

2/o MY REMINISCENCES

My mind standing on the brink called out, as it
were, with an eager waving of hands to the ferry-
man sailing away across the waves to the other
side. For Life longed to start on life's journey.

It is not true that my peculiarly isolated social
condition was the bar to my plunging into the
midst of the world-life. I see no sign that those
of my countrymen who have been all their lives
in the thick of society feel, any more than I did,
the touch of its living intimacy. The life of our
country has its high banks, and its flight of steps,
and, on its dark waters falls the cool shade of the
ancient trees, while from within the leafy branches
over-head the koel cooes forth its ravishing old-
time song. But for all that it is stagnant water.
Where is its current, where are the waves, when
does the high tide rush in from the sea?

Did I then get from the neighbourhood on the
other side of our lane an echo of the victorious
paean with which the river, falling and rising, wave
after wave, cuts its way through walls of stone
to the sea? No! My life in its solitude was simply
fretting for want of an invitation to the place
where the festival of world-life was being held.

Man is overcome by a profound depression while
nodding through his voluptuously lazy hours of
seclusion, because in this way he is deprived of full
commerce with life. Such is the despondency

MY REMINISCENCES 271

from which I have always painfully struggled to
get free. My mind refused to respond to the
cheap intoxication of the political movements of
those days, devoid, as they seemed, of all strength
of national consciousness, with their complete ig-
norance of the country, their supreme indifference
to real service of the motherland. I was tormented
by a furious impatience, an intolerable dissatis-
faction with myself and all around me. Much
rather, I said to myself, would I be an Arab
Bedouin!

While in other parts of the world there is no end
to the movement and clamour of the revelry of
free life, we, like the beggar maid, stand outside
and longingly look on. When have we had the
wherewithal to deck ourselves for the occasion
and go and join in it? Only in a country where
the spirit of separation reigns supreme, and in-
numerable petty barriers divide one from another,
need this longing to realise the larger life of the
world in one's own remain unsatisfied.

I strained with the same yearning towards the
world of men in my youth, as I did in my child-
hood towards outside nature from within the chalk-
ring drawn round me by the servants. How rare,
how unattainable, how far away it seemed! And
yet if we cannot get into touch with it, if from it no
breeze can blow, no current come, if no road be

272 MY REMINISCENCES

there for the free goings and comings of travellers,
then the dead things that accumulate around us
never get removed, but continue to be heaped up
till they smother all life.

During the Rains there are only dark clouds and
showers. And in the Autumn there is the play of
light and shade in the sky, but that is not all-
absorbing; for there is also the promise of corn in
the fields. So in my poetical career, when the
rainy season was in the ascendant there were only
my vaporous fancies which stormed and showered;
my utterance was misty, my verses were wild.
And with the Sharps and Flats of my Autumn,
not only was there the play of cloud-effects in the
sky, but out of the ground crops were to be seen
rising. Then, in the commerce with the world of
reality, both language and metre attempted def-
initeness and variety of form.

Thus ends another Book. The days of coming
together of inside and outside, kin and stranger,
are closing in upon my life. My life's journey has
now to be completed through the dwelling places
of men. And the good and evil, joy and sorrow,
which it thus encountered, are not to be lightly
viewed as pictures. What makings and breakings,
victories and defeats, clashings and minglings, are
here going on!

I have not the power to disclose and display the

MY REMINISCENCES 273

supreme art with which the Guide of my life is
joyfully leading me through all its obstacles, an-
tagonisms and crookednesses towards the fulfil-
ment of its innermost meaning. And if I cannot
make clear all the mystery of this design, whatever
else I may try to show is sure to prove misleading
at every step. To analyse the image is only to
get at its dust, not at the joy of the artist.

So having escorted them to the door of the inner
sanctuary I take leave of my readers.

Printed in the United States of America

following pages contain advertisements of
Macmillan books by the same author.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Personality

Cloth, izmo.

Herein are brought together some of the lectures which Sir Rabin-
dranath Tagore delivered while in this country. Among those in-
cluded are found: What is Art? The World of Personality, The
Second Birth, My School and Meditation. Many of the thousands
of people who heard Sir Rabindranath speak on these different sub-
jects will doubtless be glad of the opportunity here presented for
further study of his thoughts and philosophy.

Songs of Kabir

Cloth, I2mo, $1.25. Leather, $1.75.

"Tagore has given his songs their melodic English translation
and Miss Evelyn Underbill has prepared an excellent preface for the
volume which outlines the life and philosophy of 'Kabir.'" Review
of Reviews.

"No one in the least sympathetic to spiritual aspiration can read
these outpourings without catching fire at their flame and getting a
sense of supernal things. Tagore, a kindred spirit, has done a serv-
ice in making this old mystic, whose soul experiences did not make
him abstract, whose high song was that of the ascetic, but of a weaver
who trod the common ways of man, known to English readers."
Bellman, Minneapolis, Minn.

"Upon the reality of life he erects his faith, and buttresses it with
whatever of devotional good he may find in any religion. No ascetic,
Kabir pictures the mystic world of his belief with a beautiful richness
of symbolism." Philadelphia Public Ledger.

"Not only students of Indian literature or of comparative religions
will welcome this striking translation of a fifteenth-century Indian
mystic. Every one who is capable of responding to an appeal to cast
off the swathings of formalism and come out into spiritual freedom,
every one who is sensitive to poetry that, while highly symbolical,
is yet clear and simple and full of beauty, will read it with interest
and with heart-quickening." New York Times.

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The Cycle of Spring : A Play

Cloth, I2mo, $1.25. Leather, $1.75.

This, the latest and richest of the author's plays, was
recently performed in the courtyard of his Calcutta home
by the masters and boys of Shantiniketan. The success
was immense: and naturally, for the spirit of the play is
the spirit of universal youth, rilled with laughter and
lyric fervour, jest and pathos and resurgence: immortal
youth whose every death is a rebirth, every winter an
enfolded spring.

"All the joy, the buoyancy, the resilience, the indomit-
able and irrepressible hopefulness of Youth are compacted
in the lines of the play. The keynote is sounded, with
subtle symbolism, in the Prelude, in which the King ranks
above all matters of State or of Humanity the circum-
stances that two gray hairs had made their appearance
behind the ear that morning. . . . Dramatic power,
philosophy and lyric charm are brilliantly blended in a
work of art that has the freshness and the promise of its
theme." New York Tribune.

"A more beautiful play than 'The Cycle of Spring'
by Sir Rabindranath Tagore it would be hard to find in
all literature. It embodies the spirit of youth, and one
can almost hear in it the laughter of the eternally young.
. . . Not only the glamor of the Orient but the breath of
Undying Youth is in this work of Tagore, a genius so
peculiar to India, so utterly inartificial, so completely
of imagination all compact that his colossal power begotten
of Fairyland and the World of Visions makes us poor
Occidentals look very small indeed." Rochester Post
Express.

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The Hungry Stones and Other Stories

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"These short stories furnish a double guaranty of the Hindu Nobel
Prize winner's rightful place among the notable literary figures of
our times." New York Globe.

"Imagination, charm of style, poetry, and depth of feeling with-
out gloominess, characterize this volume of stories of the Eastern
poet. This new volume of his work which introduces him to English
readers as a short-story writer is as significant of his power as are the
verses that have preceded it." Boston Transcript.

"A book of strange, beautiful, widely varying tales. Through
them all, the thread on which the beautiful beads are strung is the
poet's mystic philosophy." New York Times.

"The unutterable fascination of the Orient will be found in all
these beautiful tales. Exquisite art unlike that of any other living
writer. Rabindranath Tagore is one of the magicians of modern
literature — a transcendently great genius who brings to mammon-
worshipping Western minds the fantasy, the enchantment, and the
wonder of the Orient." Rochester Post Express.

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Stray Birds

Frontispiece and Decorations by Willy Pogany

isrno, $1.50.

Written during his present visit to America, this book
may be said to contain the essence of all Tagore's poetry
and philosophy, revealed by many aphorisms, epigrams
and sayings.

Here is the kernel of the wisdom and insight of the
great Hindu seer in the form of short extracts. These
sayings are the essence of his Eastern message to the
Western world. The frontispiece and decorations by
Willy Pogany are beautiful in themselves, and enhance
the spiritual significance of this extraordinary book.

"Each reflects some aspect of beauty, in thought or in
nature, or some of the many-sided philosophical reflections
of the author. In one sense these stray birds are tiny
prose poems, a fact which makes the dedication of the
volume to 'T. Kara, of Yokohama,' peculiarly appropri-
ate, for they all suggest the delicacy and minuteness of
Japanese poetry as it is known to us in translation."
Philadelphia Public Ledger.

"Pleasing and inspiring." Boston Daily Advertiser.

"His utterances have something of the elusive delicacy
of memories of moral experiences out of a remote past."
Nation.

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913. Author of "Gitan-
jali," "The Gardener," "The Crescent Moon," "Sad-
hana."

Chitra

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

Cloth, ismo, $1.00. Leather, $1.75.

"The play is told with the simplicity and wonder of
imagery always characteristic of Rabindranath Tagore."
Cleveland Plain Dealer.

"All the poetry of Tagore is here." . . . Poetry
Journal.

"Beautiful and marked by skilful rhythm." Newark
Evening News.

"A clear portrayal of the dual nature of womankind."
Graphic.

"The play is finely idyllic." Chicago Daily Tribune.

"A pretty situation, prettily worked out. And there
is something piquant in the combination of the old Hindu
metaphorical style, half mystical in allusion, with what
is really a plea for the emancipation of women." The
Nation.

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Fruit Gathering

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"A shining pathway up which we can confidently
travel to those regions of wisdom and experience which
consciously or unconsciously we strive to reach." Boston
Transcript.

"Quaintly lovely fragments." Chicago Herald.

"Exquisitely conceived and with all the distinctive
grace which marked 'Song Offerings.'" San Francisco
Chronicle.

"Exotic fragrance." Chicago Daily News.

"The songs have the quality of universality — the
greatest quality which poetry can possess." Chicago
Tribune.

"As perfect in form as they are beautiful and poignant
in content." The Athen&um, London.

" Nothing richer nor sweeter. . . . Something of Omar
Khayyam and something of Rabbi ben Ezra, expressed
more at length and more mystically. In smoothly flowing
rhythms, with vivid little pictures of life's activities, the
poet sings of old age, the fruit gathering time, its sadness
and its glory, its advantages and its sorrows." The Boston
Globe.

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The Post Office

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"... filled with tender pathos and spiritual beauty. There are two acts,
and the story is that of a frail little Indian lad condemned to seclusion and
inaction by ill health. He makes a new world for himself, however, by his
imagination and insatiable curiosity, and the passersby bring the world of
action to him. The play has been presented in England by the Irish Players,
and fully adapts itself to the charming simplicity and charm which are their
principal characteristics." Phtta. Public Ledger.

"A beautiful and appealing piece of dramatic work." Boston Transcript.

"Once more Tagore demonstrates the universality of his genius; once more
he shows how art and true feeling know no racial and no religious lines."
Kentucky Post.

" One reads in ' The Post Office ' his own will of symbolism. Simplicity and
a pervading, appealing pathos are the qualities transmitted to its lines by
the poet." N. Y. World.

"He writes from his soul; there is neither bombast nor didacticism. His
poems bring one to the quiet places where the soul speaks to the soul surely
but serenely." N. Y. American.

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The King of the Dark Chamber

By

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913; Author of "Gitan-
gali," "The Gardener," "The Crescent Moon,"
" Sadhana," " Chitra," "The Post-Office," etc. Cloth
12 mo, $1.25; leather, $1.75.

"The real poetical imagination of it is unchangeable;
the allegory, subtle and profound and yet simple, is cast
into the form of a dramatic narrative, which moves with
unconventional freedom to a finely impressive climax; and
the reader, who began in idle curiosity, finds his intelligence
more and more engaged until, when he turns the last page,
he has the feeling of one who has been moving in worlds
not realized, and communing with great if mysterious

presences."

The London Globe.

PUBLISHED BY

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OTHER WORKS BY

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913

GITANJALI (Song Offerings). A Collection of Prose Translations made by

the author from the original Bengali. New Edition $1.25

THE GARDENER, Poems of Youth $1.25

THE CRESCENT MOON. Child Poems. (Colored 111.) $^25

SADHANA: THE REALIZATION OF LIFE. A volume of

essays $1.25

All four by Rabindranath Tagore, translated by the author from the
original Bengali.

Rabindranath Tagore is the Hindu poet and preacher to whom the Nobel
Prize was recently awarded. . . .

I would commend these volumes, and especially the one entitled "Sad-
hana," the collection of essays, to all intelligent readers. I know of nothing,
except it be Maeterlinck, in the whole modern range of the literature of the
inner life that can compare with them.

There are no preachers nor writers upon spiritual topics, whether in Europe
or America, that have the depth of insight, the quickness of religious apper-
ception, combined with the intellectual honesty and scientific clearness of
Tagore. . . .

Here is a book from a master, free as the a'r, with a mind universal as the
sunshine. He writes, of course, from the standpoint of the Hindu. But,
strange to say, his spirit and teaching come nearer to Jesus, as we find Him
in the Gospels, than any modern Christian writer I know.

He does for the average reader what Bergson and Eucken are doing for
scholars; he rescues the soul and its faculties from their enslavement to
logic-chopping. He shows us the way back to Nature and her spiritual
voices.

He rebukes our materialistic, wealth-mad, Western life with the dignity
and authority of one of the old Hebrew prophets. . . .

He opens up the meaning of life. He makes us feel the redeeming fact that
life is tremendous, a worth-while adventure. "Everything has sprung from
immortal life and is vibrating with life. LIFE IS IMMENSE." . . .

Tagore is a great human being. His heart is warm with love. His thoughts
are pure and high as the galaxy.

(Copyright, 1913, by Frank Crane.) Reprinted by permission from the
New York Globe, Dec. 18, 1913.

PUBLISHED BY

MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

9253

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title:My reminiscences

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item id: 31 761005787825

due: 5/1 1/2004,23: 59