"...Our greatest poet is Rabindranath. Along with many other types of literary creations, he has also given us humor. Yet, how often does anyone stop to think the extent of painful events that filled his life? I am entirely convinced that any other ordinary person could never lead a normal and healthy life if subjected to such unrelenting heartbreaks and tragedies. Yet, observing Rabindranath one could never guess the vastness of the grief he carried in his heart. He not only did not allow himself to suffer a breakdown, but, moreover, he never acted against his Dharma under the most excruciating blasts of personal sorrow - i.e., he never deviated from his Dharma, which was poetic creativity. Speaking about him, his Rishi-like eldest brother would say, "We all have slipped and fallen. Rabi never did."
Rabindranath never received the love of his mother (his mother died when he was quite young - author). But when he was about seven or eight, his brother (fifth eldest, Jyotirindranath- author) was married and brought home Kadambari Devi. Tagore and Kadambari were about the same age. But perhaps because the mother's instinct comes early to women, Kadambari filled for Tagore the void left by the death of his mother. To this young brother- in-law of her own age, she had extended great affection and love. Readers may find details of this in Prabhat Mukhopadhyay's Rabindra-Jivani.
This dearly beloved sister-in-law committed suicide when Tagore was twenty-two. The depth of his overwhelming grief at this event has found expression again and again in his poetry (Tumi Ki Kebali Chhabi- Are you only a portrait?- is one such poem/song- author). When Professor Amiya Chakravarty's brother committed suicide, an aging poet consoled him in a letter- this letter, too, is mentioned in the Rabindra-Jivani. I invite readers to read it. What astounding strength of character enables a man to find the tranquility of imperturbable meditation despite such overwhelming tragedy, and then express himself in such manifold rhythms of songs and poetry with which to fill the hearts of readers and listeners with indescribable gladness mixed with sorrow and joy? The poet's personal losses metamorphosed into timeless and priceless treasures of Bengal's poetry.
Then he lost his elder brother and his inspiring Father- I mention this almost in passing, and not for the sake of keeping accounts!
Since then, not even twenty years had elapsed- when there came bereavement after devastating bereavement. First to depart was his wife. She had not quite completed thirty. She died within months after his eldest daughter Madhurilata (nicknamed Bela- author) was married; she left behind three daughters and two sons. The eldest was fifteen, the youngest seven. Except for Madhurilata, the upbringing of the remaining children fell in Rabindranath's hands. Rabindranath's disciple Ajit Chakravarty's (author of Kavya-Parikrama) mother told me twenty years after the death of the poet's wife that the kind of unstinting love and nursing that Mrinalini Devi (Tagore's wife- author) received from her husband when she was confined to her sickbed was unlike anything she had known a woman could get from her husband. She said that despite repeated requests from his wife for him to get his rest, he waved a hand-fan over her night after night.
Anyone familiar with Rabindranath's poetry should know how intimately this death revealed the mysteries of life to the extraordinarily sensitive poet. Rabindranath was about forty or forty-one then- he looked thiry or thirty-one, such was his robust health. Yet, he never married again.
Months after this, his second daughter Renuka became gravely ill. When her ailment was diagnosed as tuberculosis, I have not the ability to describe how desperately the poet tried to save her life. Rabindranath has himself described it a little- he did not know then that this girl would leave him shortly. Despite her illness, this girl was full of life and restlessness. The few happy moments father and daughter had inside a train on their way to a health resort may be gleaned from the poem Phanki (Deception) in Palataka (The Fugitive):
(When treatment for a year and a half wore out her bones
Then they said, "Needs a change of air".
Readers, note the word "Then" in these lines. Not when the disease was in its early stages- only when death was very near. This painful experience is common to the relatives of many tuberculosis patients.)
Two untimely deaths in less than two years- completely meaningless, entirely without any correlation, as though God decided to inflict pain merely for the sake of pain. Four years after this, his youngest son, Shamindranath, then thirteen, had gone to Munger (also known as Monghyr) on a trip with a friend. "There Shamindranath came down with cholera; receiving a telegram the poet left Calcutta for Munger. Rabindranath himself wrote in a letter at this time, "What you have heard is not incorrect. Bhola had gone to Munger to his maternal uncle's; Shami, too, went with him; he never returned."
I have heard many say, Shamindra was the most favorite of his father's children . Prabhat Mukhopadhyay says that, "In appearance and nature, he was much like his Father."
"Shamindra's mother had passed away exactly five years ago the same day"- Prabhat Mukhopadhyay.
Some years later Rabindranath wrote a poem in memory of this son which had the lines,
"When Biju went away to that world beyond death,
Cutting away the many bonds of his Father-
It felt as though the dawn in my room had died from a bursting heart.
Again, untimely death. Maybe God alone knows "In his scheme of things"- why is this ever necessary? Shami is not our son, yet what human out there does not feel his heart burst upon reading this poem? In my life I have read this poem only once. I couldn't read it a second time.
After this, not even a decade had passed. His eldest child, daughter Madhurilata, contracted tuberculosis as well. Prabhat Mukhopadhyay has written, "I have heard too, that Madhuri's husband was not on good terms with the Tagores."... Rabindranath would travel at midday to visit his daughter in a covered coach. His son-in-law would then be in Court. All afternoon, he would tell his daughter stories. Or perhaps read her poems. Perhaps one or two of these have found their way into his Palataka (The Fugitive- author ) collection, even though the name came much later.
One afternoon, no sooner had his coach arrived in front of the house than he heard the sound of great weeping from within. The poet immediately ordered the coachman to turn the coach around. He did not enter the house. I am told, this daughter would wait eagerly for her Father's writings. In Bhagalpur, in Calcutta.
A great many years later, a friend of this daughter, the novelist Anurupa Devi (whose in-laws were also from Bhagalpur) wrote, "A few drops of tear fell from the poet's eyes in remembering his daughter." I believe we can find reference to this daughter in Palataka's Mukti (Freedom).
I have said before, the poet would tell Madhurilata stories by her sickbed. Perhaps near the end he had realized with much sorrow that this daughter, too, would not survive. At this time, he understood that his wife, son, daughters- they are all escaping much before their time- they are all "Fugitives". Hence, months after Madhurilata's death, the collection The Fugitives came out. In this book, we find the indelible mark of Madhuri, Renuka and Shami. Perhaps there are others too, but maybe because they are not relatives, it is difficult to identify them. In Palataka's last poem, Shesh Pratishtha (Last Foundation), we find:
I hear this often, "Is gone, Is gone"
Yet say I this
Do not say "Is not".
...
There I wish to immerse my Life
In the ocean where "Is" and "Is Not" fulfilled remain equal."
This poem is for all fugitives. Yet, the question remains, how can "Is" and "Is Not" find equality? The poet answered this at the time of the last tragedy of his life, an answer which I do not know will satisfy all.
After almost all the "Fugitives" had escaped, the poet was left with only his son Rathindranath and daughter Mira. This Mira-di had a son and a daughter. How much affection Rabindranath poured upon this grandson is well known to all the ashramites from then. Let me state on the personal side - even though Nitu was about nine years younger than me, he would often come to my room in the hostel. He was very handsome. Often, if he would come dressed in a fine dhoti and kurta, he would look fabulous- we would ask, "Who helped you with your dress, little one?"
He would not answer, only smile a little. Jiten Hore of Chittagong would say, "Must be Dadamoshai (Grandfather, implying Tagore- author). I would say "Maybe Mother" ... This Nitu went to Europe. Died there of tuberculosis at nineteen or twenty. No one would have the heart to describe this last tragedy. The poet was then seventy-one. First his own grief, and to top that, his daughter's- the son-bereaved mother's grief.
... (Quoted from Nirmalkumari Mahalanobis' Baishey Sravan): ... He (Tagore) received a letter from Andrews that Nitu was a little better.
"The next morning we read in the newspaper a telegram from Reuter, six days before, on 7th August, Nitu died in Germany. So how were we to break this news to Rabindranath? Finally, it was decided that we call Rathindranath and Pratima Devi from Khardah by telephone, and all four of us go the poet to tell him about it. After Pratima-di and Rathi-da arrived, we all went to the poet's room (at the Mahalanobis home- author) and sat down. The poet asked Rathindranath, "Have you heard the news about Nitu, he is better now, isn't it?" Rathibabu replied, "No, the news isn't good." At first the poet did not quite follow. He said, "Better? Yesterday, Andrews, too has written to me that Nitu is much better. Perhaps in a few days we can bring him home." At this, Rathibabu raised his voice with an effort and said, "No, the news is not good. It's in today's paper." Immediately, the poet sort of froze; he stared at Rathibabu's face. A few tears fell from his eyes. A few moments later, in a calm and steady voice, he said, "Let Bouma (a word used to address his daughter-in-law- author) go to Shantiniketan today; Buri (his grand-daughter, Nitu's sister- author) is alone there. I shall go tomorrow, you (Rathindranath) must go with me"."
Nitu's mother had gone to Germany upon hearing of his illness. A few days before she returned to Bombay, Rabindranath wrote her a letter to the Bombay address. In it, there is the answer to the question about "Is" and "Is Not". Therein, he wrote, "The night Shami left, I had prayed with all my heart that may he find his movement at will in the Universal Consciousness, may my grieving not pull him back the least bit. Likewise, when I heard of Nitu's departure, I said many times for days after, I have no duties left, all I can do is wish that in the Immeasurable Absolute where he finds his place, may he be blessed there. Our caring does not reach there, but maybe our love does- why else does love survive till this very moment?"
This is the substantive word. He "Is Not", yet in my love, he "Is". I salute my Guru, my Gurudev, again and again. Time after time, fighting cruel fate, he has been tormented, yet he never admitted defeat. (This statement by Mujtaba Ali is particularly relevant because he wrote this essay in memory of his own cruel loss some time before- author).
If I may, I would now advise my readers: if they should lose their loved ones, or be separated from them, may they read the above letter. This letter is not by a renunciate soul! Because, in the Gita it is said, the renunciate is "In sorrow unperturbed". Rabindranath would suffer from tragedy just like us- perhaps even more. After all, the compassion of his heart, the sensitivity of his soul, were a million times greater than ours'- yet he would never yield. We are easily vanquished. If this letter delivers even one among us from admitting defeat to the torment of Fate, Rabindranath would be pleased in the other world." ©Monish R. Chatterjee (1991)
Tagore's treatment of time and death has been interpreted as "gentle, ordered, even humorous" by Edward Dimock, Jr. in his The Sound of the Silent Guns (Oxford U. Press, 1989). Arguing that in this respect, Tagore is conceptually at a variance with Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), a member of the "Kallol" group of modern Bengali poets who strove to set themselves up in opposition to the influence of Tagore, Dimock uses the following poems by Tagore as an illustration:
Ah, my queen, is this how you listen to my goodbye?
I see the smile tremble in the corner of your eye.
I've taken false leave of you before,
So you think to yourself:
This man will never go.
He gets to the door and turns;
he'll come back again.
Then if you ask me
I'll tell you the truth-
the doubt is there with me too.
I shall come back.
The days of Spring come back again,
the night of the full moon smiles again,
vakula flowers bloom again on bare branches-
these do not go away.
A thousand times they take their leaves
and return again.
But doubt a little;
do not give immediate answer to the lie.
For a moment of illusion
bring tears to your eye
when I say, sobbing,
"It is time for me to go."
You can laugh when I return.
To quote from Dimock, Jr., "Tagore wrote this poem when he was about thirty- nine... He questions a little, it is true. But he sees a cycle of natural things, and himself as a natural thing, and that he too will return. It is not that he welcomes death. But death is nature, and nature is order, and he is prepared for the cycle of rebirth. He never lost this sense of the order of things, even in his last poems, though the humor of the confident young may no longer be there. In one of his last collections, Arogya, he writes like this:
Evening comes gently; one by one the many knots have slipped
in action's net, in the watch of the day. The day gives
offerings of dew,
unlocking the lion-gate of the west,
its majesty golden
in confluence of light and darkness,
bowed in silent obeisance toward distant morning.
Eyes closed like flowers, the time has come
to immerse
beneath deep meditation,
external self.
Peaceful fluid of constellations, where infinite sky
keeps hidden the unformed essence of the day;
there truth, to find itself, embarks
toward the other shore of night.
The key word of the poem is, I think, santiksetra, "the field of peace," as opposed to the field of war of the Mahabharata: the divine Bhishma will not die but by his own wish, and he dies at the twilight of the year. The place where light and darkness flow together is the sagarsangama, where the river meets the sea, where the individual, the particular, meets the whole, the place where pilgrims go. And when one reaches the other shore of night, beyond the pull of the current of life's river, then there is peace.
To Tagore, time moves in slow, majestic waves, rising up and sinking down again into the sea. Once in a while a passion is crystallized and placed beyond time. The first stanza of his Shah Jahan (fifth of the Grand Moghuls, builder of the Taj Mahal- author) goes like this:
This you used to know, lord of India, Shah Jahan:
life and youth, wealth and honor, floating in the current of time.
Only then inner pain
lives long- let it be. Was this the path along which empire led ?
Power of a king, harsh thunderbolt
like evening's bloody passion; let it be absorbed at the feet of lassitude.
Only a deep sigh
swells eternally; let the sky be merciful:
this was the hope in your heart.
Built of gems, diamonds and pearls
like the magic shimmering of rainbows in empty horizons
let it be hidden.
Only let this one tear-drop
glisten pure upon the cheek of time,
this Taj Mahal.
Shortly after Tagore's death, Jawaharlal Nehru, in a letter to Krishna Kripalani, expressed in moving and eloquent words the feelings of utter amazement and inexpressible wonder which accompany any informed and sincere assessment of his phenomenal and exquisitely beautiful life. Written from a jail cell on August 27, 1941, the letter went in part as follows:
... How long ago it all seems! People must die some time or other and Gurudev could not have lived much longer. And yet his death came as a grievous shock to me and the thought that I would never see his beautiful face and hear his gentle voice again oppressed me terribly. Ever since I came to prison this thought had haunted me. I wanted to see him once again so much. Not that I had anything special to say to him, and certainly I had no desire to trouble him in any way. Perhaps the premonition that I was not fated to see him again itself added to this yearning. However, all that is over and instead of sorrow, let us rather congratulate ourselves that we were privileged to come in contact with this great and magnificent person. Perhaps it is as well that he died when he was still pouring out song and poem and poetry- what amazing creative vitality he had! I would have hated to see him fade away gradually. He died, as he should, in the fullness of his glory.
I have met many big people in various parts of the world. But I have no doubt that in my mind the two biggest I have had the privilege of meeting have been Gandhi and Tagore. I think they have been the two outstanding personalities in the world during the last quarter of a century. As time goes by, I think this will be recognized, when all the generals and field marshals and dictators and shouting politicians are long dead and largely forgotten.
It amazes me that India in spite of her present condition (or is it because of it?) should produce these two mighty men in the course of one generation. And that also convinces me of the deep vitality of India and I am filled with hope, and the petty troubles and conflicts of the day seem trivial and unimportant before this astonishing fact- the continuity of the idea that is India from long ages past to the present day. China affects me in the same way. India and China; how can they perish?
There is another aspect which continually surprises me. Both Gurudev and Gandhiji took much from the West and from other countries, especially Gurudev. Neither was narrowly national. Their message was for the world. And yet both were one hundred percent India's children, and the inheritors, representatives and expositors of her age-old culture. How intensely Indian both have been, in spite of their wide knowledge and culture! The surprising thing is that both of these men with so much in common and drawing inspiration from the same wells of wisdom and thought and culture, should differ from each other so greatly! No two persons could probably differ so much as Gandhi and Tagore! Again, I think of the richness of India's age-long cultural genius which can throw up in the same generation two such master-types, typical of her in every way, yet representing different aspects of her many-sided personality....
In the concluding paragraph of his On the Edges of Time, Tagore's eldest son Rathindranath wrote, "No biography, however laboriously written, could ever give an adequate picture of such a complex personality as his. The subtle nuances of a life so delicately lived could only be expressed by a pen as delicate as his own. As a matter of fact, his writings constitute the best commentary on his life. These reveal him as nothing else does. "You cannot find the poet in his biography," he says in one of his poems. Yes, the poet is to be found in his poems. His poems are his best life-story and may I conclude by saying that his greatest poem is the life he has lived."
Tagore was a creative epoch in whose wake great legions of inspired writers, poets, singers, musicians, linguists, historians, artists and philosophers emerged in India. The extent of his influence on Bengali culture in particular is so enormous that no meaningful account is possible in the space of an article. The enormity of his talent has sometimes had the effect of virtually overshadowing new creative impulses which otherwise have been highly meritorious by most standards. In this respect, in my view, Tagore is at a level comparable to a combination of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Voltaire, or in some intangible ways, perhaps unlike even them- a kind of single-handed renaissance-builder who is simply in a rarest class by himself- the impact of whose genius is far from being fully understood world-wide. The prohibitive (and virtually impossible) task of presenting Tagore's supreme mastery in any other medium outside of Bengali remains one major stumbling block. Yet, I remain hopeful that, perhaps just as it took centuries before a Tulsidas brought the treasures of the Ramayana for the edification of the general and the non-elite in Hindi; a Kashiram Das did the same with the Mahabharata for readers of Bengali; and other great interpreters and exponents of the jewels of Sanskrit literature carried their finds admirably into other media, there will someday emerge the Bhagirathas of the future who will bring the Joy of Reading Tagore (title of an essay by Victoria Ocampo) before people around the world. To accomplish this, I feel, access to the translations and interpretations of Tagore's works should be broadened and not narrowly sheltered, and Tagore's genius, as well as his human limitations in areas of his life and works, must be critically evaluated and not stashed away in a forgotten iron safe of presumed perfection.
Rabindranath Tagore's profuse legacy of creativity, freedom, relentless striving towards perfection, harmony amongst people and harmony of people with nature, the unbounded joy of life which has discovered its own rich resources- these are a priceless gift to Bengal, India, and indeed, the world. Here, I have merely attempted to bring together glimpses and perspectives of that broadest and most magnificent of lives which embraced human life and Man's very existence on earth with such exuberant ecstasy that he once wrote "I do not want to die in this beautiful world, but live in the hearts of men, and find a niche in the sun-sprinkled, flowered forest ... I want to build on this earth my eternal home." Time, alas, takes away even the best among us; yet as humans, our pride can truly know no bounds that one such as this, so full of life and a universal bonding with the best aspirations of humans everywhere, lived among our not-too-distant predecessors, and left for us as everlasting gifts the infinite treasures of his heart. May great inspirations arise in generations yet to come from bathing in that inexhaustible, celestial fount.
References:
Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists, Columbia University Press, New York (1990).
Maitreyi Devi, Mongpu-te Rabindranath (in Bengali), Prima Publications, Calcutta, Eleventh Edition (1989).
Krishna Kripalani, Rabindranath Tagore : A Biography, Visva-Bharati, Calcutta (1980).
Anil Chandra Ghosh, Acharya Jagadish (in Bengali), Presidency Library, Calcutta, Fifth Edition (1958).
Troy Wilson Organ, The Hindu Quest for the Perfection of Man, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio (1970).
Syed Mujtaba Ali, Gurudev O Santiniketan (in Bengali), Mitra and Ghosh Publishers, Calcutta, Sixth Edition (1989).
Edward C. Dimock, Jr., The Place of the Hidden Moon, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago (1966).
Edward C. Dimock, Jr., The Sound of Silent Guns, Oxford Univ. Press, New Delhi (1989).
Rathindranath Tagore, On the Edges of Time, Visva-Bharati, Calcutta, Second Edition (1981).
http://academic.udayton.edu/monishch...e/sadhaka.html