GLIMPSES OF BENGAL

SELECTED FROM THE LETTERS OF

SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE

1885 TO 1895

INTRODUCTION

The letters translated in this book span the most productive period of myliterary life, when, owing to great good fortune, I was young and lessknown. 

Youth being exuberant and leisure ample, I felt the writing of lettersother than business ones to be a delightful necessity. This is a form ofliterary extravagance only possible when a surplus of thought and emotionaccumulates. Other forms of literature remain the author's and are madepublic for his good; letters that have been given to private individualsonce for all, are therefore characterised by the more generousabandonment. 

It so happened that selected extracts from a large number of such lettersfound their way back to me years after they had been written. It had beenrightly conjectured that they would delight me by bringing to mind thememory of days when, under the shelter of obscurity, I enjoyed thegreatest freedom my life has ever known. 

Since these letters synchronise with a considerable part of my publishedwritings, I thought their parallel course would broaden my readers'understanding of my poems as a track is widened by retreading the sameground. Such was my justification for publishing them in a book for mycountrymen. Hoping that the descriptions of village scenes in Bengalcontained in these letters would also be of interest to English readers, the translation of a selection of that selection has been entrusted to onewho, among all those whom I know, was best fitted to carry it out. 

 RABINDRANATH TAGORE. 

 _20th June 1920. _

BANDORA, BY THE SEA, _October_ 1885. 

The unsheltered sea heaves and heaves and blanches into foam. It sets methinking of some tied-up monster straining at its bonds, in front of whosegaping jaws we build our homes on the shore and watch it lashing its tail. What immense strength, with waves swelling like the muscles of a giant!

From the beginning of creation there has been this feud between land andwater: the dry earth slowly and silently adding to its domain andspreading a broader and broader lap for its children; the ocean recedingstep by step, heaving and sobbing and beating its breast in despair. Remember the sea was once sole monarch, utterly free. 

Land rose from its womb, usurped its throne, and ever since the maddenedold creature, with hoary crest of foam, wails and laments continually, like King Lear exposed to the fury of the elements. 

_July 1887. _

I am in my twenty-seventh year. This event keeps thrusting itself beforemy mind--nothing else seems to have happened of late. 

But to reach twenty-seven--is that a trifling thing?--to pass the meridianof the twenties on one's progress towards thirty?--thirty--that is to saymaturity--the age at which people expect fruit rather than fresh foliage. But, alas, where is the promise of fruit? As I shake my head, it stillfeels brimful of luscious frivolity, with not a trace of philosophy. 

Folk are beginning to complain: "Where is that which we expected ofyou--that in hope of which we admired the soft green of the shoot? Are weto put up with immaturity for ever? It is high time for us to know what weshall gain from you. We want an estimate of the proportion of oil whichthe blindfold, mill-turning, unbiased critic can squeeze out of you. "

It has ceased to be possible to delude these people into waitingexpectantly any longer. While I was under age they trustfully gave mecredit; it is sad to disappoint them now that I am on the verge of thirty. But what am I to do? Words of wisdom will not come! I am utterlyincompetent to provide things that may profit the multitude. Beyond asnatch of song, some tittle-tattle, a little merry fooling, I have beenunable to advance. And as the result, those who held high hopes will turntheir wrath on me; but did any one ever beg them to nurse theseexpectations?

Such are the thoughts which assail me since one fine _Bysakh_ morningI awoke amidst fresh breeze and light, new leaf and flower, to find that Ihad stepped into my twenty-seventh year. 

SHELIDAH, 1888. 

Our house-boat is moored to a sandbank on the farther side of the river. Avast expanse of sand stretches away out of sight on every side, with hereand there a streak, as of water, running across, though sometimes whatgleams like water is only sand. 

Not a village, not a human being, not a tree, not a blade of grass--theonly breaks in the monotonous whiteness are gaping cracks which in placesshow the layer of moist, black clay underneath. 

Looking towards the East, there is endless blue above, endless whitebeneath. Sky empty, earth empty too--the emptiness below hard and barren, that overhead arched and ethereal--one could hardly find elsewhere such apicture of stark desolation. 

But on turning to the West, there is water, the currentless bend of theriver, fringed with its high bank, up to which spread the village groveswith cottages peeping through--all like an enchanting dream in the eveninglight. I say "the evening light, " because in the evening we wander out, and so that aspect is impressed on my mind. 

SHAZADPUR, 1890. 

The magistrate was sitting in the verandah of his tent dispensing justiceto the crowd awaiting their turns under the shade of a tree. They set mypalanquin down right under his nose, and the young Englishman received mecourteously. He had very light hair, with darker patches here and there, and a moustache just beginning to show. One might have taken him for awhite-haired old man but for his extremely youthful face. I asked him overto dinner, but he said he was due elsewhere to arrange for a pig-stickingparty. 

As I returned home, great black clouds came up and there was a terrificstorm with torrents of rain. I could not touch a book, it was impossibleto write, so in the I-know-not-what mood I wandered about from room toroom. It had become quite dark, the thunder was continually pealing, thelightning gleaming flash after flash, and every now and then sudden gustsof wind would get hold of the big _lichi_ tree by the neck and giveits shaggy top a thorough shaking. The hollow in front of the house soonfilled with water, and as I paced about, it suddenly struck me that Iought to offer the shelter of the house to the magistrate. 

I sent off an invitation; then after investigation I found the only spareroom encumbered with a platform of planks hanging from the beams, piledwith dirty old quilts and bolsters. Servants' belongings, an excessivelygrimy mat, hubble-bubble pipes, tobacco, tinder, and two wooden chestslittered the floor, besides sundry packing-cases full of useless odds andends, such as a rusty kettle lid, a bottomless iron stove, a discolouredold nickel teapot, a soup-plate full of treacle blackened with dust. In acorner was a tub for washing dishes, and from nails in the wall hung moistdish-clouts and the cook's livery and skull-cap. The only piece offurniture was a rickety dressing-table with water stains, oil stains, milkstains, black, brown, and white stains, and all kinds of mixed stains. Themirror, detached from it, rested against another wall, and the drawerswere receptacles for a miscellaneous assortment of articles from soilednapkins down to bottle wires and dust. 

For a moment I was overwhelmed with dismay; then it was a case of--sendfor the manager, send for the storekeeper, call up all the servants, gethold of extra men, fetch water, put up ladders, unfasten ropes, pull downplanks, take away bedding, pick up broken glass bit by bit, wrench nailsfrom the wall one by one. --The chandelier falls and its pieces strew thefloor; pick them up again piece by piece. --I myself whisk the dirty matoff the floor and out of the window, dislodging a horde of cockroaches, messmates, who dine off my bread, my treacle, and the polish on my shoes. 

The magistrate's reply is brought back; his tent is in an awful state andhe is coming at once. Hurry up! Hurry up! Presently comes the shout: "Thesahib has arrived. " All in a flurry I brush the dust off hair, beard, andthe rest of myself, and as I go to receive him in the drawing-room, I tryto look as respectable as if I had been reposing there comfortably all theafternoon. 

I went through the shaking of hands and conversed with the magistrateoutwardly serene; still, misgivings about his accommodation would now andthen well up within. When at length I had to show my guest to his room, Ifound it passable, and if the homeless cockroaches do not tickle the solesof his feet, he may manage to get a night's rest. 

KALIGRAM, 1891. 

I am feeling listlessly comfortable and delightfully irresponsible. 

This is the prevailing mood all round here. There is a river but it has nocurrent to speak of, and, lying snugly tucked up in its coverlet offloating weeds, seems to think--"Since it is possible to get on withoutgetting along, why should I bestir myself to stir?" So the sedge whichlines the banks knows hardly any disturbance until the fishermen come withtheir nets. 

Four or five large-sized boats are moored near by, alongside each other. On the upper deck of one the boatman is fast asleep, rolled up in a sheetfrom head to foot. On another, the boatman--also basking in thesun--leisurely twists some yarn into rope. On the lower deck in a third, an oldish-looking, bare-bodied fellow is leaning over an oar, staringvacantly at our boat. 

Along the bank there are various other people, but why they come or go, with the slowest of idle steps, or remain seated on their haunchesembracing their knees, or keep on gazing at nothing in particular, no onecan guess. 

The only signs of activity are to be seen amongst the ducks, who, quackingclamorously, thrust their heads under and bob up again to shake off thewater with equal energy, as if they repeatedly tried to explore themysteries below the surface, and every time, shaking their heads, had toreport, "Nothing there! Nothing there!"

The days here drowse all their twelve hours in the sun, and silently sleepaway the other twelve, wrapped in the mantle of darkness. The only thingyou want to do in a place like this is to gaze and gaze on the landscape, swinging your fancies to and fro, alternately humming a tune and noddingdreamily, as the mother on a winter's noonday, her back to the sun, rocksand croons her baby to sleep. 

KALIGRAM, 1891. 

Yesterday, while I was giving audience to my tenants, five or six boysmade their appearance and stood in a primly proper row before me. Before Icould put any question their spokesman, in the choicest of high-flownlanguage, started: "Sire! the grace of the Almighty and the good fortuneof your benighted children have once more brought about your lordship'sauspicious arrival into this locality. " He went on in this strain fornearly half an hour. Here and there he would get his lesson wrong, pause, look up at the sky, correct himself, and then go on again. I gathered thattheir school was short of benches and stools. "For want of thesewood-built seats, " as he put it, "we know not where to sit ourselves, where to seat our revered teachers, or what to offer our most respectedinspector when he comes on a visit. "

I could hardly repress a smile at this torrent of eloquence gushing fromsuch a bit of a fellow, which sounded specially out of place here, wherethe ryots are given to stating their profoundly vital wants in plain anddirect vernacular, of which even the more unusual words get sadly twistedout of shape. The clerks and ryots, however, seemed duly impressed, andlikewise envious, as though deploring their parents' omission to endowthem with so splendid a means of appealing to the _Zamindar_. 

I interrupted the young orator before he had done, promising to arrangefor the necessary number of benches and stools. Nothing daunted, heallowed me to have my say, then took up his discourse where he had leftit, finished it to the last word, saluted me profoundly, and marched offhis contingent. He probably would not have minded had I refused to supplythe seats, but after all his trouble in getting it by heart he would haveresented bitterly being robbed of any part of his speech. So, though itkept more important business waiting, I had to hear him out. 

NEARING SHAZADPUR, _January_ 1891. 

We left the little river of Kaligram, sluggish as the circulation in adying man, and dropped down the current of a briskly flowing stream whichled to a region where land and water seemed to merge in each other, riverand bank without distinction of garb, like brother and sister in infancy. 

The river lost its coating of sliminess, scattered its current in manydirections, and spread out, finally, into a _beel_ (marsh), with herea patch of grassy land and there a stretch of transparent water, remindingme of the youth of this globe when through the limitless waters land hadjust begun to raise its head, the separate provinces of solid and fluid asyet undefined. 

Round about where we have moored, the bamboo poles of fishermen areplanted. Kites hover ready to snatch up fish from the nets. On the ooze atthe water's edge stand the saintly-looking paddy birds in meditation. Allkinds of waterfowl abound. Patches of weeds float on the water. Here andthere rice-fields, untilled, untended, [1] rise from the moist, clay soil. Mosquitoes swarm over the still waters. .. . 

[Footnote 1: On the rich river-side silt, rice seed is simply scatteredand the harvest reaped when ripe; nothing else has to be done. ]

We start again at dawn this morning and pass through Kachikata, where thewaters of the _beel_ find an outlet in a winding channel only six orseven yards wide, through which they rush swiftly. To get our unwieldyhouse-boat through is indeed an adventure. The current hurries it along atlightning speed, keeping the crew busy using their oars as poles toprevent the boat being dashed against the banks. We thus come out againinto the open river. 

The sky had been heavily clouded, a damp wind blowing, with occasionalshowers of rain. The crew were all shivering with cold. Such wet andgloomy days in the cold weather are eminently disagreeable, and I havespent a wretched lifeless morning. At two in the afternoon the sun cameout, and since then it has been delightful. The banks are now high andcovered with peaceful groves and the dwellings of men, secluded and fullof beauty. 

The river winds in and out, an unknown little stream in the inmost_zenana_ of Bengal, neither lazy nor fussy; lavishing the wealth ofher affection on both sides, she prattles about common joys and sorrowsand the household news of the village girls, who come for water, and sitby her side, assiduously rubbing their bodies to a glowing freshness withtheir moistened towels. 

This evening we have moored our boat in a lonely bend. The sky is clear. The moon is at its full. Not another boat is to be seen. The moonlightglimmers on the ripples. Solitude reigns on the banks. The distant villagesleeps, nestling within a thick fringe of trees. The shrill, sustainedchirp of the cicadas is the only sound. 

SHAZADPUR, _February_ 1891. 

Just in front of my window, on the other side of the stream, a band ofgypsies have ensconced themselves, putting up bamboo frameworks coveredover with split-bamboo mats and pieces of cloth. There are only three ofthese little structures, so low that you cannot stand upright inside. Their life is lived in the open, and they only creep under these sheltersat night, to sleep huddled together. 

That is always the gypsies' way: no home anywhere, no landlord to pay rentto, wandering about as it pleases them with their children, their pigs, and a dog or two; and on them the police keep a vigilant eye. 

I frequently watch the doings of the family nearest me. They are dark butgood-looking, with fine, strongly-built bodies, like north-west countryfolk. Their women are handsome, and have tall, slim, well-knit figures;and with their free and easy movements, and natural independent airs, theylook to me like swarthy Englishwomen. 

The man has just put the cooking-pot on the fire, and is now splittingbamboos and weaving baskets. The woman first holds up a little mirror toher face, then puts a deal of pains into wiping and rubbing it, over andover again, with a moist piece of cloth; and then, the folds of her uppergarment adjusted and tidied, she goes, all spick and span, up to her manand sits beside him, helping him now and then in his work. 

These are truly children of the soil, born on it somewhere, bred by thewayside, here, there, and everywhere, dying anywhere. Night and day underthe open sky, in the open air, on the bare ground, they lead a unique kindof life; and yet work, love, children, and household duties--everything isthere. 

They are not idle for a moment, but always doing something. Her ownparticular task over, one woman plumps herself down behind another, untiesthe knot of her hair and cleans and arranges it for her; and whether atthe same time they fall to talking over the domestic affairs of the threelittle mat-covered households I cannot say for certain from this distance, but shrewdly suspect it. 

This morning a great disturbance invaded the peaceful gypsy settlement. Itwas about half-past eight or nine. They were spreading out over the matroofs tattered quilts and sundry other rags, which serve them for beds, inorder to sun and air them. The pigs with their litters, lying in a hollowall of a heap and looking like a dab of mud, had been routed out by thetwo canine members of the family, who fell upon them and sent them roamingin search of their breakfasts, squealing their annoyance at beinginterrupted in enjoyment of the sun after the cold night. I was writing myletter and absently looking out now and then when the hubbub suddenlycommenced. 

I rose and went to the window, and found a crowd gathered round the gypsyhermitage. A superior-looking personage was flourishing a stick andindulging in the strongest language. The headman of the gypsies, cowed andnervous, was apparently trying to offer explanations. I gathered that somesuspicious happenings in the locality had led to this visitation by apolice officer. 

The woman, so far, had remained sitting, busily scraping lengths of splitbamboo as serenely as if she had been alone and no sort of row going on. Suddenly, however, she sprang to her feet, advanced on the police officer, gesticulated violently with her arms right in his face, and gave him, instrident tones, a piece of her mind. In the twinkling of an eyethree-quarters of the officer's excitement had subsided; he tried to putin a word or two of mild protest but did not get a chance, and so departedcrestfallen, a different man. 

After he had retreated to a safe distance, he turned and shouted back:"All I say is, you'll have to clear out from here!"

I thought my neighbours opposite would forthwith pack up their mats andbamboos and move away with their bundles, pigs, and children. But there isno sign of it yet. They are still nonchalantly engaged in splittingbamboos, cooking food, or completing a toilet. 

SHAZADPUR, _February_ 1891. 

The post office is in a part of our estate office building, --this is veryconvenient, for we get our letters as soon as they arrive. Some eveningsthe postmaster comes up to have a chat with me. I enjoy listening to hisyarns. 

He talks of the most impossible things in the gravest possible manner. 

Yesterday he was telling me in what great reverence people of thislocality hold the sacred river Ganges. If one of their relatives dies, hesaid, and they have not the means of taking the ashes to the Ganges, theypowder a piece of bone from his funeral pyre and keep it till they comeacross some one who, some time or other, has drunk of the Ganges. To himthey administer some of this powder, hidden in the usual offering of_pán_[1], and thus are content to imagine that a portion of theremains of their deceased relative has gained purifying contact with thesacred water. 

[Footnote 1: Spices wrapped in betel leaf. ]

I smiled as I remarked: "This surely must be an invention. "

He pondered deeply before he admitted after a pause: "Yes, it may be. "

ON THE WAY. 

_February_ 1891. 

We have got past the big rivers and just turned into a little one. 

The village women are standing in the water, bathing or washing clothes;and some, in their dripping _saris_, with veils pulled well overtheir faces, move homeward with their water vessels filled and claspedagainst the left flank, the right arm swinging free. Children, covered allover with clay, are sporting boisterously, splashing water on each other, while one of them shouts a song, regardless of the tune. 

Over the high banks, the cottage roofs and the tops of the bamboo clumpsare visible. The sky has cleared and the sun is shining. Remnants ofclouds cling to the horizon like fluffs of cotton wool. The breeze iswarmer. 

There are not many boats in this little river; only a few dinghies, ladenwith dry branches and twigs, are moving leisurely along to the tiredplash! plash! of their oars. At the river's edge the fishermen's nets arehung out to dry between bamboo poles. And work everywhere seems to be overfor the day. 

CHUHALI. 

_June_ 1891. 

I had been sitting out on the deck for more than a quarter of an hour whenheavy clouds rose in the west. They came up, black, tumbled, and tattered, with streaks of lurid light showing through here and there. The littleboats scurried off into the smaller arm of the river and clung with theiranchors safely to its banks. The reapers took up the cut sheaves on theirheads and hied homewards; the cows followed, and behind them frisked thecalves waving their tails. 

Then came an angry roar. Torn-off scraps of cloud hurried up from thewest, like panting messengers of evil tidings. Finally, lightning andthunder, rain and storm, came on altogether and executed a mad dervishdance. The bamboo clumps seemed to howl as the raging wind swept theground with them, now to the east, now to the west. Over all, the stormdroned like a giant snake-charmer's pipe, and to its rhythm swayedhundreds and thousands of crested waves, like so many hooded snakes. Thethunder was incessant, as though a whole world was being pounded to piecesaway there behind the clouds. 

With my chin resting on the ledge of an open window facing away from thewind, I allowed my thoughts to take part in this terrible revelry; theyleapt into the open like a pack of schoolboys suddenly set free. When, however, I got a thorough drenching from the spray of the rain, I had toshut up the window and my poetising, and retire quietly into the darknessinside, like a caged bird. 

SHAZADPUR. 

_June_ 1891. 

From the bank to which the boat is tied a kind of scent rises out of thegrass, and the heat of the ground, given off in gasps, actually touches mybody. I feel that the warm, living Earth is breathing upon me, and thatshe, also, must feel my breath. 

The young shoots of rice are waving in the breeze, and the ducks are inturn thrusting their heads beneath the water and preening their feathers. There is no sound save the faint, mournful creaking of the gangway againstthe boat, as she imperceptibly swings to and fro in the current. 

Not far off there is a ferry. A motley crowd has assembled under thebanyan tree awaiting the boat's return; and as soon as it arrives, theyeagerly scramble in. I enjoy watching this for hours together. It ismarket-day in the village on the other bank; that is why the ferry is sobusy. Some carry bundles of hay, some baskets, some sacks; some are goingto the market, others coming from it. Thus, in this silent noonday, thestream of human activity slowly flows across the river between twovillages. 

I sat wondering: Why is there always this deep shade of melancholy overthe fields arid river banks, the sky and the sunshine of our country? AndI came to the conclusion that it is because with us Nature is obviouslythe more important thing. The sky is free, the fields limitless; and thesun merges them into one blazing whole. In the midst of this, man seems sotrivial. He comes and goes, like the ferry-boat, from this shore to theother; the babbling hum of his talk, the fitful echo of his song, isheard; the slight movement of his pursuit of his own petty desires is seenin the world's market-places: but how feeble, how temporary, howtragically meaningless it all seems amidst the immense aloofness of theUniverse!

The contrast between the beautiful, broad, unalloyed peace ofNature--calm, passive, silent, unfathomable, --and our own everydayworries--paltry, sorrow-laden, strife-tormented, puts me beside myself asI keep staring at the hazy, distant, blue line of trees which fringe thefields across the river. 

Where Nature is ever hidden, and cowers under mist and cloud, snow anddarkness, there man feels himself master; he regards his desires, hisworks, as permanent; he wants to perpetuate them, he looks towardsposterity, he raises monuments, he writes biographies; he even goes thelength of erecting tombstones over the dead. So busy is he that he has nottime to consider how many monuments crumble, how often names areforgotten!

SHAZADPUR. 

_June_ 1891. 

There was a great, big mast lying on the river bank, and some littlevillage urchins, with never a scrap of clothing, decided, after a longconsultation, that if it could be rolled along to the accompaniment of asufficient amount of vociferous clamour, it would be a new and altogethersatisfactory kind of game. The decision was no sooner come to than actedupon, with a "_Shabash_, brothers! All together! Heave ho!" And atevery turn it rolled, there was uproarious laughter. 

The demeanour of one girl in the party was very different. She was playingwith the boys for want of other companions, but she clearly viewed withdisfavour these loud and strenuous games. At last she stepped up to themast and, without a word, deliberately sat on it. 

So rare a game to come to so abrupt a stop! Some of the players seemed toresign themselves to giving it up as a bad job; and retiring a little wayoff, they sulkily glared at the girl in her impassive gravity. One made asif he would push her off, but even this did not disturb the careless easeof her pose. The eldest lad came up to her and pointed to other equallysuitable places for taking a rest; at which she energetically shook herhead, and putting her hands in her lap, steadied herself down still morefirmly on her seat. Then at last they had recourse to physical argumentand were completely successful. 

Once again joyful shouts rent the skies, and the mast rolled along sogloriously that even the girl had to cast aside her pride and herdignified exclusiveness and make a pretence of joining in the unmeaningexcitement. But one could see all the time that she was sure boys neverknow how to play properly, and are always so childish! If only she had theregulation yellow earthen doll handy, with its big, black top-knot, wouldshe ever have deigned to join in this silly game with these foolish boys?

All of a sudden the idea of another splendid pastime occurred to the boys. Two of them got hold of a third by the arms and legs and began to swinghim. This must have been great fun, for they all waxed enthusiastic overit. But it was more than the girl could stand, so she disdainfully leftthe playground and marched off home. 

Then there was an accident. The boy who was being swung was let fall. Heleft his companions in a pet, and went and lay down on the grass with hisarms crossed under his head, desiring to convey thereby that never againwould he have anything to do with this bad, hard world, but would foreverlie, alone by himself, with his arms under his head, and count the starsand watch the play of the clouds. 

The eldest boy, unable to bear the idea of such untimelyworld-renunciation, ran up to the disconsolate one and taking his head onhis own knees repentantly coaxed him. "Come, my little brother! Do get up, little brother! Have we hurt you, little brother?" And before long I foundthem playing, like two pups, at catching and snatching away each other'shands! Two minutes had hardly passed before the little fellow was swingingagain. 

SHAZADPUR, _June_ 1891. 

I had a most extraordinary dream last night. The whole of Calcutta seemedenveloped in some awful mystery, the houses being only dimly visiblethrough a dense, dark mist, within the veil of which there were strangedoings. 

I was going along Park Street in a hackney carriage, and as I passed St. Xavier's College I found it had started growing rapidly and was fastgetting impossibly high within its enveloping haze. Then it was borne inon me that a band of magicians had come to Calcutta who, if they were paidfor it, could bring about many such wonders. 

When I arrived at our Jorasanko house, I found these magicians had turnedup there too. They were ugly-looking, of a Mongolian type, with scantymoustaches and a few long hairs sticking out of their chins. They couldmake men grow. Some of the girls wanted to be made taller, and themagician sprinkled some powder over their heads and they promptly shot up. To every one I met I kept repeating: "This is most extraordinary, --justlike a dream!"

Then some one proposed that our house should be made to grow. Themagicians agreed, and as a preliminary began to take down some portions. The dismantling over, they demanded money, or else they would not go on. The cashier strongly objected. How could payment be made before the workwas completed? At this the magicians got wild and twisted up the buildingmost fearsomely, so that men and brickwork got mixed together, bodiesinside walls and only head and shoulders showing. 

It had altogether the look of a thoroughly devilish business, as I told myeldest brother. "You see, " said I, "the kind of thing it is. We had bettercall upon God to help us!" But try as I might to anathematise them in thename of God, my heart felt like breaking and no words would come. Then Iawoke. 

A curious dream, was it not? Calcutta in the hands of Satan and growingdiabolically, within the darkness of an unholy mist!

SHAZADPUR, _June_ 1891. 

The schoolmasters of this place paid me a visit yesterday. 

They stayed on and on, while for the life of me I could not find a word tosay. I managed a question or so every five minutes, to which they offeredthe briefest replies; and then I sat vacantly, twirling my pen, andscratching my head. 

At last I ventured on a question about the crops, but being schoolmastersthey knew nothing whatever about crops. 

About their pupils I had already asked them everything I could think of, so I had to start over again: How many boys had they in the school? Onesaid eighty, another said a hundred and seventy-five. I hoped that thismight lead to an argument, but no, they made up their difference. 

Why, after an hour and a half, they should have thought of taking leave, Icannot tell. They might have done so with as good a reason an hourearlier, or, for the matter of that, twelve hours later! Their decisionwas clearly arrived at empirically, entirely without method. 

SHAZADPUR, _July_ 1891. 

There is another boat at this landing-place, and on the shore in front ofit a crowd of village women. Some are evidently embarking on a journey andthe others seeing them off; infants, veils, and grey hairs are all mixedup in the gathering. 

One girl in particular attracts my attention. She must be about eleven ortwelve; but, buxom and sturdy, she might pass for fourteen or fifteen. Shehas a winsome face--very dark, but very pretty. Her hair is cut short likea boy's, which well becomes her simple, frank, and alert expression. Shehas a child in her arms and is staring at me with unabashed curiosity, andcertainly no lack of straightforwardness or intelligence in her glance. Her half-boyish, half-girlish manner is singularly attractive--a novelblend of masculine nonchalance and feminine charm. I had no idea therewere such types among our village women in Bengal. 

None of this family, apparently, is troubled with too much bashfulness. One of them has unfastened her hair in the sun and is combing it out withher ringers, while conversing about their domestic affairs at the top ofher voice with another, on board. I gather she has no other childrenexcept a girl, a foolish creature who knows neither how to behave or talk, nor even the difference between kin and stranger. I also learn thatGopal's son-in-law has turned out a ne'er-do-well, and that his daughterrefuses to go to her husband. 

When, at length, it was time to start, they escorted my short-haireddamsel, with plump shapely arms, her gold bangles and her guileless, radiant face, into the boat. I could divine that she was returning fromher father's to her husband's home. They all stood there, following theboat with their gaze as it cast off, one or two wiping their eyes with theloose end of their _saris_. A little girl, with her hair tightly tiedinto a knot, clung to the neck of an older woman and silently wept on hershoulder. Perhaps she was losing a darling Didimani [1] who joined in herdoll games and also slapped her when she was naughty. .. . 

[Footnote 1: An elder sister is often called sister-jewel(_Didimani_). ]

The quiet floating away of a boat on the stream seems to add to the pathosof a separation--it is so like death--the departing one lost to sight, those left behind returning to their daily life, wiping their eyes. True, the pang lasts but a while, and is perhaps already wearing off both inthose who have gone and those who remain, --pain being temporary, oblivionpermanent. But none the less it is not the forgetting, but the pain whichis true; and every now and then, in separation or in death, we realise howterribly true. 

ON BOARD A CANAL STEAMER GOING TO CUTTACK, _August_ 1891. 

My bag left behind, my clothes daily get more and more intolerablydisreputable, --this thought continually uppermost is not compatible with adue sense of self-respect. With the bag I could have faced the world ofmen head erect and spirits high; without it, I fain would skulk incorners, away from the glances of the crowd. I go to bed in these clothesand in them I appear in the morning, and on the top of that the steamer isfull of soot, and the unbearable heat of the day keeps one unpleasantlymoist. 

Apart from this, I am having quite a time of it on board the steamer. Myfellow-passengers are of inexhaustible variety. There is one, Aghore Babu, who cannot allude to anything, animate or inanimate, except in terms ofpersonal abuse. There is another, a lover of music, who persists inattempting variations on the Bhairab[1] mode at dead of night, convincingme of the untimeliness of his performance in more senses than one. 

[Footnote: A Raga, or mode of Indian classical music, supposed to beappropriate to the early dawn. ]

The steamer has been aground in a narrow ditch of a canal ever since lastevening, and it is now past nine in the morning. I spent the night in acorner of the crowded deck, more dead than alive. I had asked the stewardto fry some _luchis_ for my dinner, and he brought me somenondescript slabs of fried dough with no vegetable accompaniments to eatthem with. On my expressing a pained surprise, he was all contrition andoffered to make me some hotch-potch at once. But the night being alreadyfar advanced, I declined his offer, managed to swallow a few mouthfuls ofthe stuff dry, and then, all lights on and the deck packed withpassengers, laid myself down to sleep. 

Mosquitoes hovered above, cockroaches wandered around. There was afellow-sleeper stretched crosswise at my feet whose body my soles everynow and then came up against. Four or five noses were engaged in snoring. Several mosquito-tormented, sleepless wretches were consoling themselvesby pulls at their hubble-bubble pipes; and above all, there rose thosevariations on the mode _Bhairab_! Finally, at half-past three in themorning, some fussy busy-bodies began loudly inciting each other to getup. In despair, I also left my bed and dropped into my deck-chair to awaitthe dawn. Thus passed that variegated nightmare of a night. 

One of the hands tells me that the steamer has stuck so fast that it maytake the whole day to get her off. I inquire of another whether anyCalcutta-bound steamer will be passing, and get the smiling reply thatthis is the only boat on this line, and I may come back in her, if I like, after she has reached Cuttack! By a stroke of luck, after a great deal oftugging and hauling, they have just got her afloat at about ten o'clock. 

TIRAN. 

7_th September_ 1891. 

The landing-place at Balia makes a pretty picture with its fine big treeson either side, and on the whole the canal somehow reminds me of thelittle river at Poona. On thinking it over I am sure I should have likedthe canal much better had it really been a river. 

Cocoanut palms as well as mangoes and other shady trees line its banks, which, turfed with beautifully green grass, slope gently down to thewater, and are sprinkled over with sensitive plants in flower. Here andthere are screwpine groves, and through gaps in the border of treesglimpses can be caught of endless fields, stretching away into thedistance, their crops so soft and velvety after the rains that the eyeseems to sink into their depths. Then again, there are the little villagesunder their clusters of cocoanut and date palms, nestling under the moistcool shade of the low seasonal clouds. 

Through all these the canal, with its gentle current, winds gracefullybetween its clean, grassy banks, fringed, in its narrower stretches, withclusters of water-lilies with reeds growing among them. And yet the mindkeeps fretting at the idea that after all it is nothing but an artificialcanal. 

The murmur of its waters does not reach back to the beginning of time. Itknows naught of the mysteries of some distant, inaccessible mountain cave. It has not flowed for ages, graced with an old-world feminine name, givingthe villages on its sides the milk of its breast. Even old artificiallakes have acquired a greater dignity. 

However when, a hundred years hence, the trees on its banks will havegrown statelier; its brand-new milestones been worn down and moss-coveredinto mellowness; the date 1871, inscribed on its lock-gates, left behindat a respectable distance; then, if I am reborn as my great-grandson andcome again to inspect the Cuttack estates along this canal, I may feeldifferently towards it. 

SHELIDAH, _October_ 1891. 

Boat after boat touches at the landing-place, and after a whole yearexiles are returning home from distant fields of work for the Poojahvacation, their boxes, baskets, and bundles loaded with presents. I noticeone who, as his boat nears the shore, changes into a freshly folded andcrinkled muslin _dhoti_, dons over his cotton tunic a China silkcoat, carefully adjusts round his neck a neatly twisted scarf, and walksoff towards the village, umbrella held aloft. 

Rustling waves pass over the rice-fields. Mango and cocoanut tree-topsrise into the sky, and beyond them there are fluffy clouds on the horizon. The fringes of the palm leaves wave in the breeze. The reeds on thesand-bank are on the point of flowering. It is altogether an exhilaratingscene. 

The feelings of the man who has just arrived home, the eager expectancy ofhis folk awaiting him, this autumn sky, this world, the gentle morningbreeze, the universal responsive tremor in tree and shrub and in thewavelets on the river, conspire to overwhelm this lonely youth, gazingfrom his window, with unutterable joys and sorrows. 

Glimpses of the world received from wayside windows bring new desires, orrather, make old desires take on new forms. The day before yesterday, as Iwas sitting at the window of the boat, a little fisher-dinghy floatedpast, the boatman singing a song--not a very tuneful song. But it remindedme of a night, years ago, when I was a child. We were going along thePadma in a boat. I awoke one night at about 2 o'clock, and, on raising thewindow and putting out my head, I saw the waters without a ripple, gleaming in the moonlight, and a youth in a little dinghy paddling alongall by himself and singing, oh so sweetly, --such sweet melody I had neverheard before. 

A sudden longing came upon me to go back to the day of that song; to beallowed to make another essay at life, this time not to leave it thusempty and unsatisfied; but with a poet's song on my lips to float aboutthe world on the crest of the rising tide, to sing it to men and subduetheir hearts; to see for myself what the world holds and where; to let menknow me, to get to know them; to burst forth through the world in life andyouth like the eager rushing breezes; and then return home to a fulfilledand fruitful old age to spend it as a poet should. 

Not a very lofty ideal, is it? To benefit the world would have been muchhigher, no doubt; but being on the whole what I am, that ambition does noteven occur to me. I cannot make up my mind to sacrifice this precious giftof life in a self-wrought famine, and disappoint the world and the heartsof men by fasts and meditations and constant argument. I count it enoughto live and die as a man, loving and trusting the world, unable to look onit either as a delusion of the Creator or a snare of the Devil. It is notfor me to strive to be wafted away into the airiness of an Angel. 

SHELIDAH, 2_nd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891. 

When I come to the country I cease to view man as separate from the rest. As the river runs through many a clime, so does the stream of men babbleon, winding through woods and villages and towns. It is not a truecontrast that _men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever_. Humanity, with all its confluent streams, big and small, flows on and on, just as does the river, from its source in birth to its sea of death;--twodark mysteries at either end, and between them various play and work andchatter unceasing. 

Over there the cultivators sing in the fields: here the fishing-boatsfloat by. The day wears on and the heat of the sun increases. Some bathersare still in the river, others are finished and are taking home theirfilled water-vessels. Thus, past both banks of the river, hundreds ofyears have hummed their way, while the refrain rises in a mournful chorus:_I go on for ever!_

Amid the noonday silence some youthful cowherd is heard calling at the topof his voice for his companion; some boat splashes its way homewards; theripples lap against the empty jar which some village woman rests on thewater before dipping it; and with these mingle several other less definitesounds, --the twittering of birds, the humming of bees, the plaintivecreaking of the house-boat as it gently swings to and fro, --the wholemaking a tender lullaby, as of a mother trying to quiet a suffering child. "Fret not, " she sings, as she soothingly pats its fevered forehead. "Worrynot; weep no more. Let be your strugglings and grabbings and fightings;forget a while, sleep a while. "

SHELIDAH, 3_rd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891. 

It was the _Kojagar_ full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riversideconversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I wasdoing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. Thepoor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine thepower to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?

But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, butnever got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and fromaway over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream isseen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to thisshore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boatin sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed islandsand-bank. 

It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; arandom river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawnfairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world, --all the kings and theprincesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished, leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, overwhich the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the palemoonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of thisdying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore--the shoreof life--where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century holdsway, and tea and cigarettes. 

SHELIDAH, 9_th January_ 1892. 

For some days the weather here has been wavering between Winter andSpring. In the morning, perhaps, shivers will run over both land and waterat the touch of the north wind; while the evening will thrill with thesouth breeze coming through the moonlight. 

There is no doubt that Spring is well on its way. After a long intervalthe _papiya_ once more calls out from the groves on the oppositebank. The hearts of men too are stirred; and after evening falls, soundsof singing are heard in the village, showing that they are no longer insuch a hurry to close doors and windows and cover themselves up snugly forthe night. 

To-night the moon is at its full, and its large, round face peers at methrough the open window on my left, as if trying to make out whether Ihave anything to say against it in my letter, --it suspects, maybe, that wemortals concern ourselves more with its stains than its beams. 

A bird is plaintively crying tee-tee on the sand-bank. The river seems notto move. There are no boats. The motionless groves on the bank cast anunquivering shadow on the waters. The haze over the sky makes the moonlook like a sleepy eye kept open. 

Henceforward the evenings will grow darker and darker; and when, to-morrow, I come over from the office, this moon, the favourite companionof my exile, will already have drifted a little farther from me, doubtingwhether she had been wise to lay her heart so completely bare lastevening, and so covering it up again little by little. 

Nature becomes really and truly intimate in strange and lonely places. Ihave been actually worrying myself for days at the thought that after themoon is past her full I shall daily miss the moonlight more and more;feeling further and further exiled when the beauty and peace which awaitsmy return to the riverside will no longer be there, and I shall have tocome back through darkness. 

Anyhow I put it on record that to-day is the full moon--the first fullmoon of this year's springtime. In years to come I may perchance bereminded of this night, with the tee-tee of the bird on the bank, theglimmer of the distant light on the boat off the other shore, the shiningexpanse of river, the blur of shade thrown by the dark fringe of treesalong its edge, and the white sky gleaming overhead in unconcernedaloofness. 

SHELIDAH, 7_th April_ 1892. 

The river is getting low, and the water in this arm of it is hardly morethan waist-deep anywhere. So it is not at all extraordinary that the boatshould be anchored in mid-stream. On the bank, to my right, the ryots areploughing and cows are now and then brought down to the water's edge for adrink. To the left there are the mango and cocoanut trees of the oldShelidah garden above, and on the bathing slope below there are villagewomen washing clothes, filling water jars, bathing, laughing and gossipingin their provincial dialect. 

The younger girls never seem to get through their sporting in the water;it is a delight to hear their careless, merry laughter. The men gravelytake their regulation number of dips and go away, but girls are on muchmore intimate terms with the water. Both alike babble and chatter andripple and sparkle in the same simple and natural manner; both maylanguish and fade away under a scorching glare, yet both can take a blowwithout hopelessly breaking under it. The hard world, which, but for them, would be barren, cannot fathom the mystery of the soft embrace of theirarms. 

Tennyson has it that woman to man is as water to wine. I feel to-day itshould be as water is to land. Woman is more at home with the water, laving in it, playing with it, holding her gatherings beside it; andwhile, for her, other burdens are not seemly, the carrying of water fromthe spring, the well, the bank of river or pool, has ever been held tobecome her. 

BOLPUR, 2_nd May_ 1892. 

There are many paradoxes in the world and one of them is this, thatwherever the landscape is immense, the sky unlimited, clouds intimatelydense, feelings unfathomable--that is to say where infinitude ismanifest--its fit companion is one solitary person; a multitude thereseems so petty, so distracting. 

An individual and the infinite are on equal terms, worthy to gaze on oneanother, each from his own throne. But where many men are, how small bothhumanity and infinitude become, how much they have to knock off eachother, in order to fit in together! Each soul wants so much room to expandthat in a crowd it needs must wait for gaps through which to thrust alittle craning piece of a head from time to time. 

So the only result of our endeavour to assemble is that we become unableto fill our joined hands, our outstretched arms, with this endless, fathomless expanse. 

BOLPUR, 8_th Jaistha_ (_May_) 1892. 

Women who try to be witty, but only succeed in being pert, areinsufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful inwomen whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated, and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, thecamel and the giraffe are comic, all overgrowth is comic. 

It is rather keenness that is akin to beauty, as the thorn to the flower. So sarcasm is not unbecoming in woman, though coming from her it hurts. But ridicule which savours of bulkiness woman had better leave to oursublime sex. The masculine Falstaff makes our sides split, but a feminineFalstaff would only rack our nerves. 

BOLPUR, 12_th Jaistha_ (_May_) 1892. 

I usually pace the roof-terrace, alone, of an evening. Yesterday afternoonI felt it my duty to show my visitors the beauties of the local scenery, so I strolled out with them, taking Aghore as a guide. 

On the verge of the horizon, where the distant fringe of trees was blue, athin line of dark blue cloud had risen over them and was lookingparticularly beautiful. I tried to be poetical and said it was like bluecollyrium on the fringe of lashes enhancing a beautiful blue eye. Of mycompanions one did not hear the remark, another did not understand, whilethe third dismissed it with the reply: "Yes, very pretty. " I did not feelencouraged to attempt a second poetical flight. 

After walking about a mile we came to a dam, and along the pool of waterthere was a row of _tâl_ (fan palm) trees, under which was a naturalspring. While we stood there looking at this, we found that the line ofcloud which we had seen in the North was making for us, swollen and growndarker, flashes of lightning gleaming the while. 

We unanimously came to the conclusion that viewing the beauties of naturecould be better done from within the shelter of the house, but no soonerhad we turned homewards than a storm, making giant strides over the openmoorland, was on us with an angry roar. I had no idea, while I wasadmiring the collyrium on the eyelashes of beauteous dame Nature, that shewould fly at us like an irate housewife, threatening so tremendous a slap!

It became so dark with the dust that we could not see beyond a few paces. The fury of the storm increased, and flying stony particles of the rubblysoil stung our bodies like shot, as the wind took us by the scruff of theneck and thrust us along, to the whipping of drops of rain which had begunto fall. 

Run! Run! But the ground was not level, being deeply scarred withwatercourses, and not easy to cross at any time, much less in a storm. Imanaged to get entangled in a thorny shrub, and was nearly thrown on myface by the force of the wind as I stopped to free myself. 

When we had almost reached the house, a host of servants came hurryingtowards us, shouting and gesticulating, and fell upon us like anotherstorm. Some took us by the arms, some bewailed our plight, some were eagerto show the way, others hung on our backs as if fearing that the stormmight carry us off altogether. We evaded their attentions with somedifficulty and managed at length to get into the house, panting, with wetclothes, dusty bodies, and tumbled hair. 

One thing I had learnt; and will never again write in novel or story thelie that the hero with the picture of his lady-love in his mind can passunruffled through wind and rain. No one could keep any face in mind, however lovely, in such a storm, --he has enough to do to keep the sand outof his eyes!. .. 

The Vaishnava-poets have sung ravishingly of Radha going to her tryst withKrishna through a stormy night. Did they ever pause to consider, I wonder, in what condition she must have reached him? The kind of tangle her hairgot into is easily imaginable, and also the state of the rest of hertoilet. When she arrived in her bower with the dust on her body soaked bythe rain into a coating of mud, she must have been a sight!

But when we read the Vaishnava poems, these thoughts do not occur. We onlysee on the canvas of our mind the picture of a beautiful woman, passingunder the shelter of the flowering kadambas in the darkness of a stormy_Shravan_[1] night, towards the bank of the Jumna, forgetful of windor rain, as in a dream, drawn by her surpassing love. She has tied up heranklets lest they should tinkle; she is clad in dark blue raiment lest shebe discovered; but she holds no umbrella lest she get wet, carries nolantern lest she fall!

[Footnote 1: July-August, the rainy season. ]

Alas for useful things--how necessary in practical life, how neglected inpoetry! But poetry strives in vain to free us from their bondage--theywill be with us always; so much so, we are told, that with the march ofcivilisation it is poetry that will become extinct, but patent afterpatent will continue to be taken out for the improvement of shoes andumbrellas. 

BOLPUR, 16_th Jaistha (May)_ 1892. 

No church tower clock chimes here, and there being no other humanhabitation near by, complete silence falls with the evening, as soon asthe birds have ceased their song. There is not much difference betweenearly night and midnight. A sleepless night in Calcutta flows like a huge, slow river of darkness; one can count the varied sounds of its passing, lying on one's back in bed. But here the night is like a vast, still lake, placidly reposing, with no sign of movement. And as I tossed from side toside last night I felt enveloped within a dense stagnation. 

This morning I left my bed a little later than usual and, comingdownstairs to my room, leant back on a bolster, one leg resting over theother knee. There, with a slate on my chest, I began to write a poem tothe accompaniment of the morning breeze and the singing birds. I wasgetting along splendidly--a smile playing over my lips, my eyes halfclosed, my head swaying to the rhythm, the thing I hummed gradually takingshape--when the post arrived. 

There was a letter, the last number of the _Sadhana Magazine_, one ofthe _Monist_, and some proof-sheets. I read the letter, raced my eyesover the uncut pages of the _Sadhana_, and then again fell to noddingand humming through my poem. I did not do another thing till I hadfinished it. 

I wonder why the writing of pages of prose does not give one anything likethe joy of completing a single poem. One's emotions take on suchperfection of form in a poem; they can, as it were, be taken up by thefingers. But prose is like a sackful of loose material, heavy andunwieldy, incapable of being lifted as you please. 

If I could finish writing one poem a day, my life would pass in a kind ofjoy; but though I have been busy tending poetry for many a year it has notbeen tamed yet, and is not the kind of winged steed to allow me to bridleit whenever I like! The joy of art is in freedom to take a distant flightas fancy will; then, even after return within the prison-world, an echolingers in the ear, an exaltation in the mind. 

Short poems keep coming to me unsought, and so prevent my getting on withthe play. Had it not been for these, I could have let in ideas for two orthree plays which have been knocking at the door. I am afraid I must waitfor the cold weather. All my plays except "Chitra" were written in thewinter. In that season lyrical fervour is apt to grow cold, and one getsthe leisure to write drama. 

BOLPUR, _31st May 1892. _

It is not yet five o'clock, but the light has dawned, there is adelightful breeze, and all the birds in the garden are awake and havestarted singing. The _koel_ seems beside itself. It is difficult tounderstand why it should keep on cooing so untiringly. Certainly not toentertain us, nor to distract the pining lover[1]--it must have somepersonal purpose of its own. But, sadly enough, that purpose never seemsto get fulfilled. Yet it is not down-hearted, and its Coo-oo! Coo-oo!keeps going, with now and then an ultra-fervent trill. What can it mean?

[Footnote 1: A favourite conceit of the old Sanskrit poets. ]

And then in the distance there is some other bird with only a faintchuck-chuck that has no energy or enthusiasm, as if all hope were lost;none the less, from within some shady nook it cannot resist uttering thislittle plaint: chuck, chuck, chuck. 

How little we really know of the household affairs of these innocentwinged creatures, with their soft, breasts and necks and theirmany-coloured feathers! Why on earth do they find it necessary to sing sopersistently?

SHELIDAH, _31st Jaistha (June)1892. _

I hate these polite formalities. Nowadays I keep repeating the line: "Muchrather would I be an Arab Bedouin!" A fine, healthy, strong, and freebarbarity. 

I feel I want to quit this constant ageing of mind and body, withincessant argument and nicety concerning ancient decaying things, and tofeel the joy of a free and vigorous life; to have, --be they good orbad, --broad, unhesitating, unfettered ideas and aspirations, free fromeverlasting friction between custom and sense, sense and desire, desireand action. 

If only I could set utterly and boundlessly free this hampered life ofmine, I would storm the four quarters and raise wave upon wave of tumultall round; I would career away madly, like a wild horse, for very joy ofmy own speed! But I am a Bengali, not a Bedouin! I go on sitting in mycorner, and mope and worry and argue. I turn my mind now this way up, nowthe other--as a fish is fried--and the boiling oil blisters first thisside, then that. 

Let it pass. Since I cannot be thoroughly wild, it is but proper that Ishould make an endeavour to be thoroughly civil. Why foment a quarrelbetween the two?

SHELIDAH, _16th June 1892. _

The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearerit becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform theordinary duties of one's daily life simply and naturally. From the grassesin the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; andthere is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because noneof these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations. 

Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has toput forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of itsrootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive tobecome a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green. And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in thesocieties of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not tobig doings and fine talk. 

Perhaps because the whole of our life is not vividly present at eachmoment, some imaginary hope may lure, some glowing picture of a future, untrammelled with everyday burdens, may tempt us; but these are illusory. 

SHELIDAH, _2nd Asarh (June) 1892. _

Yesterday, the first day of _Asarh_, [1] the enthronement of the rainyseason was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance. It was very hot thewhole day, but in the afternoon dense clouds rolled up in stupendousmasses. 

[Footnote 1: June-July, the commencement of the rainy season. ]

I thought to myself, this first day of the rains, I would rather riskgetting wet than remain confined in my dungeon of a cabin. 

The year 1293 [1] will not come again in my life, and, for the matter of that, how many more even of these first daysof _Asarh_ will come? My life would be sufficiently long could itnumber thirty of these first days of _Asarh_ to which the poet of the_Meghaduta_[2] has, for me at least, given special distinction. 

[Footnote 1: Of the Bengal era. ]

[Footnote 2: In the _Meghaduta_ (Cloud Messenger) of Kalidas a famousdescription of the burst of the Monsoon begins with the words: _On thefirst day of Asarh_. ]

It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day shouldtake its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and settingsun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a whiteflower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!

A thousand years ago Kalidas welcomed that first day of _Asarh_; andonce in every year of my life that same day of _Asarh_ dawns in allits glory--that self-same day of the poet of old Ujjain, which has broughtto countless men and women their joys of union, their pangs of separation. 

Every year one such great, time-hallowed day drops out of my life; and thetime will come when this day of Kalidas, this day of the _Meghaduta_, this eternal first day of the Rains in Hindustan, shall come no more forme. When I realise this I feel I want to take a good look at nature, tooffer a conscious welcome to each day's sunrise, to say farewell to eachday's setting sun, as to an intimate friend. 

What a grand festival, what a vast theatre of festivity! And we cannoteven fully respond to it, so far away do we live from the world! The lightof the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannotreach our hearts--so many millions of miles further off are we!

The world into which I have tumbled is peopled with strange beings. Theyare always busy erecting walls and rules round themselves, and how carefulthey are with their curtains lest they should see! It is a wonder to methey have not made drab covers for flowering plants and put up a canopy toward off the moon. If the next life is determined by the desires of this, then I should be reborn from our enshrouded planet into some free and openrealm of joy. 

Only those who cannot steep themselves in beauty to the full, despise itas an object of the senses. But those who have tasted of itsinexpressibility know how far it is beyond the highest powers of mere eyeor ear--nay, even the heart is powerless to attain the end of itsyearning. 

_P. S. _--I have left out the very thing I started to tell of. Don't beafraid, it won't take four more sheets. It is this, that on the evening ofthe first day of _Asarh_ it came on to rain very heavily, in greatlance-like showers. That is all. 

ON THE WAY TO GOALUNDA, _21st June 1892. _

Pictures in an endless variety, of sand-banks, fields and their crops, andvillages, glide into view on either hand--of clouds floating in the sky, of colours blossoming when day meets night. Boats steal by, fishermencatch fish; the waters make liquid, caressing sounds throughout thelivelong day; their broad expanse calms down in the evening stillness, like a child lulled to sleep, over whom all the stars in the boundless skykeep watch--then, as I sit up on wakeful nights, with sleeping banks oneither side, the silence is broken only by an occasional cry of a jackalin the woods near some village, or by fragments undermined by the keencurrent of the Padma, that tumble from the high cliff-like bank into thewater. 

Not that the prospect is always of particular interest--a yellowishsandbank, innocent of grass or tree, stretches away; an empty boat is tiedto its edge; the bluish water, of the same shade as the hazy sky, flowspast; yet I cannot tell how it moves me. I suspect that the old desiresand longings of my servant-ridden childhood--when in the solitaryimprisonment of my room I pored over the _Arabian Nights_, and sharedwith Sinbad the Sailor his adventures in many a strange land--are not yetdead within me, but are roused at the sight of any empty boat tied to asand-bank. 

If I had not heard fairy tales and read the _Arabian Nights_ and_Robinson Crusoe_ in childhood, I am sure views of distant banks, orthe farther side of wide fields, would not have stirred me so--the wholeworld, in fact, would have had for me a different appeal. 

What a maze of fancy and fact becomes tangled up within the mind of man!The different strands--petty and great--of story and event and picture, how they get knotted together!

SHELIDAH, _22nd June 1892. _

Early this morning, while still lying in bed, I heard the women at thebathing-place sending forth joyous peals of _Ulu! Ulu!_[1] The soundmoved me curiously, though it is difficult to say why. 

[Footnote 1: A peculiar shrill cheer given by women on auspicious orfestive occasions. ]

Perhaps such joyful outbursts put one in mind of the great stream offestive activity which goes on in this world, with most of which theindividual man has no connection. The world is so immense, the concourseof men so vast, yet with how few has one any tie! Distant sounds of life, wafted near, bearing tidings from unknown homes, make the individualrealise that the greater part of the world of men does not, cannot own orknow him; then he feels deserted, loosely attached to the world, and avague sadness creeps over him. 

Thus these cries of _Ulu! Ulu!_ made my life, past and future, seemlike a long, long road, from the very ends of which they come to me. Andthis feeling colours for me the beginning of my day. 

As soon as the manager with his staff, and the ryots seeking audience, come upon the scene, this faint vista of past and future will be promptlyelbowed out, and a very robust present will salute and stand before me. 

SHAZADPUR, _25th June 1892. _

In to-day's letters there was a touch about A---'s singing which made myheart yearn with a nameless longing. Each of the little joys of life, which remain unappreciated amid the hubbub of the town, send in theirclaims to the heart when far from home. I love music, and there is nodearth of voices and instruments in Calcutta, yet I turn a deaf ear tothem. But, though I may fail to realise it at the time, this needs mustleave the heart athirst. 

As I read to-day's letters, I felt such a poignant desire to hear A---'ssweet song, I was at once sure that one of the many suppressed longings ofcreation which cry after fulfilment is for neglected joys within reach;while we are busy pursuing chimerical impossibilities we famish ourlives. .. . 

The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. Andthe day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, Iwould strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full theselittle, unsought, everyday joys which life offers. 

SHAZADPUR, _27th June 1892. _

Yesterday, in the afternoon, it clouded over so threateningly, I felt asense of dread. I do not remember ever to have seen before suchangry-looking clouds. 

Swollen masses of the deepest indigo blue were piled, one on top of theother, just above the horizon, looking like the puffed-out moustaches ofsome raging demon. 

Under the jagged lower edges of the clouds there shone forth a blood-redglare, as through the eyes of a monstrous, sky-filling bison, with tossingmane and with head lowered to strike the earth in fury. 

The crops in the fields and the leaves of the trees trembled with fear ofthe impending disaster; shudder after shudder ran across the waters; thecrows flew wildly about, distractedly cawing. 

SHAZADPUR, _29th June 1892. _

I wrote yesterday that I had an engagement with Kalidas, the poet, forthis evening. As I lit a candle, drew my chair up to the table, and madeready, not Kalidas, but the postmaster, walked in. A live postmastercannot but claim precedence over a dead poet, so I could not very welltell him to make way for Kalidas, who was due by appointment, --he wouldnot have understood me! Therefore I offered him a chair and gave oldKalidas the go-by. 

There is a kind of bond between this postmaster and me. When the postoffice was in a part of this estate building, I used to meet him everyday. I wrote my story of "The Postmaster" one afternoon in this very room. And when the story was out in the _Hitabadi_ he came to me with asuccession of bashful smiles, as he deprecatingly touched on the subject. Anyhow, I like the man. He has a fund of anecdote which I enjoy listeningto. He has also a sense of humour. 

Though it was late when the postmaster left, I started at once on the_Raghuvansa_[1], and read all about the _swayamuara_[2] ofIndumati. 

[Footnote 1: Book of poems by Kalidas, who is perhaps best known toEuropean readers as the author of _Sakuntala_. ]

[Footnote 2: An old Indian custom, according to which a princess choosesamong assembled rival suitors for her hand by placing a garland round theneck of the one whose love she returns. ]

The handsome, gaily adorned princes are seated on rows of thrones in theassembly hall. Suddenly a blast of conch-shell and trumpet resounds, asIndumati, in bridal robes, supported by Sunanda, is ushered in and standsin the walk left between them. It was delightful to dwell on the picture. 

Then as Sunanda introduces to her each one of the suitors, Indumati bowslow in loveless salutation, and passes on. How beautiful is this humblecourtesy! They are all princes. They are all her seniors. For she is amere girl. Had she not atoned for the inevitable rudeness of her rejectionby the grace of her humility, the scene would have lost its beauty. 

SHELIDAH, _20th August 1892. _

"If only I could live there!" is often thought when looking at a beautifullandscape painting. That is the kind of longing which is satisfied here, where one feels alive in a brilliantly coloured picture, with none of thehardness of reality. When I was a child, illustrations of woodland andsea, in _Paul and Virginia_, or _Robinson Crusoe_, would waft meaway from the everyday world; and the sunshine here brings back to my mindthe feeling with which I used to gaze on those pictures. 

I cannot account for this exactly, or explain definitely what kind oflonging it is which is roused within me. It seems like the throb of somecurrent flowing through the artery connecting me with the larger world. Ifeel as if dim, distant memories come to me of the time when I was onewith the rest of the earth; when on me grew the green grass, and on mefell the autumn light; when a warm scent of youth would rise from everypore of my vast, soft, green body at the touch of the rays of the mellowsun, and a fresh life, a sweet joy, would be half-consciously secreted andinarticulately poured forth from all the immensity of my being, as it laydumbly stretched, with its varied countries and seas and mountains, underthe bright blue sky. 

My feelings seem to be those of our ancient earth in the daily ecstasy ofits sun-kissed life; my own consciousness seems to stream through eachblade of grass, each sucking root, to rise with the sap through the trees, to break out with joyous thrills in the waving fields of corn, in therustling palm leaves. 

I feel impelled to give expression to my blood-tie with the earth, mykinsman's love for her; but I am afraid I shall not be understood. 

BOALIA, _18th November 1892. _

I am wondering where your train has got to by now. This is the time forthe sun to rise over the ups and downs of the treeless, rocky region nearNawadih station. The scene around there must be brightened by the freshsunlight, through which distant, blue hills are beginning to be faintlyvisible. 

Cultivated fields are scarcely to be seen, except where the primitivetribesmen have done a little ploughing with their buffaloes; on each sideof the railway cutting there are the heaped-up black rocks--theboulder-marked footprints of dried-up streams--and the fidgety, blackwagtails, perched along the telegraph wires. A wild, seamed, and scarrednature lies there in the sun, as though tamed at the touch of some soft, bright, cherubic hand. 

Do you know the picture which this calls up for me? In the _Sakuntala_ ofKalidas there is a scene where Bharat, the infant son of King Dushyanta, is playing with a lion cub. The child is lovingly passing his delicate, rosy fingers through the rough mane of the great beast, which lies quietlystretched in trustful repose, now and then casting affectionate glancesout of the corner of its eyes at its little human friend. 

And shall I tell you what those dry, boulder-strewn watercourses put me inmind of? We read in the English fairy tale of the Babes in the Wood, howthe little brother and sister left a trace of their wanderings, throughthe unknown forest into which their stepmother had turned them out, bydropping pebbles as they went. These streamlets are like lost babes in thegreat world into which they are sent adrift, and that is why they leavestones, as they go forth, to mark their course, so as not to lose theirway when they may be returning. But for them there is no return journey!

NATORE, _2nd December_ 1892. 

There is a depth of feeling and breadth of peace in a Bengal sunset behindthe trees which fringe the endless solitary fields, spreading away to thehorizon. 

Lovingly, yet sadly withal, does our evening sky bend over and meet theearth in the distance. It casts a mournful light on the earth it leavesbehind--a light which gives us a taste of the divine grief of the EternalSeparation[1] and eloquent is the silence which then broods over earth, sky, and waters. 

[Footnote 1: _I. E. _ between Purusha and Prakriti--God and Creation. ]

As I gaze on in rapt motionlessness, I fall to wondering--If ever thissilence should fail to contain itself, if the expression for which thishour has been seeking from the beginning of time should break forth, woulda profoundly solemn, poignantly moving music rise from earth to starland?

With a little steadfast concentration of effort we can, for ourselves, translate the grand harmony of light and colour which permeates theuniverse into music. We have only to close our eyes and receive with theear of the mind the vibration of this ever-flowing panorama. 

But how often shall I write of these sunsets and sunrises? I feel theirrenewed freshness every time; yet how am I to attain such renewedfreshness in my attempts at expression?

SHELIDAH, _9th December_ 1892. 

I am feeling weak and relaxed after my painful illness, and in this statethe ministrations of nature are sweet indeed. I feel as if, like the rest, I too am lazily glittering out my delight at the rays of the sun, and myletter-writing progresses but absent-mindedly. 

The world is ever new to me; like an old friend loved through this andformer lives, the acquaintance between us is both long and deep. 

I can well realise how, in ages past, when the earth in her first youthcame forth from her sea-bath and saluted the sun in prayer, I must havebeen one of the trees sprung from her new-formed soil, spreading myfoliage in all the freshness of a primal impulse. 

The great sea was rocking and swaying and smothering, like a foolishlyfond mother, its first-born land with repeated caresses; while I wasdrinking in the sunlight with the whole of my being, quivering under theblue sky with the unreasoning rapture of the new-born, holding fast andsucking away at my mother earth with all my roots. In blind joy my leavesburst forth and my flowers bloomed; and when the dark clouds gathered, their grateful shade would comfort me with a tender touch. 

From age to age, thereafter, have I been diversely reborn on this earth. So whenever we now sit face to face, alone together, various ancientmemories, gradually, one after another, come back to me. 

My mother earth sits to-day in the cornfields by the river-side, in herraiment of sunlit gold; and near her feet, her knees, her lap, I rollabout and play. Mother of a multitude of children, she attends butabsently to their constant calls on her, with an immense patience, butalso with a certain aloofness. She is seated there, with her far-away lookfastened on the verge of the afternoon sky, while I keep chattering onuntiringly. 

BALJA, _Tuesday, February 1893_. 

I do not want to wander about any more. I am pining for a corner in whichto nestle down snugly, away from the crowd. 

India has two aspects--in one she is a householder, in the other awandering ascetic. The former refuses to budge from the home corner, thelatter has no home at all. I find both these within me. I want to roamabout and see all the wide world, yet I also yearn for a little shelterednook; like a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast sky forflight. 

I hanker after a corner because it serves to bring calmness to my mind. Mymind really wants to be busy, but in making the attempt it knocks sorepeatedly against the crowd as to become utterly frenzied and to keepbuffeting me, its cage, from within. If only it is allowed a littleleisurely solitude, and can look about and think to its heart's content, it will express its feelings to its own satisfaction. 

This freedom of solitude is what my mind is fretting for; it would bealone with its imaginings, as the Creator broods over His own creation. 

CUTTACK, _February 1893_. 

Till we can achieve something, let us live incognito, say I. So long as weare only fit to be looked down upon, on what shall we base our claim torespect? When we have acquired a foothold of our own in the world, when wehave had some share in shaping its course, then we can meet otherssmilingly. Till then let us keep in the background, attending to our ownaffairs. 

But our countrymen seem to hold the opposite opinion. They set no store byour more modest, intimate wants which have to be met behind thescenes, --the whole of their attention is directed to momentaryattitudinising and display. 

Ours is truly a God-forsaken country. Difficult, indeed, is it for us tomaintain the strength of will to _do_. We get no help in any realsense. There is no one, within miles of us, in converse with whom we mightgain an accession of vitality. No one near seems to be thinking, orfeeling, or working. Not a soul has any experience of big striving, or ofreally and truly living. They all eat and drink, do their office work, smoke and sleep, and chatter nonsensically. When they touch upon emotionthey grow sentimental, when they reason they are childish. One yearns fora full-blooded, sturdy, and capable personality; these are all so manyshadows, flitting about, out of touch with the world. 

CUTTACK, _10th February_ 1893. 

He was a fully developed John Bull of the outrageous type--with a hugebeak of a nose, cunning eyes, and a yard-long chin. The curtailment of ourright to be tried by jury is now under consideration by the Government. The fellow dragged in the subject by the ears and insisted on arguing itout with our host, poor B---- Babu. He said the moral standard of thepeople of this country was low; that they had no real belief in thesacredness of life; so that they were unfit to serve on juries. 

The utter contempt with which we are regarded by these people was broughthome to me when I saw how they can accept a Bengali's hospitality and talkthus, seated at his table, without a quiver of compunction. 

As I sat in a corner of the drawing-room after dinner, everything round melooked blurred to my eyes. I seemed to be seated by the head of my great, insulted Motherland, who lay there in the dust before me, disconsolate, shorn of her glory. I cannot tell what a profound distress overpowered myheart. 

How incongruous seemed the _mem-sahibs_ there, in theirevening-dresses, the hum of English conversation, and the ripples oflaughter! How richly true for us is our India of the ages; how cheap andfalse the hollow courtesies of an English dinner-party!

CUTTACK, _March_ 1893. 

If we begin to attach too much importance to the applause of Englishmen, we shall have to be rid of much in us that is good, and to accept fromthem much that is bad. 

We shall grow ashamed of going about without socks, and cease to feelshame at the sight of their ball dresses. We shall have no compunction inthrowing overboard our ancient manners, nor any in emulating their lack ofcourtesy. 

We shall leave off wearing our _achgans_ because they are susceptible ofimprovement, but think nothing of surrendering our heads to their hats, though no headgear could well be uglier. 

In short, consciously or unconsciously, we shall have to cut our livesdown according as they clap their hands or not. 

Wherefore I apostrophise myself and say: "O Earthen Pot! For goodness sakekeep away from that Metal Pot! Whether he comes to you in anger or merelyto give you a patronising pat on the back, you are done for, cracked ineither case. So pay heed to old Aesop's sage counsel, I pray--and keepyour distance. "

Let the metal pot ornament wealthy homes; you have work to do in those ofthe poor. If you let yourself be broken, you will have no place in either, but merely return to the dust; or, at best, you may secure a corner in abric-a-brac cabinet--as a curiosity, and it is more glorious far to beused for fetching water by the meanest of village women. 

SHELIDAH, _8th May 1893_. 

Poetry is a very old love of mine--I must have been engaged to her when Iwas only Rathi's[1] age. Long ago the recesses under the old banyan treebeside our tank, the inner gardens, the unknown regions on the groundfloor of the house, the whole of the outside world, the nursery rhymes andtales told by the maids, created a wonderful fairyland within me. It isdifficult to give a clear idea of all the vague and mysterious happeningsof that period, but this much is certain, that my exchange of garlands[2]with Poetic Fancy was already duly celebrated. 

[Footnote 1: Rathi, his son, was then five years old. ]

[Footnote 2: The betrothal ceremony. ]

I must admit, however, that my betrothed is not an auspiciousmaiden--whatever else she may bring one, it is not good fortune. I cannotsay she has never given me happiness, but peace of mind with her is out ofthe question. The lover whom she favours may get his fill of bliss, buthis heart's blood is wrung out under her relentless embrace. It is not forthe unfortunate creature of her choice ever to become a staid and soberhouseholder, comfortably settled down on a social foundation. 

Consciously or unconsciously, I may have done many things that wereuntrue, but I have never uttered anything false in my poetry--that is thesanctuary where the deepest truths of my life find refuge. 

SHELIDAH, _10th May_ 1893. 

Here come black, swollen masses of cloud; they soak up the golden sunshinefrom the scene in front of me like great pads of blotting-paper. Rain mustbe near, for the breeze feels moist and tearful. 

Over there, on the sky-piercing peaks of Simla, you will find it hard torealise exactly what an important event the coming of the clouds is here, or how many are anxiously looking up to the sky, hailing their advent. 

I feel a great tenderness for these peasant folk--our ryots--big, helpless, infantile children of Providence, who must have food brought totheir very lips, or they are undone. When the breasts of Mother Earth dryup they are at a loss what to do, and can only cry. But no sooner is theirhunger satisfied than they forget all their past sufferings. 

I know not whether the socialistic ideal of a more equal distribution ofwealth is attainable, but if not, the dispensation of Providence is indeedcruel, and man a truly unfortunate creature. For if in this world miserymust exist, so be it; but let some little loophole, some glimpse ofpossibility at least, be left, which may serve to urge the nobler portionof humanity to hope and struggle unceasingly for its alleviation. 

They say a terribly hard thing who assert that the division of the world'sproduction to afford each one a mouthful of food, a bit of clothing, isonly an Utopian dream. All these social problems are hard indeed! Fate hasallowed humanity such a pitifully meagre coverlet, that in pulling it overone part of the world, another has to be left bare. In allaying ourpoverty we lose our wealth, and with this wealth what a world of grace andbeauty and power is lost to us. 

But the sun shines forth again, though the clouds are still banked up inthe West. 

SHELIDAH, _11th May 1893. _

There is another pleasure for me here. Sometimes one or other of oursimple, devoted, old ryots comes to see me--and their worshipful homage isso unaffected! How much greater than I are they in the beautifulsimplicity and sincerity of their reverence. What if I am unworthy oftheir veneration--their feeling loses nothing of its value. 

I regard these grown-up children with the same kind of affection that Ihave for little children--but there is also a difference. They are moreinfantile still. Little children will grow up later on, but these bigchildren never. 

A meek and radiantly simple soul shines through their worn and wrinkled, old bodies. Little children are merely simple, they have not theunquestioning, unwavering devotion of these. If there be any undercurrentalong which the souls of men may have communication with one another, thenmy sincere blessing will surely reach and serve them. 

SHELIDAH, _16th May_ 1893. 

I walk about for an hour on the river bank, fresh and clean after myafternoon bath. Then I get into the new jolly-boat, anchor in mid-stream, and on a bed, spread on the planked over-stern, I lie silently there on myback, in the darkness of the evening. Little S---- sits beside me andchatters away, and the sky becomes more and more thickly studded withstars. 

Each day the thought recurs to me: Shall I be reborn under thisstar-spangled sky? Will the peaceful rapture of such wonderful eveningsever again be mine, on this silent Bengal river, in so secluded a cornerof the world?

Perhaps not. The scene may be changed; I may be born with a differentmind. Many such evenings may come, but they may refuse to nestle sotrustfully, so lovingly, with such complete abandon, to my breast. 

Curiously enough, my greatest fear is lest I should be reborn in Europe!For there one cannot recline like this with one's whole being laid open tothe infinite above--one is liable, I am afraid, to be soundly rated forlying down at all. I should probably have been hustling strenuously insome factory or bank, or Parliament. Like the roads there, one's mind hasto be stone-metalled for heavy traffic--geometrically laid out, and keptclear and regulated. 

I am sure I cannot exactly say why this lazy, dreamy, self-absorbed, sky-filled state of mind seems to me the more desirable. I feel no whitinferior to the busiest men of the world as I lie here in my jolly-boat. Rather, had I girded up my loins to be strenuous, I might have seemed everso feeble compared to those chips of old oaken blocks. 

SHELIDAH, _3rd July 1893. _

All last night the wind howled like a stray dog, and the rain still pourson without a break. The water from the fields is rushing in numberless, purling streams to the river. The dripping ryots are crossing the river inthe ferryboat, some with their tokas[1] on, others with yam leaves heldover their heads. Big cargo-boats are gliding along, the boatman sittingdrenched at his helm, the crew straining at the tow-ropes through therain. The birds remain gloomily confined to their nests, but the sons ofmen fare forth, for in spite of the weather the world's work must go on. 

[Footnote 1: Conical hats of straw or of split bamboo. ]

Two cowherd lads are grazing their cattle just in front of my boat. Thecows are munching away with great gusto, their noses plunged into the lushgrass, their tails incessantly busy flicking off the flies. The raindropsand the sticks of the cowherd boys fall on their backs with the sameunreasonable persistency, and they bear both with equally uncriticalresignation, steadily going on with their munch, munch, munch. These cowshave such mild, affectionate, mournful eyes; why, I wonder, shouldProvidence have thought fit to impose all the burden of man's work on thesubmissive shoulders of these great, gentle beasts?

The river is rising daily. What I could see yesterday only from the upperdeck, I can now see from my cabin windows. Every morning I awake to findmy field of vision growing larger. Not long since, only the tree-tops nearthose distant villages used to appear, like dark green clouds. To-day thewhole of the wood is visible. 

Land and water are gradually approaching each other like two bashfullovers. The limit of their shyness has nearly been reached--their armswill soon be round each other's necks. I shall enjoy my trip along thisbrimful river at the height of the rains. I am fidgeting to give the orderto cast off. 

SHELIDAH, _4th July_ 1893. 

A little gleam of sunlight shows this morning. There was a break in therains yesterday, but the clouds are banked up so heavily along the skirtsof the sky that there is not much hope of the break lasting. It looks asif a heavy carpet of cloud had been rolled up to one side, and at anymoment a fussy breeze may come along and spread it over the whole placeagain, covering every trace of blue sky and golden sunshine. 

What a store of water must have been laid up in the sky this year. Theriver has already risen over the low _chur_-lands, [1] threatening tooverwhelm all the standing crops. The wretched ryots, in despair, arecutting and bringing away in boats sheaves of half-ripe rice. As they passmy boat I hear them bewailing their fate. It is easy to understand howheart-rending it must be for cultivators to have to cut down their rice onthe very eve of its ripening, the only hope left them being that some ofthe ears may possibly have hardened into grain. 

[Footnote 1: Old sand-banks consolidated by the deposit of a layer ofculturable soil. ]

There must be some element of pity in the dispensations of Providence, else how did we get our share of it? But it is so difficult to see whereit comes in. The lamentations of these hundreds of thousands ofunoffending creatures do not seem to get anywhere. The rain pours on as itlists, the river still rises, and no amount of petitioning seems to havethe effect of bringing relief from any quarter. One has to seekconsolation by saying that all this is beyond the understanding of man. And yet, it is so vitally necessary for man to understand that there aresuch things as pity and justice in the world. 

However, this is only sulking. Reason tells us that creation never can beperfectly happy. So long as it is incomplete it must put up withimperfection and sorrow. It can only be perfect when it ceases to becreation, and is God. Do our prayers dare go so far?

The more we think over it, the oftener we come hack to thestarting-point--Why this creation at all? If we cannot make up our mindsto object to the thing itself, it is futile complaining about itscompanion, sorrow. 

SHAZADPUR, _7th July_ 1893. 

The flow of village life is not too rapid, neither is it stagnant. Workand rest go together, hand in hand. The ferry crosses to and fro, thepassers-by with umbrellas up wend their way along the tow-path, women arewashing rice on the split-bamboo trays which they dip in the water, theryots are coming to the market with bundles of jute on their heads. Twomen are chopping away at a log of wood with regular, ringing blows. Thevillage carpenter is repairing an upturned dinghy under a big_aswatha_ tree. A mongrel dog is prowling aimlessly along the canalbank. Some cows are lying there chewing the cud, after a huge meal off theluxuriant grass, lazily moving their ears backwards and forwards, flickingoff flies with their tails, and occasionally giving an impatient toss oftheir heads when the crows perched on their backs take too much of aliberty. 

The monotonous blows of woodcutter's axe or carpenter's mallet, thesplashing of oars, the merry voices of the naked little children at play, the plaintive tune of the ryot's song, the more dominant creaking of theturning oil-mill, all these sounds of activity do not seem out of harmonywith murmuring leaves and singing birds, and all combine like movingstrains of some grand dream-orchestra, rendering a composition of immensethough restrained pathos. 

SHAZADPUR, _10th July 1893. _

All I have to say about the discussion that is going on over "silentpoets" is that, though the strength of feeling may be the same in thosewho are silent as in those who are vocal, that has nothing to do withpoetry. Poetry is not a matter of feeling, it is the creation of form. 

Ideas take shape by some hidden, subtle skill at work within the poet. This creative power is the origin of poetry. Perceptions, feelings, orlanguage, are only raw material. One may be gifted with feeling, a secondwith language, a third with both; but he who has as well a creativegenius, alone is a poet. 

PATISAR, _13th August 1893. _

Coming through these _beels_[1] to Kaligram, an idea took shape in mymind. Not that the thought was new, but sometimes old ideas strike onewith new force. 

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. --Sometimes a stream passing through theflat Bengal country encounters a stretch of low land and spreads out intoa sheet of water, called a _beel_, of indefinite extent, ranging from alarge pool in the dry season to a shoreless expanse during the rains. 

Villages consisting of a cluster of huts, built on mounds, stand out hereand there like islands, and boats or round, earthen vessels are the onlymeans of getting about from village to village. 

Where the waters cover cultivated tracts the rice grows through, oftenfrom considerable depths, giving to the boats sailing over them thecurious appearance of gliding over a cornfield, so clear is the water. Elsewhere these _beels_ have a peculiar flora and fauna of water-liliesand irises and various water-fowl. As a result, they resemble neither amarsh nor a lake, but have a distinct character of their own. ]

The water loses its beauty when it ceases to be defined by banks andspreads out into a monotonous vagueness. In the case of language, metreserves for banks and gives form and beauty and character. Just as thebanks give each river a distinct personality, so does rhythm make eachpoem an individual creation; prose is like the featureless, impersonal_beel_. Again, the waters of the river have movement and progress; thoseof the _beel_ engulf the country by expanse alone. So, in order to givelanguage power, the narrow bondage of metre becomes necessary; otherwiseit spreads and spreads, but cannot advance. 

The country people call these _beels_ "dumb waters"--they have nolanguage, no self-expression. The river ceaselessly babbles; so the wordsof the poem sing, they are not "dumb words. " Thus bondage creates beautyof form, motion, and music; bounds make not only for beauty but power. 

Poetry gives itself up to the control of metre, not led by blind habit, but because it thus finds the joy of motion. There are foolish persons whothink that metre is a species of verbal gymnastics, or legerdemain, ofwhich the object is to win the admiration of the crowd. That is not so. Metre is born as all beauty is born the universe through. The current setup within well-defined bounds gives metrical verse power to move the mindsof men as vague and indefinite prose cannot. 

This idea became clear to me as I glided on from river to _beel_ and_beel_ to river. 

PATISAR, _26th (Straven) August 1893. _

For some time it has struck me that man is a rough-hewn and woman afinished product. 

There is an unbroken consistency in the manners, customs, speech, andadornment of woman. And the reason is, that for ages Nature has assignedto her the same definite rôle and has been adapting her to it. Nocataclysm, no political revolution, no alteration of social ideal, has yetdiverted woman from her particular functions, nor destroyed theirinter-relations. She has loved, tended, and caressed, and done nothingelse; and the exquisite skill which she has acquired in these, permeatesall her being and doing. Her disposition and action have becomeinseparably one, like the flower and its scent. She has, therefore, nodoubts or hesitations. 

But the character of man has still many hollows and protuberances; each ofthe varied circumstances and forces which have contributed to his makinghas left its mark upon him. That is why the features of one will displayan indefinite spread of forehead, of another an irresponsible prominenceof nose, of a third an unaccountable hardness about the jaws. Had man butthe benefit of continuity and uniformity of purpose, Nature must havesucceeded in elaborating a definite mould for him, enabling him tofunction simply and naturally, without such strenuous effort. He would nothave so complicated a code of behaviour; and he would be less liable todeviate from the normal when disturbed by outside influences. 

Woman was cast in the mould of mother. Man has no such primal design to goby, and that is why he has been unable to rise to an equal perfection ofbeauty. 

PATISAR, _19th February 1894. _

We have two elephants which come to graze on this bank of the river. Theygreatly interest me. They give the ground a few taps with one foot, andthen taking hold of the grass with the end of their trunks wrench off anenormous piece of turf, roots, soil, and all. This they go on swingingtill all the earth leaves the roots; they then put it into their mouthsand eat it up. 

Sometimes the whim takes them to draw up the dust into their trunks, andthen with a snort they squirt it all over their bodies; this is theirelephantine toilet. 

I love to look on these overgrown beasts, with their vast bodies, theirimmense strength, their ungainly proportions, their docile harmlessness. Their very size and clumsiness make me feel a kind of tenderness forthem--their unwieldy bulk has something infantile about it. Moreover, theyhave large hearts. When they get wild they are furious, but when they calmdown they are peace itself. 

The uncouthness which goes with bigness does not repel, it ratherattracts. 

PATISAR, _27th February 1894. _

The sky is every now and then overcast and again clears up. Sudden littlepuffs of wind make the boat lazily creak and groan in all its seams. Thusthe day wears on. 

It is now past one o'clock. Steeped in this countryside noonday, with itsdifferent sounds--the quacking of ducks, the swirl of passing boats, bathers splashing the clothes they wash, the distant shouts from droverstaking cattle across the ford, --it is difficult even to imagine thechair-and-table, monotonously dismal routine-life of Calcutta. 

Calcutta is as ponderously proper as a Government office. Each of its dayscomes forth, like coin from a mint, clear-cut and glittering. Ah! thosedreary, deadly days, so precisely equal in weight, so decentlyrespectable!

Here I am quit of the demands of my circle, and do not feel like a woundup machine. Each day is my own. And with leisure and my thoughts I walkthe fields, unfettered by bounds of space or time. The evening graduallydeepens over earth and sky and water, as with bowed head I stroll along. 

PATISAR, _22nd March 1894. _

As I was sitting at the window of the boat, looking out on the river, Isaw, all of a sudden, an odd-looking bird making its way through the waterto the opposite bank, followed by a great commotion. I found it was adomestic fowl which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley byjumping overboard and was now trying frantically to win across. It hadalmost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closedon it, and it was brought back in triumph, gripped by the neck. I told thecook I would not have any meat for dinner. 

I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only becausewe do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimeswhich are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is putdown to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty isnot of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nicedistinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, itsprotest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go onperpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us--in fact, any one whodoes not join in is dubbed a crank. 

How artificial is our apprehension of sin! I feel that the highestcommandment is that of sympathy for all sentient beings. Love is thefoundation of all religion. The other day I read in one of the Englishpapers that 50, 000 pounds of animal carcasses had been sent to some armystation in Africa, but the meat being found to have gone bad on arrival, the consignment was returned and was eventually auctioned off for a fewpounds at Portsmouth. What a shocking waste of life! What callousness toits true worth! How many living creatures are sacrificed only to grace thedishes at a dinner-party, a large proportion of which will leave the tableuntouched!

So long as we are unconscious of our cruelty we may not be to blame. Butif, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelingssimply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult allthat is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet. 

PATISAR, _28th March 1894. _

It is getting rather warm here, but I do not mind the heat of the sunmuch. The heated wind whistles on its way, now and then pauses in a whirl, then dances away twirling its skirt of dust and sand and dry leaves andtwigs. 

This morning, however, it was quite cold--almost like a cold-weathermorning; in fact, I did not feel over-enthusiastic for my bath. It is sodifficult to account for what veritably happens in this big thing calledNature. Some obscure cause turns up in some unknown corner, and all of asudden things look completely different. 

The mind of man works in just the same mysterious fashion as outsideNature--so it struck me yesterday. A wondrous alchemy is being wrought inartery, vein, and nerve, in brain and marrow. The blood-stream rushes on, the nerve--strings vibrate, the heart-muscle rises and falls, and theseasons in man's being change from one to another. What kind of breezeswill blow next, when and from what quarter--of that we know nothing. 

One day I am sure I shall get along splendidly; I feel strong enough toleap over all the obstructing sorrows and trials of the world; and, as ifI had a printed programme for the rest of my life tucked safely away in mypocket, I am at ease. The next day there is a nasty wind, sprung up fromsome unknown _inferno_, the aspect of the sky is threatening, and Ibegin to doubt whether I shall ever weather the storm. Merely becausesomething has gone wrong in some blood-vessel or nerve-fibre, all mystrength and intelligence seem to fail me. 

This mystery within frightens me. It makes me diffident about talking ofwhat I shall or shall not do. Why was this tacked on to me--this immensemystery which I can neither understand nor control? I know not where itmay lead me or I lead it. I cannot see what is happening, nor am Iconsulted about what is going to happen, and yet I have to keep up anappearance of mastery and pretend to be the doer. .. . 

I feel like a living pianoforte with a vast complication of machinery andwires inside, but with no means of telling who the player is, and withonly a guess as to why the player plays at all. I can only know what isbeing played, whether the mode is merry or mournful, when the notes aresharp or flat, the tune in or out of time, the key high-pitched or low. But do I really know even that?

PATISAR, _30th March 1894. _

Sometimes when I realise that Life's journey is long, and that the sorrowsto be encountered are many and inevitable, a supreme effort is required tokeep up my strength of mind. Some evenings, as I sit alone staring at theflame of the lamp on the table, I vow I will live as a brave manshould--unmoved, silent, uncomplaining. The resolve puffs me up, and forthe moment I mistake myself for a very, very brave person indeed. But assoon as the thorns on the road worry my feet, I writhe and begin to feelserious misgivings as to the future. The path of life again seems long, and my strength inadequate. 

But this last conclusion cannot be the true one, for it is these pettythorns which are the most difficult to bear. The household of the mind isa thrifty one, and only so much is spent as is necessary. There is nosquandering on trifles, and its wealth of strength is saved up withmiserly strictness to meet the really big calamities. So any amount ofweeping and wailing over the lesser griefs fails to evoke a charitableresponse. But when sorrow is deepest there is no stint of effort. Then thesurface crust is pierced, and consolation wells up, and all the forces ofpatience and courage are banded together to do their duty. Thus greatsuffering brings with it the power of great endurance. 

One side of man's nature has the desire for pleasure--there is anotherside which desires self-sacrifice. When the former meets withdisappointment, the latter gains strength, and on its thus finding fullerscope a grand enthusiasm fills the soul. So while we are cowards beforepetty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood. And in these, therefore, there is a joy. 

It is not an empty paradox to say that there is joy in sorrow, just as, onthe other hand, it is true that there is a dissatisfaction in pleasure. Itis not difficult to understand why this should be so. 

SHELIDAH, _24th June 1894_. 

I have been only four days here, but, having lost count of the hours, itseems such a long while, I feel that if I were to return to Calcuttato-day I should find much of it changed--as if I alone had been standingstill outside the current of time, unconscious of the gradually changingposition of the rest of the world. 

The fact is that here, away from Calcutta, I live in my own inner world, where the clocks do not keep ordinary time; where duration is measuredonly by the intensity of the feelings; where, as the outside world doesnot count the minutes, moments change into hours and hours into moments. So it seems to me that the subdivisions of time and space are only mentalillusions. Every atom is immeasurable and every moment infinite. 

There is a Persian story which I was greatly taken with when I read it asa boy--I think I understood, even then, something of the underlying idea, though I was a mere child. To show the illusory character of time, a_faquir_ put some magic water into a tub and asked the King to take adip. The King no sooner dipped his head in than he found himself in astrange country by the sea, where he spent a good long time going througha variety of happenings and doings. He married, had children, his wife andchildren died, he lost all his wealth, and as he writhed under hissufferings he suddenly found himself back in the room, surrounded by hiscourtiers. On his proceeding to revile the _faquir_ for hismisfortunes, they said: "But, Sire, you have only just dipped your headin, and raised it out of the water!"

The whole of our life with its pleasures and pains is in the same wayenclosed in one moment of time. However long or intense we may feel it tobe while it lasts, as soon as we have finished our dip in the tub of theworld, we shall find how like a slight, momentary dream the whole thinghas been. .. . 

SHELIDAH, _9th August 1894. _

I saw a dead bird floating down the current to-day. The history of itsdeath may easily be divined. It had a nest in some mango tree at the edgeof a village. It returned home in the evening, nestling there againstsoft-feathered companions, and resting a wearied little body in sleep. Allof a sudden, in the night, the mighty Padma tossed slightly in her bed, and the earth was swept away from the roots of the mango tree. The littlecreature bereft of its nest awoke just for a moment before it went tosleep again for ever. 

When I am in the presence of the awful mystery of all-destructive Nature, the difference between myself and the other living things seems trivial. In town, human society is to the fore and looms large; it is cruellycallous to the happiness and misery of other creatures as compared withits own. 

In Europe, also, man is so complex and so dominant, that the animal is toomerely an animal to him. To Indians the idea of the transmigration of thesoul from animal to man, and man to animal, does not seem strange, and sofrom our scriptures pity for all sentient creatures has not been banishedas a sentimental exaggeration. 

When I am in close touch with Nature in the country, the Indian in measserts itself and I cannot remain coldly indifferent to the abounding joyof life throbbing within the soft down-covered breast of a single tinybird. 

SHELIDAH, _10th August 1894. _

Last night a rushing sound in the water awoke me--a sudden boisterousdisturbance of the river current--probably the onslaught of a freshet: athing that often happens at this season. One's feet on the planking of theboat become aware of a variety of forces at work beneath it. Slighttremors, little rockings, gentle heaves, and sudden jerks, all keep me intouch with the pulse of the flowing stream. 

There must have been some sudden excitement in the night, which sent thecurrent racing away. I rose and sat by the window. A hazy kind of lightmade the turbulent river look madder than ever. The sky was spotted withclouds. The reflection of a great big star quivered on the waters in along streak, like a burning gash of pain. Both banks were vague with thedimness of slumber, and between them was this wild, sleepless unrest, running and running regardless of consequences. 

To watch a scene like this in the middle of the night makes one feelaltogether a different person, and the daylight life an illusion. Thenagain, this morning, that midnight world faded away into some dreamland, and vanished into thin air. The two are so different, yet both are truefor man. 

The day-world seems to me like European Music--its concords and discordsresolving into each other in a great progression of harmony; thenight-world like Indian Music--pure, unfettered melody, grave andpoignant. What if their contrast be so striking--both move us. Thisprinciple of opposites is at the very root of creation, which is dividedbetween the rule of the King and the Queen; Night and Day; the One and theVaried; the Eternal and the Evolving. 

We Indians are under the rule of Night. We are immersed in the Eternal, the One. Our melodies are to be sung alone, to oneself; they take us outof the everyday world into a solitude aloof. European Music is for themultitude and takes them along, dancing, through the ups and downs of thejoys and sorrows of men. 

SHELIDAH, _13th August 1894. _

Whatever I truly think, truly feel, truly realise, --its natural destiny isto find true expression. There is some force in me which continually workstowards that end, but is not mine alone, --it permeates the universe. Whenthis universal force is manifested within an individual, it is beyond hiscontrol and acts according to its own nature; and in surrendering ourlives to its power is our greatest joy. It not only gives us expression, but also sensitiveness and love; this makes our feelings so fresh to usevery time, so full of wonder. 

When my little daughter delights me, she merges into the original mysteryof joy which is the Universe; and my loving caresses are called forth likeworship. I am sure that all our love is but worship of the Great Mystery, only we perform it unconsciously. Otherwise it is meaningless. 

Like universal gravitation, which governs large and small alike in theworld of matter, this universal joy exerts its attraction throughout ourinner world, and baffles our understanding when we see it in a partialview. The only rational explanation of why we find joy in man and natureis given in the Upanishad:

 For of joy are born all created things. 

SHELIDAH, _19th August 1894. _

The Vedanta seems to help many to free their minds from all doubt as tothe Universe and its First Cause, but my doubts remain undispelled. It istrue that the Vedanta is simpler than most other theories. The problem ofCreation and its Creator is more complex than appears at first sight; butthe Vedanta has certainly simplified it half way, by cutting the Gordianknot and leaving out Creation altogether. 

There is only Brahma, and the rest of us merely imagine that we are, --itis wonderful how the human mind should have found room for such a thought. It is still more wonderful to think that the idea is not so inconsistentas it sounds, and the real difficulty is, rather, to prove that anythingdoes exist. 

Anyhow, when as now the moon is up, and with half-closed eyes I amstretched beneath it on the upper deck, the soft breeze cooling myproblem-vexed head, then the earth, waters, and sky around, the gentlerippling of the river, the casual wayfarer passing along the tow-path, theoccasional dinghy gliding by, the trees across the fields, vague in themoonlight, the sleepy village beyond, bounded by the dark shadows of itsgroves, --verily seem an illusion of _Maya_; and yet they cling to anddraw the mind and heart more truly than truth itself, which isabstraction, and it becomes impossible to realise what kind of salvationthere can be in freeing oneself from them. 

SHAZADPUR, _5th September 1894. _

I realise how hungry for space I have become, and take my fill of it inthese rooms where I hold my state as sole monarch, with all doors andwindows thrown open. Here the desire and power to write are mine as theyare nowhere else. The stir of outside life comes into me in waves ofverdure, and with its light and scent and sound stimulated my fancy intostory-writing. 

The afternoons have a special enchantment of their own. The glare of thesun, the silence, the solitude, the bird cries, especially the cawings ofcrows, and the delightful, restful leisure--these conspire to carry meaway altogether. 

Just such noondays seem to have gone to the making of the ArabianNights, --in Damascus, Bokhara, or Samarkhand, with their desert roadways, files of camels, wandering horsemen, crystal springs, welling up under theshade of feathery date groves; their wilderness of roses, songs ofnightingales, wines of Shiraz; their narrow bazaar paths with brightoverhanging canopies, the men, in loose robes and multi-coloured turbans, selling dates and nuts and melons; their palaces, fragrant with incense, luxurious with kincob-covered divans and bolsters by the window-side;their Zobedia or Amina or Sufia with gaily decorated jacket, widetrousers, and gold-embroidered slippers, a long narghilah pipe curled upat her feet, with gorgeously liveried eunuchs on guard, --and all thepossible and impossible tales of human deeds and desires, and the laughterand wailing, of that distant mysterious region. 

ON THE WAY TO DIGHAPATIAYA, _20th September 1894. _

Big trees are standing in the flood water, their trunks wholly submerged, their branches and foliage bending over the waters. Boats are tied upunder shady groves of mango and bo tree, and people bathe screened behindthem. Here and there cottages stand out in the current, their innerquadrangles under water. 

As my boat rustles its way through standing crops it now and then comesacross what was a pool and is still to be distinguished by its clusters ofwater-lilies, and diver-birds pursuing fish. 

The water has penetrated every possible place. I have never before seensuch a complete defeat of the land. A little more and the water will beright inside the cottages, and their occupants will have to put up_machans_ to live on. The cows will die if they have to remainstanding like this in water up to their knees. All the snakes have beenflooded out of their holes, and they, with sundry other homeless reptilesand insects, will have to chum with man and take refuge on the thatch ofhis roof. 

The vegetation rotting in the water, refuse of all kinds floating about, naked children with shrivelled limbs and enlarged spleens splashingeverywhere, the long-suffering patient housewives exposed in their wetclothes to wind and rain, wading through their daily tasks with tucked-upskirts, and over all a thick pall of mosquitoes hovering in the noxiousatmosphere--the sight is hardly pleasing!

Colds and fevers and rheumatism in every home, the malaria-strickeninfants constantly crying, --nothing can save them. How is it possible formen to live in such unlovely, unhealthy, squalid, neglected surroundings?The fact is we are so used to bear everything, hands down, --the ravages ofNature, the oppression of rulers, the pressure of our _shastras_ towhich we have not a word to say, while they keep eternally grinding usdown. 

ON THE WAY TO BOALIA, _22nd September 1894. _

It feels strange to be reminded that only thirty-two Autumns have come andgone in my life; for my memory seems to have receded back into the dimnessof time immemorial; and when my inner world is flooded with a light, as ofan unclouded autumn morning, I feel I am sitting at the window of somemagic palace, gazing entranced on a scene of distant reminiscence, soothedwith soft breezes laden with the faint perfume of all the Past. 

Goethe on his death-bed wanted "more light. " If I have any desire left atall at such a time, it will be for "more space" as well; for I dearly loveboth light and space. Many look down on Bengal as being only a flatcountry, but that is just what makes me revel in its scenery all the more. Its unobstructed sky is filled to the brim, like an amethyst cup, with thedescending twilight and peace of the evening; and the golden skirt of thestill, silent noonday spreads over the whole of it without let orhindrance. 

Where is there another such country for the eye to look on, the mind totake in?

CALCUTTA, _5th October 1894. _

To-morrow is the Durga Festival. As I was going to S----'s yesterday, Inoticed images being made in almost every big house on the way. It struckme that during these few days of the Poojahs, old and young alike hadbecome children. 

When we come to think of it, all preparation for enjoyment is really aplaying with toys which are of no consequence in themselves. From outsideit may appear wasteful, but can that be called futile which raises such awave of feeling through and through the country? Even the driest ofworldly-wise people are moved out of their self-centred interests by therush of the pervading emotion. 

Thus, once every year there comes a period when all minds are in a meltingmood, fit for the springing of love and affection and sympathy. The songsof welcome and farewell to the goddess, the meeting of loved ones, thestrains of the festive pipes, the limpid sky and molten gold of autumn, are all parts of one great paean of joy. 

Pure joy is the children's joy. They have the power of using any and everytrivial thing to create their world of interest, and the ugliest doll ismade beautiful with their imagination and lives with their life. He whocan retain this faculty of enjoyment after he has grown up, is indeed thetrue Idealist. For him things are not merely visible to the eye or audibleto the ear, but they are also sensible to the heart, and their narrownessand imperfections are lost in the glad music which he himself supplies. 

Every one cannot hope to be an Idealist, but a whole people approachesnearest to this blissful state at such seasons of festivity. And then whatmay ordinarily appear to be a mere toy loses its limitations and becomesglorified with an ideal radiance. 

BOLPUR, _19th October 1894. _

We know people only in dotted outline, that is to say, with gaps in ourknowledge which we have to fill in ourselves, as best we can. Thus, eventhose we know well are largely made up of our imagination. Sometimes thelines are so broken, with even the guiding dots missing, that a portion ofthe picture remains darkly confused and uncertain. If, then, our bestfriends are only pieces of broken outline strung on a thread ofimagination, do we really know anybody at all, or does anybody know usexcept in the same disjointed fashion? But perhaps it is these veryloopholes, allowing entrance to each other's imagination, which make forintimacy; otherwise each one, secure in his inviolate individuality, wouldhave been unapproachable to all but the Dweller within. 

Our own self, too, we know only in bits, and with these scraps of materialwe have to shape the hero of our life-story, --likewise with the help ofour imagination. Providence has, doubtless, deliberately omitted portionsso that we may assist in our own creation. 

BOLPUR, _31st October 1894. _

The first of the north winds has begun to blow to-day, shiveringly. Itlooks as if there had been a visitation of the tax-gatherer in the_Amlaki_ groves, --everything beside itself, sighing, trembling, withering. The tired impassiveness of the noonday sunshine, with itsmonotonous cooing of doves in the dense shade of the mango-tops, seems toovercast the drowsy watches of the day with a pang, as of some impendingparting. 

The ticking of the clock on my table, and the pattering of the squirrelswhich scamper in and out of my room, are in harmony with all other middaysounds. 

It amuses me to watch these soft, grey and black striped, furry squirrels, with their bushy tails, their twinkling bead-like eyes, their gentle yetbusily practical demeanour. Everything eatable has to be put away in thewire-gauze cupboard in the corner, safe from these greedy creatures. So, sniffing with an irrepressible eagerness, they come nosing round and roundthe cupboard, trying to find some hole for entrance. If any grain or crumbhas been dropped outside they are sure to find it, and, taking it betweentheir forepaws, nibble away with great industry, turning it over and overto adjust it to their mouths. At the least movement of mine up go theirtails over their backs and off they run, only to stop short half-way, situp on their tails on the door-mat, scratching their ears with theirhind-paws, and then come back. 

Thus little sounds continue all day long--gnawing teeth, scampering feet, and the tinkling of the china on the shelves. 

SHELIDAH, _7th December 1894. _

As I walk on the moonlit sands, S---- usually comes up for a businesstalk. 

He came last evening; and when silence fell upon me after the talk wasover, I became aware of the eternal universe standing before me in theevening light. The trivial chatter of one person had been enough toobscure the presence of its all-pervading manifestation. 

As soon as the patter of words came to an end, the peace of the starsdescended, and filled my heart to overflowing. I found my seat in onecorner, with these assembled millions of shining orbs, in the greatmysterious conclave of Being. 

I have to start out early in the evening so as to let my mind absorb thetranquillity outside, before S---- comes along with his jarring inquiriesas to whether the milk has agreed with me, and if I have finished goingthrough the Annual Statement. 

How curiously placed are we between the Eternal and the Ephemeral! Anyallusion to the affairs of the stomach sounds so hopelessly discordantwhen the mind is dwelling on the things of the spirit, --and yet the souland the stomach have been living together so long. The very spot on whichthe moonlight falls is my landed property, but the moonlight tells me thatmy _zamindari_ is an illusion, and my _zamindari_ tells me thatthis moonlight is all emptiness. And as for poor me, I remain distractedbetween the two. 

SHELIDAH, _23rd February_ 1895. 

I grow quite absent-minded when I try to write for the _Sadhana_magazine. 

I raise my eyes to every passing boat and keep staring at the ferry goingto and fro. And then on the bank, close to my boat, there are a herd ofbuffaloes thrusting their massive snouts into the herbage, wrapping theirtongues round it to get it into their mouths, and then munching away, blowing hard with great big gasps of contentment, and flicking the fliesoff their backs with their tails. 

All of a sudden a naked weakling of a human cub appears on the scene, makes sundry noises, and pokes one of the patient beasts with a cudgel, whereupon, throwing occasional glances at the human sprig out of a cornerof its eye, and snatching at tufts of leaves or grass here and there onthe way, the unruffled beast leisurely moves on a few paces, and that impof a boy seems to feel that his duty as herdsman has been done. 

I fail to penetrate this mystery of the boy-cowherd's mind. Whenever a cowor a buffalo has selected a spot to its liking and is comfortably grazingthere, I cannot divine what purpose is served by worrying it, as heinsists on doing, till it shifts somewhere else. I suppose it is man'smasterfulness glorying in triumph over the powerful creature it has tamed. Anyhow, I love to see these buffaloes amongst the lush grass. 

But this is not what I started to say. I wanted to tell you how the leastthing distracts me nowadays from my duty to the _Sadhana_. In my lastletter[1] I told you of the bumble-bees which hover round me in somefruitless quest, to the tune of a meaningless humming, with tirelessassiduity. 

[Footnote 1: Not included in this selection. ]

They come every day at about nine or ten in the morning, dart up to mytable, shoot down under the desk, go bang on to the coloured glasswindow-pane, and then with a circuit or two round my head are off againwith a whizz. 

I could easily have thought them to be departed spirits who had left thisworld unsatisfied, and so keep coming back to it again and again in theguise of bees, paying me an inquiring visit in passing. But I thinknothing of the kind. I am sure they are real bees, otherwise known, inSanskrit, as honey-suckers, or on still rarer occasions asdouble-proboscideans. 

SHELIDAH, _16th (Phalgun) February_ 1895. 

We have to tread every single moment of the way as we go on living ourlife, but when taken as a whole it is such a very small thing, two hoursuninterrupted thought can hold all of it. 

After thirty years of strenuous living Shelley could only supply materialfor two volumes of biography, of which, moreover, a considerable space istaken up by Dowden's chatter. The thirty years of my life would not filleven one volume. 

What a to-do there is over this tiny bit of life! To think of the quantityof land and trade and commerce which go to furnish its commissariat alone, the amount of space occupied by each individual throughout the world, though one little chair is large enough to hold the whole of him! Yet, after all is over and done, there remains only material for two hours'thought, some pages of writing!

What a negligible fraction of my few pages would this one lazy day of mineoccupy! But then, will not this peaceful day, on the desolate sands by theplacid river, leave nevertheless a distinct little gold mark even upon thescroll of my eternal past and eternal future?

SHELIDAH, _28th February_ 1895. 

I have got an anonymous letter to-day which begins:

 To give up one's self at the feet of another, is the truest of all gifts. 

The writer has never seen me, but knows me from my writings, and goes onto say:

 However petty or distant, the Sun[1]-worshipper gets a share of the Sun's rays. You are the world's poet, yet to me it seems you are my own poet!

[Footnote 1: Rabi, the author's name, means the Sun. ]

and more in the same strain. 

Man is so anxious to bestow his love on some object, that he ends byfalling in love with his own Ideal. But why should we suppose the idea tobe less true than the reality? We can never know for certain the truth ofthe substance underlying what we get through the senses. Why should thedoubt be greater in the case of the entity behind the ideas which are thecreation of mind?

The mother realises in her child the great Idea, which is in every child, the ineffableness of which, however, is not revealed to any one else. Arewe to say that what draws forth the mother's very life and soul isillusory, but what fails to draw the rest of us to the same extent is thereal truth?

Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love--the beauty of hissoul knows no limit. .. . But I am departing into generalities. What Iwanted to express is, that in one sense I have no right to accept thisoffering of my admirer's heart; that is to say, for me, seen within myeveryday covering, such a person could not possibly have had thesefeelings. But there is another sense in which I am worthy of all this, orof even greater adoration. 

ON THE WAY TO PABNA, _9th July_ 1895. 

I am gliding through this winding little Ichamati, this streamlet of therainy season. With rows of villages along its banks, its fields of juteand sugar-cane, its reed patches, its green bathing slopes, it is like afew lines of a poem, often repeated and as often enjoyed. One cannotcommit to memory a big river like the Padma, but this meandering littleIchamati, the flow of whose syllables is regulated by the rhythm of therains, I am gradually making my very own. .. . 

It is dusk, the sky getting dark with clouds. The thunder rumblesfitfully, and the wild casuarina clumps bend in waves to the stormy gustswhich pass through them. The depths of bamboo thickets look black as ink. The pallid twilight glimmers over the water like the herald of some weirdevent. 

I am bending over my desk in the dimness, writing this letter. I want towhisper low-toned, intimate talk, in keeping with this penumbra of thedusk. But it is just wishes like these which baffle all effort. Theyeither get fulfilled of themselves, or not at all. That is why it is asimple matter to warm up to a grim battle, but not to an easy, inconsequent talk. 

SHELIDAH, _14th August_ 1895. 

One great point about work is that for its sake the individual has to makelight of his personal joys and sorrows; indeed, so far as may be, toignore them. I am reminded of an incident at Shazadpur. My servant waslate one morning, and I was greatly annoyed at his delay. He came up andstood before me with his usual _salaam_, and with a slight catch inhis voice explained that his eight-year-old daughter had died last night. Then, with his duster, he set to tidying up my room. 

When we look at the field of work, we see some at their trades, sometilling the soil, some carrying burdens, and yet underneath, death, sorrow, and loss are flowing, in an unseen undercurrent, every day, --theirprivacy not intruded upon. If ever these should break forth beyond controland come to the surface, then all this work would at once come to a stop. Over the individual sorrows, flowing beneath, is a hard stone track, across which the trains of duty, with their human load, thunder their way, stopping for none save at appointed stations. This very cruelty of workproves, perhaps, man's sternest consolation. 

KUSHTEA, _5th October 1895_. 

The religion that only comes to us from external scriptures never becomesour own; our only tie with it is that of habit. To gain religion within isman's great lifelong adventure. In the extremity of suffering must it beborn; on his life-blood it must live; and then, whether or not it bringshim happiness, the man's journey shall end in the joy of fulfilment. 

We rarely realise how false for us is that which we hear from other lips, or keep repeating with our own, while all the time the temple of our Truthis building within us, brick by brick, day after day. We fail tounderstand the mystery of this eternal building when we view our joys andsorrows apart by themselves, in the midst of fleeting time; just as asentence becomes unintelligible if one has to spell through every word ofit. 

When once we perceive the unity of the scheme of that creation which isgoing on in us, we realise our relation to the ever-unfolding universe. Werealise that we are in the process of being created in the same way as arethe glowing heavenly orbs which revolve in their courses, --our desires, our sufferings, all finding their proper place within the whole. 

We may not know exactly what is happening: we do not know exactly evenabout a speck of dust. But when we feel the flow of life in us to be onewith the universal life outside, then all our pleasures and pains are seenstrung upon one long thread of joy. The facts: _I am, I move, Igrow_, are seen in all their immensity in connection with the fact thateverything else is there along with me, and not the tiniest atom can dowithout me. 

The relation of my soul to this beautiful autumn morning, this vastradiance, is one of intimate kinship; and all this colour, scent, andmusic is but the outward expression of our secret communion. This constantcommunion, whether realised or unrealised, keeps my mind in movement; outof this intercourse between my inner and outer worlds I gain suchreligion, be it much or little, as my capacity allows: and in its light Ihave to test scriptures before I can make them really my own. 

SHELIDAH, _12th December 1895. _

The other evening I was reading an English book of criticisms, full of allmanner of disputations about Poetry, Art, Beauty, and so forth and so on. As I plodded through these artificial discussions, my tired facultiesseemed to have wandered into a region of empty mirage, filled with thepresence of a mocking demon. 

The night was far advanced. I closed the book with a bang and flung it onthe table. Then I blew out the lamp with the idea of turning into bed. Nosooner had I done so than, through the open windows, the moonlight burstinto the room, with a shock of surprise. 

That little bit of a lamp had been sneering drily at me, like someMephistopheles: and that tiniest sneer had screened off this infinitelight of joy issuing forth from the deep love which is in all the world. What, forsooth, had I been looking for in the empty wordiness of the book?There was the very thing itself, filling the skies, silently waiting forme outside, all these hours!

If I had gone off to bed leaving the shutters closed, and thus missed thisvision, it would have stayed there all the same without any protestagainst the mocking lamp inside. Even if I had remained blind to it all mylife, --letting the lamp triumph to the end, --till for the last time I wentdarkling to bed, --even then the moon would have still been there, sweetlysmiling, unperturbed and unobtrusive, waiting for me as she has throughoutthe ages.