The Tagore Omnibus, Volume One

  One day a renowned group of kirtan singers from another part of the country were performing at the local Krishna temple. The session seemed set to go on till late. I slipped away soon after the start, thinking my absence wouldn’t be noticed amidst the crowd.

  That evening Damini laid bare her soul. The things that are hard to say, that stick in the throat even if one wishes to say them, were said by her with a wonderful simplicity. As she spoke she seemed to discover many dark and unfamiliar corners of her own mind. Quite fortuitously she had found an opportunity to come face to face with herself.

  We didn’t notice when Sachish came up behind us and stood listening. Tears were streaming from Damini’s eyes. Not that what she said was very serious, but that day it all seemed to flow from the deep wellspring of her tears.

  When Sachish turned up the kirtan session was clearly still a long way from the end, I could see that he had been agitated by something for some time.

  Suddenly catching sight of Sachish standing in front of her, Damini hurriedly wiped her tears and made to retreat into the next room. In a quavering voice Sachish asked her to stop.‘Please, Damini, there’s something I have to say to you.’

  Damini sat down again slowly I began to fidget, looking for an escape, but Sachish fixed me with such a stare that I didn’t dare move.

  ‘You don’t share our purpose in following Guruji,’ Sachish said.

  ‘No,’ Damini replied.

  ‘Then why do you remain with us?’

  Damini’s eyes flashed. ‘Why? Do you think I came willingly? You believers have kept this unbeliever in the fetters of belief. You have left me with no choice.’

  ‘We’ ve decided to pay for you to live with some female relative,’ Sachish said.

  ‘You have decided?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Why, what objections do you have?’

  ‘For some reason or the other one of you decides one thing, while for some other reason another one of you decides another thing; am I to be a pawn caught in the middle?’

  Sachish stared in astonishment.

  Damini went on. ‘I didn’t choose to come here to please you. I won’t budge just because you are not pleased with me now and wish me to leave.’

  As she spoke she pressed the edge of her sari to her face with both hands and burst into tears. She hurried into her room and shut the door.

  Sachish didn’t return to the kirtan session. He sat quietly on the dusty roof. That day the sound of distant sea waves, swept by the south wind, rose towards the stars like sobs from deep within the earth’s breast, I went out and aimlessly wandered the dark deserted village paths.

  4

  THE EARTH HAD GIRDED UP HER LOINS TO DESTROY THE PARADISE OF ecstasy in which Guruji had tried to keep us cloistered. All these days he had been pouring the wine of his mystic moods into the cup of metaphor for us to guzzle, but now the clash of a beautiful figure with the figures of speech threatened to tip the cup over and spill its contents on the ground, The signs of impending danger didn’t escape the guru.

  Sachish had become rather strange lately. He was like a kite whose string had just snapped—still airborne but at any moment liable to go into a spin and plummet to earth. He showed no neglect in the outward forms of devotion—jap, austerities, prayer, discussion—but looking into his eyes one knew that inwardly he was faltering.

  And as for me, Damini left nothing to conjecture. The more she realized that Guruji secretly feared her and that Sachish was in secret agony, the more she dragged me around. It got to a point where she would suddenly appear near the door when, for instance, Guruji, Sachish and I were in earnest colloquy, and then vanish after calling out: ‘Sribilashbabu, will you please come to me?’ She couldn’t be bothered to explain why she wanted Sribilashbabu. Guruji would give me a look, Sachish would give me a look, and, deliberating whether to get up or not, I would turn towards the door and suddenly get up and rush out. Even after I had gone an attempt would be made to keep the discussion going, but the effort would be out of all proportion to the things said; then the words would cease altogether. Thus everything became topsy-turvy and threatened to disintegrate; things just wouldn’t hold together any more.

  Sachish and I were the stalwarts of Guruji’s camp—one might say we were to him what the mythic mounts, Airavata the elephant and Ucchaisraba the horse, were to the god Indra—so he couldn’t just give up on us. He went to Damini and said, ‘Ma , we’re going to some remote and inaccessible places now. You must turn back.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To your aunt’s.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘First, because she is only a distant aunt, and second, because she is under no obligation to keep me in her house.’

  ‘It won’t cost her anything. We can . . .’

  ‘Is it only a question of cost? It’s not her responsibility to look after me and watch over me.’

  ‘Must I take care of you for ever?’

  ‘Is that for me to say?’

  ‘Where will you go if I die?’

  ‘Why should I have to think about that? I only know that I have no mother, no father, no home, no money, I have absolutely nothing, and that’s why I am such a great burden. You gladly took the burden on yourself, you can’t now shift it to somebody else’s shoulder.’

  As Damini walked away, Guruji invoked Lord Krishna with a sigh.

  One day Damini commanded me to get her some good Bengali books. Needless to say, by good books she didn’t mean devotional literature, and she had no qualms about ordering me about. She had come to see that the greatest favour she could show me was to make demands on me. There are some plants that thrive if their branches are kept trimmed: in my relationship with Damini I was like those plants.

  The writer whose books I had to procure was thoroughly modern. In his writings the influence of Man was much stronger than that of Manu. The packet of books fell into Guruji’s hands. ‘What’s this, Sribilash?’ he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Why have you got these books?’

  I remained silent.

  Turning over a few pages Guruji said, ‘I find no scent of piety in this.’

  He didn’t like the author at all.

  ‘If you read with a little care you will smell the scent of Truth,’ I blurted out.

  Truth to tell, rebellion had been brewing in my soul. The intoxication of mystic flights had given me a bad hangover. Pushing Man aside to deliberate day and night on his emotional essence had produced in me an aversion as strong as one can get.

  Guruji gazed at my face for a while, then said, ‘Very well, I’ll read them attentively and see.’

  Saying this he put the books under his pillow. I could tell he had no intention of returning them.

  Damini in her room must have had an inkling of what had transpired. She came to the door and said to me, ‘Those books I had asked you to order—haven’t they arrived?’

  I kept quiet.

  ‘Those books aren’t suitable for you, Ma,’ Guruji said.

  ‘How would you know?’ she asked.

  ‘And how would you know?’ Guruji said with furrowed brow.

  ‘I read them once before. I don’t suppose you ever have.’

  ‘So why do you need them again?’

  ‘Your needs are never questioned. Am I alone to be denied any needs of my own?’

  ‘You know very well I am a sannyasi.’

  ‘And you know that I am not a sannyasini. I enjoy reading those books. Give them back?’

  Guruji took the books from under the pillow and tossed them towards me, I handed them to Damini.

  The upshot of this incident was that Damini now summoned me to read out to her the books she used to read in the solitude of her room. Our readings, followed by discussions, took place on the veranda. Sachish would frequently pass by, now in one direction, now in the other, longing to join us but unable to do so unasked.

  Once as we cam
e to an amusing episode in a book Damini burst into uncontrollable giggles. There was a fair going on at the temple and we thought Sachish had gone there. But suddenly he came out through the back door and sat down with us.

  Damini’s merriment ceased instantly. I too felt discomfited. I thought I should say something to Sachish, however trivial it might be, but couldn’t think of anything, and silently went on turning the pages of the book. Sachish got up and left as suddenly as he had come. After that we couldn’t go on with our reading that day. Sachish perhaps didn’t realize that while he envied the absence of any barrier between Damini and me, I actually envied the barrier between him and Damini.

  The same day Sachish went to Guruji with a request: ‘Master, I wish to go alone to the seaside for a few days. I’ll be back in about a week.’

  ‘Excellent idea,’ said Guruji enthusiastically. ‘By all means, go.’

  Sachish went away. Damini stopped asking me to read; nor did she need me for anything else. I didn’t even see her go to gossip with the village women. She kept to her room, her door shut tight.

  A few days went by. One day when Guruji was taking a midday nap and I sat writing a letter on the upper veranda, Sachish suddenly arrived and without a glance at me knocked on Damini’s door and called, ‘Damini! Damini!’

  Damini at once opened the door and came out. How Sachish’s face had changed! It gave the impression of a storm-tossed ship with tattered sails and broken masts. A strange look in his eyes, hair awry, face haggard, clothes dirty.

  ‘Damini,’ Sachish said, ‘it was wrong of me to ask you to leave. Please forgive me.’

  ‘Why are you saying such things?’ Damini asked with palms joined submissively.

  ‘No, really, please forgive me. I ll never again entertain for a moment the utterly unjust thought that to preserve our spirituality we can decide to keep you or abandon you, as the whim takes us. But I have a request that you must keep.’

  At once bowing and touching his feet Damini said, ‘I am yours to command.’

  ‘Come and join us,’ Sachish said. ‘Don’t hold yourself aloof like this.’

  ‘Yes, I will join you,’ Damini said. ‘I won’t break any rules.’ She bent down again, touched Sachish’s feet in obeisance and repeated, ‘I won’t break any rules.’

  5

  THE ROCK MELTED AGAIN. DAMINI’S BLINDING RADIANCE RETAINED ITS LIGHT but lost its heat. A sweet aura pervaded her prayers and acts of kindness. She would never miss the sessions of kirtan singing or discussion, in which Guruji expounded the Bhagavad Gita or the Puranas. Her dress too changed; once again she wore tussore. Whenever one saw her during the day one felt that she had just had a bath.

  Damini’s greatest trial lay in her behaviour with Guruji. Whenever she bowed to him I would detect a flash of fierce rage in a corner of her eye. I knew that deep in her heart she couldn’t abide any of Guruji’s commands; but she followed all his injunctions so completely that one day he ventured to put forth his objections to the insufferable writings of that ultra-modern writer she had asked for. The next day he found some flowers beside the bed on which he took his siesta, arranged on pages torn from that fellow’s books.

  I had often noticed that what Damini found most intolerable was for Guruji to command Sachish to wait on him. She would try to thrust herself forward to take Sachish’s task on herself, but it wasn’t always possible. So , while Sachish blew on the tobacco-bowl of Guruji’s hookah, Damini desperately mumbled to her self, ‘I won’t break the rules, I won’t break the rules . . .’

  But things didn’t turn out the way Sachish had expected.. The last time Damini had humbled herself like this Sachish had seen only the sweetness, not the bee who produced the sweetness. This time Damini herself had become so real to him that she jostled the words of hymns and the teachings of scripture and made her presence felt: there was no way she could be suppressed. Sachish became so aware of her that his mystic trance broke. He could no longer regard her as a metaphor for a transcendental mood. Damini didn’t embellish the songs any more; the songs embellished her.

  Here I may as well add the simple fact that Damini had no more use for me. Her demands ended suddenly. Of my few companions the kite had died, the mongoose had fled, the puppy had been given away because its unseemly behaviour annoyed Guruji. Unemployed and companionless in this way, I went back to my old place in Guruji’s court, even though the songs and the conversation I heard there had become utterly distasteful to me.

  6

  ONE DAY WHILE SACHISH WAS BREWING A WONDERFUL CONCOCTION IN THE open cauldron of his fancy, compounded of philosophy, science, aesthetics and theology, drawn from the past and the present of both the East and the West, Damini suddenly ran towards us and called, ‘Please come quickly!’

  I got up hurriedly and asked, ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I think Nabin’s wife has swallowed poison,’ Damini said. Nabin was related to one of Guruji’s disciples. He was a neighbour and sang kirtans with our group. We found when we got there that his wife had died. On enquiry we learned that Nabin’s wife had brought her motherless sister to live with her. Theirs was a kulin Brahmin family, so it wasn’t easy to find a suitable match for the girl. She was good-looking. Nabin’s younger brother chose her for his bride. He was still a college student in Calcutta, and it was understood that after taking his finals, which were due in a few months, he would marry her in the month of Ashar. Just then Nabin’s wife discovered that a mutual attraction had developed between her husband and her sister. She asked him to marry her sister. Not much persuasion was necessary. Now that the nuptials were over, Nabin’s first wife had committed suicide by swallowing poison.

  There was nothing we could do. We came back. The disciples flocking round Guruji began singing kirtans to him; he joined in and began to dance.

  The moon had risen in the evening sky. Damini sat quietly in a corner of the roof dappled with light and shade by the overhanging branches of a chalta tree. Sachish slowly paced up and down the covered veranda at the back. Keeping a diary was a weakness of mine; alone in my room I scribbled away.

  The cuckoo was sleepless that night. The leaves of trees glittered in the moonlight and at the touch of the southerly breeze seemed to want to burst into speech. At one point, impelled by some notion or the other, Sachish suddenly went and stood behind Damini. She was startled and, drawing the edge of her sari over her head, she rose in a hurry—but before she could leave, Sachish called her name.

  She stopped short. With joined palms she beseeched, ‘Listen to me a moment, Master.’

  Sachish gazed at her face in silence. ‘Please explain to me,’ Damini said, ‘what use to the world are the things that engross you so day in and day out? Who have you succeeded in saving?’

  I came out of my room and stood on the veranda. Damini went on: ‘Day and night you go on about ecstasy, you talk of nothing else. Today you have seen what ecstasy is, haven’t you? It has no regard for morals or a code of conduct, for brother or wife or family pride. It has no mercy, no shame, no sense of propriety. What have you devised to save man from the hell of this cruel, shameless, fatal ecstasy?’

  I couldn’t restrain myself and blurted out, ‘We have planned to drive Woman far from our sphere and then devote ourselves undisturbed to the pursuit of ecstasy.’

  Without paying any heed to my words Damini said to Sachish, ‘I have got nothing from your guru. He hasn’t been able to calm my restless mind even for a moment. Fire cannot put out fire. The path along which your guru has been driving everyone isn’t the path of non-attachment or heroism or peace. That woman who died today was killed on the path of ecstasy by the demoness of ecstasy who sucked the blood out of her heart. Haven’t you seen how hideous the demoness looks? My Master, I beseech you not to sacrifice me to her. Save me! If anybody can save me it’s you,’

  All three of us fell silent for a while. It became so still all around that it seemed to me as if with the chirp of crickets a numbness was stealing over the pale sky.
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  ‘Tell me what I can do for you,’ Sachish said.

  ‘Be my guru,’ Damini replied. ‘I won’t obey any other. Give me a mantra that is above all these things, something that will keep me safe. Don’t even let my guardian deity come close to me.’

  Standing in a daze Sachish said, ‘It will be so.’

  Damini made a prolonged pranam with her head touching Sachish’s feet. She mumbled over and over, ‘You are my guru, you are my guru, save me from all sin, save me, save me . . .’

  Postscript

  ONCE MORE THE RUMOUR WENT ROUND, AND THE PAPERS REPORTED IN abusive terms that Sachish’s opinions had been revised yet again. He had once loudly denied religion and caste; then one day he had just as loudly proclaimed faith in gods and goddesses, yoga and asceticism, purificatory rituals and ancestor worship and taboos—the whole lot. And yet another day he threw overboard the whole freight of beliefs and subsided into peaceful silence—what he believed and what he denied became impossible to determine. One thing was apparent: he had taken up the welfare work he had done once in the past, but the caustic combativeness was no longer in him.

  The papers had many taunts and harsh words about another matter: my marriage with Damini. Not everyone will understand the mystery behind this marriage, nor is it necessary that they should.

  Sribilash

  1

  AN INDIGO FACTORY USED TO STAND HERE. IT HAD FALLEN INTO RUINS; only a few rooms still stood. Having taken a fancy to the spot I stopped here for some days on my way home after cremating Damini’s remains.

  The road that led from the river to the factory was lined with sissoo trees. The gateposts of the entrance to the indigo plantation and a bit of its boundary wall still stood, but of the plantation itself nothing was left. The only thing one could see on the plantation lands was, in one corner, the grave of a Muslim steward of the indigo factory. Lushly flowering shrubs of akanda and bhantiphool grew in the cracks in its brickwork; having tweaked the nose of death they seemed to roll with laughter in the southerly breeze, like a groom’s sisters-in-law chaffing him in the bridal chamber. The banks of the plantation’s large pond had collapsed and the water had dried up. On the dry bed peasants had planted a mixture of coriander and chick-peas. When I would sit of a morning on a mound of mossy bricks in the shade of a sissoo tree, my head would fill with the scent of coriander blossoms.