120
Patishar
Friday, 30 March 1894
What a lot of unnecessary anxiety and suffering there is in man’s fate! Our happiness and peace are dependent upon so many thousands of big and small things! Yesterday, for a long time I suffered a lot of unnecessary grief in the most helpless manner. There’s so much unhappiness that is self-created which I feel is my duty to suffer with humility and fortitude; but when I don’t get a letter and worry about calamity or illness then I cannot find any philosophy near at hand to calm down those fears. Then one’s intelligence too stops working. Yesterday while I was walking up and down I imagined so many sorts of impossible and unreasonable things—to any of which my brain too did not object—that today I feel both amused and ashamed of myself when I think of it. Yet I know for sure that once again in a few days when something like this will happen again, I’ll have exactly the same reaction. I’ve told you lots of times, you know, that the brain doesn’t belong to a man completely, it still hasn’t been totally naturalized in our minds….
When I remember that life’s path is long, and that the reasons for sorrow and suffering are innumerable and inevitable, it becomes difficult to preserve one’s strength of mind however much one tries. When you become so extremely impatient upon not having received a letter for two days, then it’s difficult to keep faith in one’s self. Sometimes, sitting alone in the evenings, staring fixedly at the light on the table, I think to myself, I shall face life like a brave—steadfastly, silently, and without complaining—and the thought makes me feel reassured for that moment, and I promptly make the mistake of thinking myself a mighty brave man. And after that, when a thorn pierces my foot while walking and I leap up in pain, I feel terribly doubtful about the future, and once again life seems very long and I feel completely unworthy. But perhaps the logic is faulty—really, perhaps a sharp thorn of grass is actually more unbearable. The mind has a tidy domesticity about it—it spends only according to its need, it doesn’t want to waste its energies on trifling matters. It seems to be saving all its strength carefully like a miser for the really big dangers and sacrifices. The thousands of tears you shed at the smallest of wounds do not warrant its help. But where your sorrow is deepest, it is never lazy. That’s why one sees that one of life’s frequent paradoxes is that the smaller sorrows are more unbearable than the larger ones. That’s because the place where the heart is torn asunder by a larger sorrow is also the fountainhead of a certain consolation that keeps rising up, and all the resources of one’s mind, all one’s patience, work together—the greatness of the sorrow is what enables you to have the strength to put up with it. Just as one side of man’s heart is full of the desire for happiness, so too there is also a desire for self-sacrifice on the other side; when the desire for happiness is in vain, the wish for self-sacrifice becomes strong, and the mind, getting the opportunity to work towards accomplishing that wish, is filled with a generous enthusiasm. We are cowards when faced with the smaller sorrows, but the larger tragedies turn us into brave-hearts by awakening our genuine humanity. There is a happiness in that—it is the happiness of finding one’s self completely. There’s an old saying about the happiness of unhappiness which is not merely a clever turn of phrase—and what they say about the dissatisfactions of happiness too is quite true. The meaning is not difficult to understand. When we do nothing else but enjoy ourselves, one part of our minds remains dissatisfied, wanting something for which to suffer and sacrifice, or we feel unworthy of enjoying our happiness—that is the reason why the happiness which is mixed with sorrow is the one which is permanent and deep, and that is what helps our character accomplish its goals.
But the philosophy on joy and sorrow keeps on growing. If one counts the living of one’s life with grace and beauty to be an art then there is a particular necessity for this philosophy, but there is an art to letter-writing as well, which one shouldn’t ignore completely. There are many things indispensable to one’s self; if I am able to tie up the entire discourse on joy and sorrow once and for all it would be of great help to me, which is why I’m using this letter as an opportunity to make my own feelings more articulate and clear—but that task is not always accomplished reasonably.
But if one begins to account for one’s hopes with such accuracy it’s very likely to result in mishap—so I’ve decided that I won’t be receiving a letter tomorrow. If I don’t get one tomorrow, I will get one the day after—but that ‘will’ isn’t too good a word, it’s a word that gave me a terrible drubbing yesterday. It is one’s duty to cautiously and with great care remove that word from all the balance sheets of one’s life—that’s one of the principal rules of living your life as an art. But it’s very difficult to escape from it—it attaches itself to you like a leech and sucks your blood.
121
Shilaidaha
24 June 1894
It’s only been about four days since I arrived, but it seems as if I’ve been here forever—it feels as though if I go to Calcutta today, I’ll see that it has changed in so many ways…. it is as if I’m alone in a place outside of the flow of time, quite still, while unknown to me, the whole world is changing its position little by little. Actually, when you come here from Calcutta, time stretches to about four times its length—one has to live only in one’s own mental world—the watch doesn’t work properly here. Mental time is measured according to the intensity of one’s feelings—an occasional fleeting moment of happiness or unhappiness seems to last for a very long time. In a place where the outer flow of people and events and the daily work schedule don’t keep us occupied always calculating the time, there, as in a dream, the short-lived moments turn into long periods and the long into the short all the time; that’s why I think that fragmented time and a fragmented sky are both delusions of the mind. Every atom is endless and every moment is eternal. I’d read a story about this in my childhood in a Persian narrative which I had liked very much—and though I was very young then, I had understood its inner meaning to some extent. In order to show that time cannot be quantified, a certain fakir filled a tub with magic water and asked a badshah to dive into it and have a bath. The moment the badshah dived in, he saw that he had arrived in a new country by the sea; there he spent a lifetime, experiencing many events and situations and many joys and sorrows in the process. He got married, and one by one he had many sons; the sons died, the wife died, all his money was lost, and when he had been driven to his wits’ end with grief he suddenly saw that he was sitting in a tub full of water in his own royal court. He became very angry with the fakir, but all his courtiers assured him that he had only immersed himself in the water for a moment before raising his head.
Our entire lives and all the joys and sorrows of our lives are enclosed in a moment such as this—however long and however intense we may think it is, the moment we raise our heads from the tub of this existence, immediately all of it will become very small, like a moment’s dream. Time is not lengthy or brief—it is we who are big or small. It is not just the anticipation of a letter from you that brought so many thoughts to my mind—this is something that keeps coming up in my mind from time to time, and the fact that even the most intense of life’s joys, sorrows and desires are not permanent is something I cannot find an answer to, and it vexes me greatly. One answer to this could be that even if happiness or unhappiness is impermanent, their results can be permanent. But then why does it delude me, tricking me into enjoying its fruits? Why does it say to me ‘The wealth of love is eternal’? Who has given man the false reassurance that love conquers death—the reassurance that has driven man to make up stories such as that of Savitri and Satyavan to comfort himself? Etc., etc., etc.
Yesterday the day was very fine. The sun and the clouds were playing a new game from moment to moment—on the lines etched on my river, on the sandbanks, and on the forest scenery on the other bank—whichever direction I looked towards from the open window, it was so beautiful! Like a dream! I don’t quite know why we always c
ompare what’s beautiful to a dream, perhaps in order to express the sheer extraordinariness of it, that is, as if it doesn’t bear the slightest trace of the weight of reality—that our food comes from these fields of grain, that the river is the path through which boatloads of jute travel, that these sandbanks need to be rented from the jamidār in lieu of taxes; it’s when these, and many other thousands of things like these, are removed far from the mind so that we may enjoy a picture of unaccounted-for, unnecessary and pure beauty and happiness alone, that we say ‘like a dream’. At other times, we take it for granted that the world is true, and later as beautiful or otherwise. But when we see it chiefly for its beauty, and don’t notice whether it is true or not, that’s when we say it’s ‘like a dream’! … Sometimes men separate out truth from beauty—science leaves out beauty from truth and poetry does not respect beauty as truth. The beauty that is to be found in science is a beauty inseparable from truth, while the truth found in poetry is the truth of beauty. There’s no space for more, so this time round you’ve escaped a lengthy disquisition.
122
Shilaidaha
26 June 1894
Getting out of bed this morning, I saw the sky was dark and stooping under the weight of livid clouds, a damp storm wind was blowing, there was a ceaseless drizzle, there weren’t too many boats on the river, the farmers, scythes in hand to cut grain, were crossing the river on ferry boats with bamboo hats on their heads and bodies covered with jute bags, no cows grazed on the fields and no chorus of women bathing at the ghat—on other days by now I would have heard their loud voices from this side of the river—today, all that cacophony and the song of the birds was missing. I had shut the window and drawn the curtain on the side from which I expected the spray of rain and opened the window on the other side, and was waiting all this time for work to commence. I’m gradually realizing now with increasing certainty that the clerks will not leave their homes today in this weather—alas, I am not Shyam, and they are not Radhika—such a marvellous opportunity for a rendezvous in the rain has been nipped in the bud. Besides which, even if I did play the flute, if Radhika had the slightest understanding of melody she wouldn’t have been too ‘thrilled’. Anyway, given that the situation is such that Radhika will not be coming, and the clerks aren’t coming either, and my ‘Muse’ too has of late left me to visit her father’s house, I may as well sit and write a bunch of letters. Actually what has happened is, since I didn’t have any work, I’d been sitting looking out at the river and humming, trying to construct a morning rāginī that was a mix of Bhairabī, Tori and Rāmkeli, absorbedly practising the ālāp, and this suddenly gave rise to such a sweet yet sharp feeling of restlessness, such an indescribable, forceful feeling of yearning in me, that, in a moment, this real life and the real world appeared to me in another aspect entirely; such a song-filled and emotional, yet wordless, meaningless and diffuse answer to all the intractable problems of our existence sounded in my ear, and through that portal of song, the liquid sound of water falling ceaselessly upon the river created such a wellspring of joy, such tear-filled, dense, dark clouds of Āshāṛh—joyous and sad—came crowding around this solitary, companionless soul at one end of the world, that suddenly there was a point at which I had to say, ‘Let it be, there’s no point in this, let’s sit down to read Criticisms on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers now.’ But to exhibit such extreme bravery on a rainy day like this is not for a weak person like me. Which is why, sighing, I’ve decided to sit down with inkpot and pen to write a letter….
Nowadays I think to myself very often that I wish I could return somehow to a lonely, silent place without fame. Or at least, that as long as I am alive, all the fame and accomplishment of my life stays shut up within itself. Then I can be quite comfortable. Of course, depending on your individual preferences, all of you may not like everything I write—in fact, a lot of good writing too may remain unappreciated—but still, one doesn’t feel like venturing out beyond that space.
123
Shilaidaha
Wednesday, 27 June 1894
Since yesterday, a happy thought has suddenly occurred to me. I’ve been thinking that even when one wants to do something that will help the world, one is not always successful, so instead, if one just does what one can do, then often the world derives some benefit from it, and at least the work too gets done. Nowadays I’ve been thinking that if I don’t do anything else other than write short stories, then I’ll be happy, and if I’m successful, then some of my readers too will be happy. No doubt it is a very noble task to write essays on elevated subjects in Sādhanā and thus propel Bengal towards progress, but of late I have not been happy doing it, nor have I been able to do very much. One of the pleasures of writing stories is that those I write about completely occupy my entire free time; they are the companions of my solitary mind—during the rains they drive away the sorrow of separation in my closed room, and when it is sunny, they roam around in front of my eyes like the bright scene on the shores of the Padma. That is why I have managed to make a small, proud, wheat-complexioned girl called Giribala descend into the world of my imagination this morning. I had only just written about five lines, and in those five lines only just said that it had rained yesterday, and today at the end of the rains the restless clouds and restless sunshine were hunting each other, when along the village path, below the trees from which drops of water collected from yesterday’s rain were falling, down which the said Giribala should have been coming, came instead the entire group of my boat’s clerks, as a result of which Giribala has at present had to wait for a little while. Even so, she is still there in my mind. Today I tried out another experiment with how to spend one’s days. Today I sat down and tried to bring my childhood memories and my state of mind then very clearly and perceptibly to my mind. When I was in the garden at Peneti, when I first went to the Bolpur gardens with Bābāmaśāẏ, my head shaved for my paite ceremony, when the farthest room on the western veranda housed our schoolroom, and I used to draw crooked lines upon a torn exercise book of blue paper and write down descriptions of nature in it in large uneven letters—when the toshākhānā* used to be in Sej-dada’s rooms and in the winter a servant called Chinta, humming a tune in a low tone, used to toast bread with butter for Jyoti-dada on the coal fire—we had no warm clothes then, we used to wear a single kāmij and sit in front of that fire to drive away the cold, staring with lustful, despairing eyes at the fragrant piece of melting cream crackling on the bread while sitting quietly, listening to Chinta’s song (I can even remember the tune, it’s called the Madhukān tune)—I was watching all those days exactly as if they were in the present, and all those days were dissolving into the sunlit Padma and the Padma’s sandbanks so beautifully, exactly as if I were sitting by that open window of my childhood and watching a fragment of a scene from this Padma. Then I thought of how powerful I was—I could write stories if I wanted to, I could transport myself away from the present to experience the farthest countries and the farthest times if I wanted to, that I could make myself quite happy without the help of any real thing. Immediately, I remembered the saying: nothing succeeds like success. ‘Money begets money’, so happiness begets happiness. When we’re happy, we think we have an endless ability to be happy—then at unhappy times we see that none of those powers are working, nothing is available near at hand, all the mechanics of it have gone completely awry. Yesterday perhaps some small thing had created a happiness that reverberated in the mind, which is why all its instruments started up simultaneously—life’s past memories and the present beauty of nature came alive at the same time, that’s why the moment I woke up this morning I thought to myself, I am a poet—there’s no end to my powers, I can flood the world with my compositions, my imagination, my joy. Whatever my poetic talent, however proud I might be of my abilities, man is terribly unfree. These starving souls roam the world: tall, rigid, emaciated—they want an entire heaven, and then they try to satisfy their hunger with whatever bits and pieces they
get, until their beggarly, upward-stretched bodies fall to the dust and they pretend that death is the attainment of heaven. If we can hold on to the little happiness that is required for all the instruments of life to keep working, then all our strength can be deployed and all our work completed before we go. Today Miss Giribala has arrived uninvited; tomorrow when I need her the most, not even the tip of her swinging plait will perhaps be visible to me any more. But there’s no need to get agitated about that today. If there’s a possibility that Miss Giribala may disappear tomorrow, so be it, but there’s no doubt about the fact that her arrival today is something to be celebrated….
Your letter this time informs me that the tiniest occupant of my home has learnt to pout her little lips to show her hurt pride. I can quite imagine it. My face, my nose, my eyes are thirsty for the scratches of her soft fists. She would clutch at me anywhere with her fists, head wobbling, to come eat me with a big bite, and, twining the cord of my spectacles in her small little fingers, would stare at me, cheeks puffed out, in the most unconscious, calm and serious way. Her fat little hands feel so sweet on my body!