Tagore Omnibus, Volume 1

by Rabindranath Tagore

Swamiji called Damini and said, ‘Ma, I’m setting off on my travels. As in the past I will arrange to send you to your aunt for the duration of the trip.’

  ‘I will go with you,’ she replied.

  ‘How can you?’ Swamiji said, ‘It’ll be a hard journey.’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ Damini said. ‘You won’t have to worry about me.’

  The Swami was pleased at Damini’s new devotion. In past years this had been the time for Damini’s holiday; she would yearn for it all year long. ‘What a miracle!’ mused the Swami. ‘How the divine chemistry of ecstasy softens even stone.’

  Damini wasn’t to be put off; she came along.

  6

  AFTER WALKING SIX HOURS IN THE SUN THAT DAY WE REACHED A promontory jutting into the sea. It was absolutely quiet and deserted; the susurrus of leaves in a coconut grove mingled with the lazy rumble of a nearly still sea.

  It seemed to me as if a slumbering earth had stretched a weary arm over the sea. In the hand at the end of that arm stood a blue-green hill, There were ancient rock carvings in a cave on the side of that hill. Whether these were Hindu or Buddhist, whether the figures were of Buddha or Krishna, whether their craftsmanship betrayed Greek influence, these were contentious issues among scholars.

  We were supposed to return to human habitation after seeing the cave. But that proved impossible. The sun had nearly set and it was the twelfth day of the dark half of the lunar month.

  ‘We shall have to spend the night in the cave,’ Guruji said.

  We went and sat on the sandy beach between the sea and the edge of the grove. The sun was on the sea’s western rim: the departing day’s final bow before the advancing dark. Guruji struck up a song—a modern poet’s lyrics, which he sang in his own style:

  ‘Travelling, we meet

  at day’s end.

  The evening glow

  vanishes when we go

  towards it.’

  That day the magic in the song was realized.Tears rolled out of Damini’s eyes. Swamiji took up the middle stanza:

  ‘Whether or not we meet

  I shall not grieve,

  Just pause a moment

  While I cover your feet in my loosened hair.’

  When the Swami ended the song, the silence of the evening, filling sky and sea, swelled from the lingering essence of the tune into a ripe golden fruit. Damini prostrated herself in a pranam before the Swami. For a long while she didn’t raise her head; her loosened hair lay piled on the sand.

  7

  AN EXTRACT FROM SACHISH’S DIARY:

  The cave had many chambers. I spread my blanket in one and lay down.

  The darkness of the cave was like a black beast—its moist breath seemed to touch my skin. It seemed to me like the first animal to appear in the very first cycle of creation; it had no eye, no ears, only a huge appetite. It had been trapped for eternity in that cave. It didn’t have a mind; it knew nothing but pain—it sobbed noiselessly.

  Weariness like a heavy weight bore down on my entire body, yet I couldn’t sleep. A bird, perhaps a bat, either flew in or went out, travelling from darkness to darkness with a flailing noise from its wings. I broke into gooseflesh at the touch of the air stirred by it.

  I thought I would sleep outside the cave. But I had forgotten the way to the entrance. When I crawled forward, in one direction my head touched the ceiling; in another direction I bumped my head; in yet another I slipped into a small ditch filled with water that had seeped through a crack.

  Finally I gave up and lay down on the blanket. It seemed the primordial beast had thrust me deep into its saliva-drenched maw; there was no escape. The beast was all dark hunger, it would lick at me slowly and consume me. Its saliva was acidic, it would corrode me.

  If only I could sleep; my wakeful mind couldn’t bear the close embrace of such colossal, destructive darkness: that was possible for death alone.

  After I don’t know how long, a thin sheet of numbness spread over my consciousness. At some point in that semi-conscious state I felt the touch of a deep breath close to my feet. That primordial beast!

  Then something clasped my feet. At first I thought it was a wild animal. But a wild animal is hairy, this creature wasn’t. My entire body shrank at the touch. It seemed to be an unknown snake-like creature. I knew nothing of its anatomy—what its head looked like, or its trunk, or its tail—nor could I imagine how it devoured its victims. It was repulsive because of its very softness, its ravenous mass.

  I was speechless with fear and loathing. I began pushing the creature away with both feet. It seemed to place its face on my feet—it was breathing heavily—I didn’t know what sort of a face it was. I began to kick at it.

  Eventually I came out of my trance. At first I had thought the creature was hairless; but suddenly I felt a mass of hair, as from a mane, fall on my feet.

  I got up quickly and sat down.

  Somebody seemed to move away in the dark. A strange sound reached my ears: such as stifled sobs!

  Damini

  1

  WE RETURNED FROM THE CAVE. ACCOMMODATION HAD BEEN ARRANGED for us on the upper floor of the house of one of Guruji’s disciples, close by the village temple.

  We didn’t see much of Damini now. She cooked and served our meals but avoided our company as far as possible. She made friends with the village women and spent her time visiting their homes.

  This annoyed Guruji somewhat. He felt that worldly life still attracted her more than the celestial realm. She seemed to tire of the nearly religious devotion with which she had been looking after us for some days past. She made mistakes, the natural grace with which she did things wasn’t there any longer.

  Guruji began to be secretly fearful of Damini once again. Her brows had for some days been darkened by a frown and her temper had become rather unpredictable. Signs of rebellion were noticeable in her lips, the corners of her eyes, the clumsily knotted hair on her neck, and at times in the involuntary motions of her hands.

  Guruji once more concentrated on the devotional hymns, he thought their sweetness would draw the errant bee back to the honeycomb. The short winter days frothed and overflowed with the intoxicating brew of music.

  But there was no catching Damini. ‘God is out hunting,’ Guruji observed with a chuckle one day, ‘and the doe by leading him a chase is adding zest to the hunt; but die she must.’

  When we first got acquainted with Damini she didn’t appear among the disciples, but we didn’t notice that. Now her absence from our midst became all too conspicuous. Not being able to see her affected us like being blown about by gusts of wind. Since Guruji interpreted her absence as pride, it hurt his pride. As for me, it’s hardly necessary to talk about my feelings.

  One day Guruji mustered enough resolve to put a mild request to her: ‘Damini, if you can make time this afternoon . . .’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve got to go to the village to help make sweets.’

  ‘Sweets? Why?’

  ‘There’s a wedding at the Nandys’.’

  ‘Is it absolutely essential?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve promised.’

  Without another word Damini left like a sudden gust of wind. Sachish was sitting with us; he was astounded. So many eminent, learned, wealthy and wise men had come with bowed heads to his guru; yet where did this slip of a girl acquire such brazen arrogance?

  On another day in the evening, when Damini was home, Guruji began a ponderous sermon, speaking especially carefully. After a while he became aware of a certain blankness in our faces. He noticed that we had become inattentive. Turning round he saw that Damini was no longer where she had sat sewing buttons on shirts. He realized that both Sachish and I were filled with the same thought—that Damini had got up and left. The thought that Damini hadn’t listened to him, hadn’t in fact wanted to listen to his words, rattled in his mind like a tambourine. He lost the thread of his discourse. He couldn’t restrain himself any lon
ger but got up and called from outside Damini’s room, ‘Damini, what are you doing all by yourself? Won’t you join us in the other room?’

  ‘No, I’m busy,’ Damini replied.

  The Guru peeped in and saw a kite inside a cage. A couple of days back the kite had flown into a telegraph wire and fallen to the ground, where it had been set upon by crows. Damini had rescued it—and nursed it ever since.

  So much for the kite. Damini had also got hold of a puppy whose appearance and pedigree matched each other perfectly. It was discord personified. At the first sound of our cymbals it raised its muzzle towards heaven and vociferously complained to God. It was a small consolation that God didn’t heed the plaint, but those of us who had to hear it on earth were driven to distraction.

  One day when Damini was tending some flowering plants grown on the roof in a broken pot Sachish went up to her and asked, ‘Why have you stopped attending?’

  ‘Attending what?’

  ‘Guruji’s meetings.’

  ‘Why, what use have you people for me?’

  ‘None, but you have some use for us.’

  Damini flared up: ‘Not at all!’

  Sachish stared dumbfounded at her. ‘Can’t you see,’ he said after a while, ‘how uneasy you’ve become? If you want peace . . .’

  ‘You give me peace? You’ve driven yourselves crazy, forever stirring up waves in your minds. Is that peace? I beg you, help me. I used to be at peace, let me live in peace again.’

  ‘You may see waves on the surface,’ Sachish said, ‘but if you have the patience to dive beneath and look you’ll see that all is calm.’

  Joining her palms in entreaty Damini said, ‘For God’s sake don’t ask me to dive any more. I’d feel relieved if you gave me up.’

  2

  I DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH EXPERIENCE TO KNOW THE SECRETS OF THE FEMALE heart. My superficial observations led me to believe that women are ready to lose their hearts where they are sure to be requited with sorrow. They will string their garland for a brute who will trample it into the horrid slime of lust; or else they will aim it at a man whose head it won’t reach because he is so absorbed in a world of abstraction that he has virtually ceased to exist. When they have a chance to choose their mates women shun average men like us, who are a mixture of the crude and the refined, know women as women—in other words, know that women are neither clay dolls nor the vibrations of veena strings. Women avoid us because we offer neither the fatal attraction of murky desire nor the colourful illusion of profound abstractions; we cannot break them through the remorseless torment of lust, nor can we forget them in the heat of abstraction and recast them in the mould of our own fancy. We know them as they really are; that’s why even if they like us they won’t fall in love with us. We are their true refuge, they can count on our loyalty; but our self-sacrifice comes so readily they forget that it has any value. The only baksheesh we receive from them is that whenever they need us they use us, and perhaps even respect us a little, but . . . enough! These words probably stem from resentment, and probably aren’t true. Perhaps it is to our advantage that we get nothing in return; at least we can console ourselves with that thought.

  Damini avoided Guruji because she bore him a grudge; she avoided Sachish because she felt exactly the opposite towards him. I was the only one around for whom she felt neither anger nor attraction. For this reason whenever she got a chance Damini would chat with me about her past, her present, what she heard in the neighbourhood—trivial things like that. I never imagined that such an insignificant event as Damini jabbering away as she sat slicing betel-nuts on the little veranda in front of our rooms upstairs would affect Sachish so much in his present mood of abstraction. Well, it might not have been such a trivial event, but I knew that in the realm in which Sachish existed there was no such thing as an event. The divine workings of Hiadini, Sandhini and Jogmaya in that realm were a perennial romance, and therefore beyond historic time. Those who listened to the whistle of the ever-steady breeze that played there on the banks of an ever-flowing Jamuna wouldn’t, surely, see or hear anything of the transitory events in the mundane world around them. At any rate, till our return from the cave Sachish’s eyes and ears had been pretty inactive.

  I myself was partly to blame. I had begun to play truant every now and then from our discussions on mystic ecstasy. Sachish began to notice my absence. Once he came looking for me and found me following Damini with an earthen bowl of milk that I had bought from the local cowherds to feed her pet mongoose. The task would hardly suffice as an excuse for truancy; it could have been easily postponed till the discussion ended; and in fact if the mongoose had been left to forage for its meals the principle of kindness to all creatures wouldn’t have been grossly violated and my reputation for decorum would have remained intact. Consequently, I was quite flustered at Sachish’s sudden appearance. I set the bowl down at once and tried to retrieve my self-esteem by sneaking away.

  But Damini’s behaviour was astonishing. She wasn’t embarrassed at all, and asked me, ‘Where are you going, Sribilashbabu?’

  I scratched my head and mumbled, ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Guruji’s meeting has ended by now,’ Damini said, ‘so why don’t you sit down?’

  My ears tingled with embarrassment at hearing such a request in Sachish’s presence.

  ‘There’s a problem with the mongoose,’ Damini said. ‘Last night it stole a chicken from a Muslim house. It’s not safe to let it loose—I have asked Sribilashbabu to buy a large basket to keep it in.’

  Damini seemed rather keen to inform Sachish about Sribilashbabu’s submissiveness in the matter of feeding milk to the mongoose or buying a basket for it. I was reminded of the day Guruji had asked Sachish in my presence to prepare the hookah. It was the same thing.

  Without a word Sachish walked away quickly. Glancing at Damini’s face I saw her eyes cast lightning shafts after Sachish. Inwardly she smiled a cruel smile.

  God knows what she made of the incident, but the practical outcome was that she began to seek me out on the flimsiest of pretexts. One day she cooked some sweet dish and insisted on serving it exclusively for me. ‘But Sachish . . .’ I protested.

  ‘Asking him to eat will only annoy him,’ she said.

  Sachish came round several times and saw me eating. Among us three, mine was the most difficult position. The two main characters in the drama were thoroughly self-possessed in their performance. I was conspicuous for the sole reason that I was utterly insignificant. At times this made me angry with my lot, but neither could I help my craving for whatever little my auxiliary role brought me. Such dire straits!

  3

  FOR SOME DAYS SACHISH PLAYED HIS CYMBALS LOUDER THAN EVER AS HE danced in the chorus of kirtan singers. Then he came to me one day and said, ‘We can’t keep Damini among us.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘We must sever all connection with Nature.’

  ‘If that is so,’ I retorted, ‘we must admit there’s a grave flaw in our spiritual endeavour.’

  Sachish gave me an open-eyed stare.

  ‘What you call Nature is a reality,’ I said. ‘You may shun it, but you can’t leave it out of the human world. If you practise your austerities pretending it isn’t there you will only delude yourself; and when the deceit is exposed there will be no escape route.’

  ‘I’m not interested in logical quibbles,’ Sachish replied. ‘I am being practical. Clearly women are agents of Nature, whose dictates they carry out by adopting varied disguises to beguile the mind. They cannot fulfil their mistress’s command till they have completely enslaved the consciousness. So to keep the consciousness clear we have to keep clear of these bawds of Nature.’

  I was about to continue but Sachish stopped me: ‘My dear Bisri, you can’t see Nature’s fatal charm because you have already succumbed to it. But the beautiful form with which it has bewitched you will disappear like a mask as soon as she has realized her purpose; when the time comes she will remove this v
ery desire which has clouded your vision and made you see her as greater than anything else in the universe. When the trap of illusion is so clearly laid, why walk straight into it with bravado?’

  ‘I accept all you are saying,’ I replied, ‘but I’d like to point out that I didn’t myself lay this worldwide trap of Nature, and I know no way of evading it. Since we can’t deny it, true devotion in my view ought to allow us to accept it and yet enable us to transcend it. Whatever you say, dear Sachish, we are not doing that, and so we are desperately trying to amputate one half of the truth.’

  ‘Could you spell out a little more clearly what sort of spiritual path you wish to follow?’ he asked.

  ‘We must row the boat of life in Nature’s current,’ I said. ‘Our problem should not be to stop the current; our problem is to keep the boat from sinking and in motion. For that we need a rudder.’

  ‘Our guru is that rudder,’ Sachish retorted, ‘but you can’t see that because you don’t accept him. Do you wish your spiritual development to follow your own whims? The result will be disaster.’

  So saying, Sachish retired to the guru’s room, sat down at his feet and began massaging them. That day, after preparing the guru’s hookah, he raised with him his complaint against Nature.

  The question couldn’t be resolved over a single smoke. For days the guru pondered the problem from various angles. He had suffered much on account of Damini. Now it appeared that the presence of this one woman had created a whirlpool in the current of his disciples’ devotion. But Shibtosh had bequeathed to him the guardianship of Damini together with the house and other property, making it difficult to get rid of her. The problem was compounded by the fact that the guru was afraid of Damini.

  Meanwhile, though Sachish continued massaging the guru’s feet and preparing his hookah with doubled, even quadrupled enthusiasm and increasing frequency, he couldn’t be oblivious of the fact that Sachish’s spiritual path had been well and truly obstructed by Nature.