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PeAcE WiTh GuNs

Friday, February 15, 2008

Cutting Chai

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Thursday, February 14, 2008

England in the words of Rabindranath Tagore

One thing struck me when living in this family—that human nature is everywhere the same. We are fond of saying, and I also believed, that the devotion of an Indian wife to her husband is something unique, and not to be found in Europe. But I at least was unable to discern any difference between Mrs. Scott and an ideal Indian wife. She was entirely wrapped up in her husband. With their modest means there was no fussing about of too many servants, and Mrs. Scott attended to every detail of her husband's wants herself. Before he came back home from his work of an evening, she would arrange his arm-chair and woollen slippers before the fire with her own hands. She would never allow herself to forget for a moment the things he liked, or the behaviour which pleased him. She would go over the house every morning,166 with their only maid, from attic to kitchen, and the brass rods on the stairs and the door knobs and fittings would be scrubbed and polished till they shone again. Over and above this domestic routine there were the many calls of social duty. After getting through all her daily duties she would join with zest in our evening readings and music, for it is not the least of the duties of a good housewife to make real the gaiety of the leisure hour.

Some evenings I would join the girls in a table-turning seance. We would place our fingers on a small tea table and it would go capering about the room. It got to be so that whatever we touched began to quake and quiver. Mrs. Scott did not quite like all this. She would sometimes gravely shake her head and say she had her doubts about its being right. She bore it bravely, however, not liking to put a damper on our youthful spirits. But one day when we put our hands on Dr. Scott's chimneypot to make it turn, that was too much for her. She rushed up in a great state of mind and forbade us to touch it. She could not bear the idea of Satan having anything to do, even for a moment, with her husband's head-gear.

In all her actions her reverence for her husband was the one thing that stood out. The memory of her sweet self-abnegation makes it clear to me that the ultimate perfection of all womanly love is to167 be found in reverence; that where no extraneous cause has hampered its true development woman's love naturally grows into worship. Where the appointments of luxury are in profusion, and frivolity tarnishes both day and night, this love is degraded, and woman's nature finds not the joy of its perfection.

I spent some months here. Then it was time for my brother to return home, and my father wrote to me to accompany him. I was delighted at the prospect. The light of my country, the sky of my country, had been silently calling me. When I said good bye Mrs. Scott took me by the hand and wept. "Why did you come to us," she said, "if you must go so soon?" That household no longer exists in London. Some of the members of the Doctor's family have departed to the other world, others are scattered in places unknown to me. But it will always live in my memory.

One winter's day, as I was passing through a street in Tunbridge Wells, I saw a man standing on the road side. His bare toes were showing through his gaping boots, his breast was partly uncovered. He said nothing to me, perhaps because begging was forbidden, but he looked up at my face just for a moment. The coin I gave him was perhaps more valuable than he expected, for, after I had gone on a bit, he came after me and168 said: "Sir, you have given me a gold piece by mistake," with which he offered to return it to me. I might not have particularly remembered this, but for a similar thing which happened on another occasion. When I first reached the Torquay railway station a porter took my luggage to the cab outside. After searching my purse for small change in vain, I gave him half-a-crown as the cab started. After a while he came running after us, shouting to the cabman to stop. I thought to myself that finding me to be such an innocent he had hit upon some excuse for demanding more. As the cab stopped he said: "You must have mistaken a half-crown piece for a penny, Sir!"

I cannot say that I have never been cheated while in England, but not in any way which it would be fair to hold in remembrance. What grew chiefly upon me, rather, was the conviction that only those who are trustworthy know how to trust. I was an unknown foreigner, and could have easily evaded payment with impunity, yet no London shopkeeper ever mistrusted me.


Read the entire bit at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22217/22217-h/22217-h.htm#England

Karwar in the words of Rabindranath Tagore

Excerpt from "My Reminiscences" by Rabindranath Tagore


(36) Karwar

Our Sudder Street party next transferred itself to Karwar on the West Sea coast. Karwar is the headquarters of the Kanara district in the Southern portion of the Bombay Presidency. It is the tract of the Malaya Hills of Sanskrit literature where grow the cardamum creeper and the Sandal Tree. My second brother was then Judge there.

The little harbour, ringed round with hills, is so secluded that it has nothing of the aspect of a port about it. Its crescent shaped beach throws out its arms to the shoreless open sea like the very image of an eager striving to embrace the infinite. The edge of the broad sandy beach is fringed with a forest of casuarinas, broken at one end by the Kalanadi river which here flows into the sea after passing through a gorge flanked by rows of hills on either side.

I remember how one moonlit evening we went up this river in a little boat. We stopped at one236 of Shivaji's old hill forts, and stepping ashore found our way into the clean-swept little yard of a peasant's home. We sat on a spot where the moonbeams fell glancing off the top of the outer enclosure, and there dined off the eatables we had brought with us. On our way back we let the boat glide down the river. The night brooded over the motionless hills and forests, and on the silent flowing stream of this little Kalanadi, throwing over all its moonlight spell. It took us a good long time to reach the mouth of the river, so, instead of returning by sea, we got off the boat there and walked back home over the sands of the beach. It was then far into the night, the sea was without a ripple, even the ever-troubled murmur of the casuarinas was at rest. The shadow of the fringe of trees along the vast expanse of sand hung motionless along its border, and the ring of blue-grey hills around the horizon slept calmly beneath the sky.





















Karwar Beach


Through the deep silence of this illimitable whiteness we few human creatures walked along with our shadows, without a word. When we reached home my sleep had lost itself in something still deeper. The poem which I then wrote is inextricably mingled with that night on the distant seashore. I do not know how it will appeal to the reader apart from the memories with which237 it is entwined. This doubt led to its being left out of Mohita Babu's edition of my works. I trust that a place given to it among my reminiscences may not be deemed unfitting.


Let me sink down, losing myself in the depths of midnight.
Let the Earth leave her hold of me, let her free me from her obstacle of dust.
Keep your watch from afar, O stars, drunk though you be with moonlight,
And let the horizon hold its wings still around me.
Let there be no song, no word, no sound, no touch; nor sleep, nor awakening,—
But only the moonlight like a swoon of ecstasy over the sky and my being.
The world seems to me like a ship with its countless pilgrims,
Vanishing in the far-away blue of the sky,
Its sailors' song becoming fainter and fainter in the air,
While I sink in the bosom of the endless night, fading away from myself, dwindling into a point.


It is necessary to remark here that merely because something has been written when feelings are brimming over, it is not therefore necessarily good. Such is rather a time when the utterance is thick with emotion. Just as it does not do to have the writer entirely removed from the feeling to which he is giving expression, so also it238 does not conduce to the truest poetry to have him too close to it. Memory is the brush which can best lay on the true poetic colour. Nearness has too much of the compelling about it and the imagination is not sufficiently free unless it can get away from its influence. Not only in poetry, but in all art, the mind of the artist must attain a certain degree of aloofness—the creator within man must be allowed the sole control. If the subject matter gets the better of the creation, the result is a mere replica of the event, not a reflection of it through the Artist's mind.

(37) Nature's Revenge

Here in Karwar I wrote the Prakritir Pratishodha, Nature's Revenge, a dramatic poem. The hero was a Sanyasi (hermit) who had been striving to gain a victory over Nature by cutting away the bonds of all desires and affections and thus to arrive at a true and profound knowledge of self. A little girl, however, brought him back from his communion with the infinite to the world and into the bondage of human affection. On so coming back the Sanyasi realised that the great is to be found in the small, the infinite within the bounds of form, and the eternal freedom of239 the soul in love. It is only in the light of love that all limits are merged in the limitless.

The sea beach of Karwar is certainly a fit place in which to realise that the beauty of Nature is not a mirage of the imagination, but reflects the joy of the Infinite and thus draws us to lose ourselves in it. Where the universe is expressing itself in the magic of its laws it may not be strange if we miss its infinitude; but where the heart gets into immediate touch with immensity in the beauty of the meanest of things, is any room left for argument?

Nature took the Sanyasi to the presence of the Infinite, enthroned on the finite, by the pathway of the heart. In the Nature's Revenge there were shown on the one side the wayfarers and the villagers, content with their home-made triviality and unconscious of anything beyond; and on the other the Sanyasi busy casting away his all, and himself, into the self-evolved infinite of his imagination. When love bridged the gulf between the two, and the hermit and the householder met, the seeming triviality of the finite and the seeming emptiness of the infinite alike disappeared.

This was to put in a slightly different form the story of my own experience, of the entrancing ray of light which found its way into the depths of the cave into which I had retired away from240 all touch with the outer world, and made me more fully one with Nature again. This Nature's Revenge may be looked upon as an introduction to the whole of my future literary work; or, rather this has been the subject on which all my writings have dwelt—the joy of attaining the Infinite within the finite.

On our way back from Karwar I wrote some songs for the Nature's Revenge on board ship. The first one filled me with a great gladness as I sang, and wrote it sitting on the deck:

Mother, leave your darling boy to us,
And let us take him to the field where we graze our cattle.
The sun has risen, the buds have opened, the cowherd boys are going to the pasture; and they would not have the sunlight, the flowers, and their play in the grazing grounds empty. They want their Shyam (Krishna) to be with them there, in the midst of all these. They want to see the Infinite in all its carefully adorned loveliness;241 they have turned out so early because they want to join in its gladsome play, in the midst of these woods and fields and hills and dales—not to admire from a distance, nor in the majesty of power. Their equipment is of the slightest. A simple yellow garment and a garland of wild-flowers are all the ornaments they require. For where joy reigns on every side, to hunt for it arduously, or amidst pomp and circumstances, is to lose it.

Shortly after my return from Karwar, I was married. I was then 22 years of age.


Find this text at:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22217/22217-h/22217-h.htm

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Sports Update

I'm feeling a lot better than I did a few months ago. I am finally doing what I've always done - play sports. The other good news is that I've finally reduced my TV watching time from 10 minutes a day to 10 minutes a week.

I play football twice a week - on Tuesdays with local fellows and on Sundays with desi fellows. I play badminton on Saturdays and table tennis on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Sometimes, like this Sunday, I play football, badminton and table tennis all in the same day. I am dead tired by the end of it but I LOVE that feeling. It keeps the dreadful feeling away - the feeling that I am growing older, getting middle aged and slipping into the mainstream.

Last summer I played cricket and tennis too. Hopefully I shall do so again this summer. I had only played tennis once in my life before last summer and it wasn't a memorable experience then! Last summer, my neighbour proposed we go play tennis and when I said I didn't know anything about it, he said he didn't either. So off we went to the store to buy tennis racquets and tennis balls and then directly to the tennis court. Our other two neighbours joined in and we looked like a set of comedians at the autumn of their careers. It got better by the end of summer though I can only hit about half of my shots where I actually intend to hit them.

In cricket, I realised that playing with pads on is an entirely different game altogether. I looked worse than a number eleven batsman and it would take some getting used to. I also realised that it is easier to bowl with a leather ball though it is difficult to bowl fast. In the three balls that I bowled with my fast bowling run-up, none landed where they should. Again - need more practice. Unfortunately nobody knows I am a very good close-in fielder with good reflexes and speed so every match I played, I was fielding on the boundaries. This was, I assume due to my first throw from the boundary in a match with these guys. I cleared the pitch by a mile and gave away overthrows! Unfortunately they realised I have the strongest arm in the side and should hence be a good boundary fielder. !"£$£%$

In football which is what I probably love the most, I am surprised at how badly I am playing. I can't seem to do anything right. I am assuming I still don't have the pulse of the other players. It was a lot different with my mates in Pune. We knew each other since primary school and so we could almost connect telepathically on a football field. I could pass without needing to look around and I would invariably find my team-mates and vice versa. Well I guess football is a game of mental bonding which is why we see so many teams' fortunes hinge on two or three key players. Even all-star teams like Real Madrid find it difficult to be invincible inspite of possessing players of perhaps the best quality available.

My badminton and table-tennis are nothing to write home about although I enjoy one thing which I have achieved through practice.I can play table tennis with either (or both) hand(s). Cool eh? Oh well, it WOULD be cool if I could play really well with even one but hey, what the heck... atleast I have something different.

With this, folks, I finish this long and probably boring sports update. It feels nice to write again. Oh, and I start taking guitar lessons this Wednesday. I've been stuck at the same level for the last five years.

-PeAcE
--WiTh
---GuNs