(4) _Servocracy_
In the history of India the regime of the Slave Dynasty was not a happy
one. In going back to the reign of the servants in my own life's history
I can find nothing glorious or cheerful touching the period. There were
frequent changes of king, but never a variation in the code of
restraints and punishments with which we were afflicted. We, however,
had no opportunity at the time for philosophising on the subject; our
backs bore as best they could the blows which befell them: and we
accepted as one of the laws of the universe that it is for the Big to
hurt and for the Small to be hurt. It has taken me a long time to learn
the opposite truth that it is the Big who suffer and the Small who cause
suffering.
The quarry does not view virtue and vice from the standpoint of the
hunter. That is why the alert bird, whose cry warns its fellows before
the shot has sped, gets abused as vicious. We howled when we were
beaten, which our chastisers did not consider good manners; it was in
fact counted sedition against the servocracy. I cannot forget how, in
order effectively to suppress such sedition, our heads used to be
crammed into the huge water jars then in use; distasteful, doubtless,
was this outcry to those who caused it; moreover, it was likely to have
unpleasant consequences.
I now sometimes wonder why such cruel treatment was meted out to us by
the servants. I cannot admit that there was on the whole anything in our
behaviour or demeanour to have put us beyond the pale of human kindness.
The real reason must have been that the whole of our burden was thrown
on the servants, and the whole burden is a thing difficult to bear even
for those who are nearest and dearest. If children are only allowed to
be children, to run and play about and satisfy their curiosity, it
becomes quite simple. Insoluble problems are only created if you try to
confine them inside, keep them still or hamper their play. Then does the
burden of the child, so lightly borne by its own childishness, fall
heavily on the guardian--like that of the horse in the fable which was
carried instead of being allowed to trot on its own legs: and though
money procured bearers even for such a burden it could not prevent them
taking it out of the unlucky beast at every step.
Of most of these tyrants of our childhood I remember only their cuffings
and boxings, and nothing more. Only one personality stands out in my
memory.
His name was Iswar. He had been a village schoolmaster before. He was a
prim, proper and sedately dignified personage. The Earth seemed too
earthy for him, with too little water to keep it sufficiently clean; so
that he had to be in a constant state of warfare with its chronic soiled
state. He would shoot his water-pot into the tank with a lightning
movement so as to get his supply from an uncontaminated depth. It was he
who, when bathing in the tank, would be continually thrusting away the
surface impurities till he took a sudden plunge expecting, as it were,
to catch the water unawares. When walking his right arm stood out at an
angle from his body, as if, so it seemed to us, he could not trust the
cleanliness even of his own garments. His whole bearing had the
appearance of an effort to keep clear of the imperfections which,
through unguarded avenues, find entrance into earth, water and air, and
into the ways of men. Unfathomable was the depth of his gravity. With
head slightly tilted he would mince his carefully selected words in a
deep voice. His literary diction would give food for merriment to our
elders behind his back, some of his high-flown phrases finding a
permanent place in our family repertoire of witticisms. But I doubt
whether the expressions he used would sound as remarkable to-day;
showing how the literary and spoken languages, which used to be as sky
from earth asunder, are now coming nearer each other.
This erstwhile schoolmaster had discovered a way of keeping us quiet in
the evenings. Every evening he would gather us round the cracked
castor-oil lamp and read out to us stories from the Ramayana and
Mahabharata. Some of the other servants would also come and join the
audience. The lamp would be throwing huge shadows right up to the beams
of the roof, the little house lizards catching insects on the walls, the
bats doing a mad dervish dance round and round the verandahs outside,
and we listening in silent open-mouthed wonder.
I still remember, on the evening we came to the story of Kusha and Lava,
and those two valiant lads were threatening to humble to the dust the
renown of their father and uncles, how the tense silence of that dimly
lighted room was bursting with eager anticipation. It was getting late,
our prescribed period of wakefulness was drawing to a close, and yet the
denouement was far off.
At this critical juncture my father's old follower Kishori came to the
rescue, and finished the episode for us, at express speed, to the
quickstep of Dasuraya's jingling verses. The impression of the soft slow
chant of Krittivasa's[7] fourteen-syllabled measure was swept clean away
and we were left overwhelmed by a flood of rhymes and alliterations.
On some occasions these readings would give rise to shastric
discussions, which would at length be settled by the depth of Iswar's
wise pronouncements. Though, as one of the children's servants, his rank
in our domestic society was below that of many, yet, as with old
Grandfather Bhisma in the Mahabharata, his supremacy would assert itself
from his seat, below his juniors.
Our grave and reverend servitor had one weakness to which, for the sake
of historical accuracy, I feel bound to allude. He used to take opium.
This created a craving for rich food. So that when he brought us our
morning goblets of milk the forces of attraction in his mind would be
greater than those of repulsion. If we gave the least expression to our
natural repugnance for this meal, no sense of responsibility for our
health could prompt him to press it on us a second time.
Iswar also held somewhat narrow views as to our capacity for solid
nourishment. We would sit down to our evening repast and a quantity of
_luchis_[8] heaped on a thick round wooden tray would be placed before
us. He would begin by gingerly dropping a few on each platter, from a
sufficient height to safeguard himself from contamination[9]--like
unwilling favours, wrested from the gods by dint of importunity, did
they descend, so dexterously inhospitable was he. Next would come the
inquiry whether he should give us any more. I knew the reply which would
be most gratifying, and could not bring myself to deprive him by asking
for another help.
Then again Iswar was entrusted with a daily allowance of money for
procuring our afternoon light refreshment. He would ask us every morning
what we should like to have. We knew that to mention the cheapest would
be accounted best, so sometimes we ordered a light refection of puffed
rice, and at others an indigestible one of boiled gram or roasted
groundnuts. It was evident that Iswar was not as painstakingly
punctilious in regard to our diet as with the shastric proprieties.
(5) _The Normal School_
While at the Oriental Seminary I had discovered a way out of the
degradation of being a mere pupil. I had started a class of my own in a
corner of our verandah. The wooden bars of the railing were my pupils,
and I would act the schoolmaster, cane in hand, seated on a chair in
front of them. I had decided which were the good boys and which the
bad--nay, further, I could distinguish clearly the quiet from the
naughty, the clever from the stupid. The bad rails had suffered so much
from my constant caning that they must have longed to give up the ghost
had they been alive. And the more scarred they got with my strokes the
worse they angered me, till I knew not how to punish them enough. None
remain to bear witness to-day how tremendously I tyrannised over that
poor dumb class of mine. My wooden pupils have since been replaced by
cast-iron railings, nor have any of the new generation taken up their
education in the same way--they could never have made the same
impression.
I have since realised how much easier it is to acquire the manner than
the matter. Without an effort had I assimilated all the impatience, the
short temper, the partiality and the injustice displayed by my teachers
to the exclusion of the rest of their teaching. My only consolation is
that I had not the power of venting these barbarities on any sentient
creature. Nevertheless the difference between my wooden pupils and those
of the Seminary did not prevent my psychology from being identical with
that of its schoolmasters.
I could not have been long at the Oriental Seminary, for I was still of
tender age when I joined the Normal School. The only one of its features
which I remember is that before the classes began all the boys had to
sit in a row in the gallery and go through some kind of singing or
chanting of verses--evidently an attempt at introducing an element of
cheerfulness into the daily routine.
Unfortunately the words were English and the tune quite as foreign, so
that we had not the faintest notion what sort of incantation we were
practising; neither did the meaningless monotony of the performance tend
to make us cheerful. This failed to disturb the serene self-satisfaction
of the school authorities at having provided such a treat; they deemed
it superfluous to inquire into the practical effect of their bounty;
they would probably have counted it a crime for the boys not to be
dutifully happy. Anyhow they rested content with taking the song as they
found it, words and all, from the self-same English book which had
furnished the theory.
The language into which this English resolved itself in our mouths
cannot but be edifying to philologists. I can recall only one line:
_Kallokee pullokee singill mellaling mellaling mellaling._
After much thought I have been able to guess at the original of a part
of it. Of what words _kallokee_ is the transformation still baffles me.
The rest I think was:
_... full of glee, singing merrily, merrily, merrily!_
As my memories of the Normal School emerge from haziness and become
clearer they are not the least sweet in any particular. Had I been able
to associate with the other boys, the woes of learning might not have
seemed so intolerable. But that turned out to be impossible--so nasty
were most of the boys in their manners and habits. So, in the intervals
of the classes, I would go up to the second storey and while away the
time sitting near a window overlooking the street. I would count: one
year--two years--three years--; wondering how many such would have to be
got through like this.
Of the teachers I remember only one, whose language was so foul that,
out of sheer contempt for him, I steadily refused to answer any one of
his questions. Thus I sat silent throughout the year at the bottom of
his class, and while the rest of the class was busy I would be left
alone to attempt the solution of many an intricate problem.
One of these, I remember, on which I used to cogitate profoundly, was
how to defeat an enemy without having arms. My preoccupation with this
question, amidst the hum of the boys reciting their lessons, comes back
to me even now. If I could properly train up a number of dogs, tigers
and other ferocious beasts, and put a few lines of these on the field of
battle, that, I thought, would serve very well as an inspiriting
prelude. With our personal prowess let loose thereafter, victory should
by no means be out of reach. And, as the picture of this wonderfully
simple strategy waxed vivid in my imagination, the victory of my side
became assured beyond doubt.
While work had not yet come into my life I always found it easy to
devise short cuts to achievement; since I have been working I find that
what is hard is hard indeed, and what is difficult remains difficult.
This, of course, is less comforting; but nowhere near so bad as the
discomfort of trying to take shortcuts.
When at length a year of that class had passed, we were examined in
Bengali by Pandit Madhusudan Vachaspati. I got the largest number of
marks of all the boys. The teacher complained to the school authorities
that there had been favouritism in my case. So I was examined a second
time, with the superintendent of the school seated beside the examiner.
This time, also, I got a top place.
(6) _Versification_
I could not have been more than eight years old at the time. Jyoti, a
son of a niece of my father's, was considerably older than I. He had
just gained an entrance into English literature, and would recite
Hamlet's soliloquy with great gusto. Why he should have taken it into
his head to get a child, as I was, to write poetry I cannot tell. One
afternoon he sent for me to his room, and asked me to try and make up a
verse; after which he explained to me the construction of the _payar_
metre of fourteen syllables.
I had up to then only seen poems in printed books--no mistakes penned
through, no sign to the eye of doubt or trouble or any human weakness. I
could not have dared even to imagine that any effort of mine could
produce such poetry.
One day a thief had been caught in our house. Overpowered by curiosity,
yet in fear and trembling, I ventured to the spot to take a peep at him.
I found he was just an ordinary man! And when he was somewhat roughly
handled by our door-keeper I felt a great pity. I had a similar
experience with poetry.
When, after stringing together a few words at my own sweet will, I found
them turned into a _payar_ verse I felt I had no illusions left about
the glories of poetising. So when poor Poetry is mishandled, even now I
feel as unhappy as I did about the thief. Many a time have I been moved
to pity and yet been unable to restrain impatient hands itching for the
assault. Thieves have scarcely suffered so much, and from so many.
The first feeling of awe once overcome there was no holding me back. I
managed to get hold of a blue-paper manuscript book by the favour of one
of the officers of our estate. With my own hands I ruled it with pencil
lines, at not very regular intervals, and thereon I began to write
verses in a large childish scrawl.
Like a young deer which butts here, there and everywhere with its newly
sprouting horns, I made myself a nuisance with my budding poetry. More
so my elder[10] brother, whose pride in my performance impelled him to
hunt about the house for an audience.
I recollect how, as the pair of us, one day, were coming out of the
estate offices on the ground floor, after a conquering expedition
against the officers, we came across the editor of "The National Paper,"
Nabagopal Mitter, who had just stepped into the house. My brother
tackled him without further ado: "Look here, Nabagopal Babu! won't you
listen to a poem which Rabi has written?" The reading forthwith
followed.
My works had not as yet become voluminous. The poet could carry all his
effusions about in his pockets. I was writer, printer and publisher, all
in one; my brother, as advertiser, being my only colleague. I had
composed some verses on The Lotus which I recited to Nabagopal Babu then
and there, at the foot of the stairs, in a voice pitched as high as my
enthusiasm. "Well done!" said he with a smile. "But what is a
_dwirepha_?"[11]
How I had got hold of this word I do not remember. The ordinary name
would have fitted the metre quite as well. But this was the one word in
the whole poem on which I had pinned my hopes. It had doubtless duly
impressed our officers. But curiously enough Nabagopal Babu did not
succumb to it--on the contrary he smiled! He could not be an
understanding man, I felt sure. I never read poetry to him again. I have
since added many years to my age but have not been able to improve upon
my test of what does or does not constitute understanding in my hearer.
However Nabagopal Babu might smile, the word _dwirepha_, like a bee
drunk with honey, stuck to its place, unmoved.
(7) _Various Learning_
One of the teachers of the Normal School also gave us private lessons at
home. His body was lean, his features dry, his voice sharp. He looked
like a cane incarnate. His hours were from six to half-past-nine in the
morning. With him our reading ranged from popular literary and science
readers in Bengali to the epic of Meghnadvadha.
My third brother was very keen on imparting to us a variety of
knowledge. So at home we had to go through much more than what was
required by the school course. We had to get up before dawn and, clad in
loin-cloths, begin with a bout or two with a blind wrestler. Without a
pause we donned our tunics on our dusty bodies, and started on our
courses of literature, mathematics, geography and history. On our return
from school our drawing and gymnastic masters would be ready for us. In
the evening Aghore Babu came for our English lessons. It was only after
nine that we were free.
On Sunday morning we had singing lessons with Vishnu. Then, almost every
Sunday, came Sitanath Dutta to give us demonstrations in physical
science. The last were of great interest to me. I remember distinctly
the feeling of wonder which filled me when he put some water, with
sawdust in it, on the fire in a glass vessel, and showed us how the
lightened hot water came up, and the cold water went down and how
finally the water began to boil. I also felt a great elation the day I
learnt that water is a separable part of milk, and that milk thickens
when boiled because the water frees itself as vapour from the connexion.
Sunday did not feel Sunday-like unless Sitanath Babu turned up.
There was also an hour when we would be told all about human bones by a
pupil of the Campbell Medical School, for which purpose a skeleton, with
the bones fastened together by wires was hung up in our schoolroom. And
finally, time was also found for Pandit Heramba Tatwaratna to come and
get us to learn by rote rules of Sanscrit grammar. I am not sure which
of them, the names of the bones or the _sutras_ of the grammarian, were
the more jaw-breaking. I think the latter took the palm.
We began to learn English after we had made considerable progress in
learning through the medium of Bengali. Aghore Babu, our English tutor,
was attending the Medical College, so he came to teach us in the
evening.
Books tell us that the discovery of fire was one of the biggest
discoveries of man. I do not wish to dispute this. But I cannot help
feeling how fortunate the little birds are that their parents cannot
light lamps of an evening. They have their language lessons early in the
morning and you must have noticed how gleefully they learn them. Of
course we must not forget that they do not have to learn the English
language!
The health of this medical-student tutor of ours was so good that even
the fervent and united wishes of his three pupils were not enough to
cause his absence even for a day. Only once was he laid up with a broken
head when, on the occasion of a fight between the Indian and Eurasian
students of the Medical College, a chair was thrown at him. It was a
regrettable occurrence; nevertheless we were not able to take it as a
personal sorrow, and his recovery somehow seemed to us needlessly swift.
It is evening. The rain is pouring in lance-like showers. Our lane is
under knee-deep water. The tank has overflown into the garden, and the
bushy tops of the Bael trees are seen standing out over the waters. Our
whole being, on this delightful rainy evening, is radiating rapture like
the _Kadamba_ flower its fragrant spikes. The time for the arrival of
our tutor is over by just a few minutes. Yet there is no certainty...!
We are sitting on the verandah overlooking the lane[12] watching and
watching with a piteous gaze. All of a sudden, with a great big thump,
our hearts seem to fall in a swoon. The familiar black umbrella has
turned the corner undefeated even by such weather! Could it not be
somebody else? It certainly could not! In the wide wide world there
might be found another, his equal in pertinacity, but never in this
little lane of ours.
Looking back on his period as a whole, I cannot say that Aghore Babu was
a hard man. He did not rule us with a rod. Even his rebukes did not
amount to scoldings. But whatever may have been his personal merits, his
time was _evening_, and his subject _English_! I am certain that even an
angel would have seemed a veritable messenger of Yama[13] to any Bengali
boy if he came to him at the end of his miserable day at school, and
lighted a dismally dim lamp to teach him English.
How well do I remember the day our tutor tried to impress on us the
attractiveness of the English language. With this object he recited to
us with great unction some lines--prose or poetry we could not tell--out
of an English book. It had a most unlooked for effect on us. We laughed
so immoderately that he had to dismiss us for that evening. He must
have realised that he held no easy brief--that to get us to pronounce in
his favour would entail a contest ranging over years.
Aghore Babu would sometimes try to bring the zephyr of outside knowledge
to play on the arid routine of our schoolroom. One day he brought a
paper parcel out of his pocket and said: "I'll show you to-day a
wonderful piece of work of the Creator." With this he untied the paper
wrapping and, producing a portion of the vocal organs of a human being,
proceeded to expound the marvels of its mechanism.
I can still call to mind the shock this gave me at the time. I had
always thought the whole man spoke--had never even imagined that the act
of speech could be viewed in this detached way. However wonderful the
mechanism of a part may be, it is certainly less so than the whole man.
Not that I put it to myself in so many words, but that was the cause of
my dismay. It was perhaps because the tutor had lost sight of this truth
that the pupil could not respond to the enthusiasm with which he was
discoursing on the subject.
Another day he took us to the dissecting room of the Medical College.
The body of an old woman was stretched on the table. This did not
disturb me so much. But an amputated leg which was lying on the floor
upset me altogether. To view man in this fragmentary way seemed to me so
horrid, so absurd that I could not get rid of the impression of that
dark, unmeaning leg for many a day.
After getting through Peary Sarkar's first and second English readers we
entered upon McCulloch's Course of Reading. Our bodies were weary at the
end of the day, our minds yearning for the inner apartments, the book
was black and thick with difficult words, and the subject-matter could
hardly have been more inviting, for in those days, Mother
Saraswati's[14] maternal tenderness was not in evidence. Children's
books were not full of pictures then as they are now. Moreover, at the
gateway of every reading lesson stood sentinel an array of words, with
separated syllables, and forbidding accent marks like fixed bayonets,
barring the way to the infant mind. I had repeatedly attacked their
serried ranks in vain.
Our tutor would try to shame us by recounting the exploits of some other
brilliant pupil of his. We felt duly ashamed, and also not well-disposed
towards that other pupil, but this did not help to dispel the darkness
which clung to that black volume.
Providence, out of pity for mankind, has instilled a soporific charm
into all tedious things. No sooner did our English lessons begin than
our heads began to nod. Sprinkling water into our eyes, or taking a run
round the verandahs, were palliatives which had no lasting effect. If by
any chance my eldest brother happened to be passing that way, and caught
a glimpse of our sleep-tormented condition, we would get let off for the
rest of the evening. It did not take our drowsiness another moment to
get completely cured.
(8) _My First Outing_
Once, when the dengue fever was raging in Calcutta, some portion of our
extensive family had to take shelter in Chhatu Babu's river-side villa.
We were among them.
This was my first outing. The bank of the Ganges welcomed me into its
lap like a friend of a former birth. There, in front of the servants'
quarters, was a grove of guava trees; and, sitting in the verandah under
the shade of these, gazing at the flowing current through the gaps
between their trunks, my days would pass. Every morning, as I awoke, I
somehow felt the day coming to me like a new gilt-edged letter, with
some unheard-of news awaiting me on the opening of the envelope. And,
lest I should lose any fragment of it, I would hurry through my toilet
to my chair outside. Every day there was the ebb and flow of the tide on
the Ganges; the various gait of so many different boats; the shifting of
the shadows of the trees from west to east; and, over the fringe of
shade-patches of the woods on the opposite bank, the gush of golden
life-blood through the pierced breast of the evening sky. Some days
would be cloudy from early morning; the opposite woods black; black
shadows moving over the river. Then with a rush would come the
vociferous rain, blotting out the horizon; the dim line of the other
bank taking its leave in tears: the river swelling with suppressed
heavings; and the moist wind making free with the foliage of the trees
overhead.
I felt that out of the bowels of wall, beam and rafter, I had a new
birth into the outside. In making fresh acquaintance with things, the
dingy covering of petty habits seemed to drop off the world. I am sure
that the sugar-cane molasses, which I had with cold _luchis_ for my
breakfast, could not have tasted different from the ambrosia which
_Indra_[15] quaffs in his heaven; for, the immortality is not in the
nectar but in the taster, and thus is missed by those who seek it.
Behind the house was a walled-in enclosure with a tank and a flight of
steps leading into the water from a bathing platform. On one side of the
platform was an immense Jambolan tree, and all round were various fruit
trees, growing in thick clusters, in the shade of which the tank nestled
in its privacy. The veiled beauty of this retired little inner garden
had a wonderful charm for me, so different from the broad expanse of the
river-bank in front. It was like the bride of the house, in the
seclusion of her midday siesta, resting on a many-coloured quilt of her
own embroidering, murmuring low the secrets of her heart. Many a midday
hour did I spend alone under that Jambolan tree dreaming of the fearsome
kingdom of the Yakshas[16] within the depths of the tank.
I had a great curiosity to see a Bengal village. Its clusters of
cottages, its thatched pavilions, its lanes and bathing places, its
games and gatherings, its fields and markets, its life as a whole as I
saw it in imagination, greatly attracted me. Just such a village was
right on the other side of our garden wall, but it was forbidden to us.
We had come out, but not into freedom. We had been in a cage, and were
now on a perch, but the chain was still there.
One morning two of our elders went out for a stroll into the village. I
could not restrain my eagerness any longer, and, slipping out
unperceived, followed them for some distance. As I went along the deeply
shaded lane, with its close thorny _seora_ hedges, by the side of the
tank covered with green water weeds, I rapturously took in picture after
picture. I still remember the man with bare body, engaged in a belated
toilet on the edge of the tank, cleaning his teeth with the chewed end
of a twig. Suddenly my elders became aware of my presence behind them.
"Get away, get away, go back at once!" they scolded. They were
scandalised. My feet were bare, I had no scarf or upper-robe over my
tunic, I was not dressed fit to come out; as if it was my fault! I never
owned any socks or superfluous apparel, so not only went back
disappointed for that morning, but had no chance of repairing my
shortcomings and being allowed to come out any other day. However though
the Beyond was thus shut out from behind, in front the Ganges freed me
from all bondage, and my mind, whenever it listed, could embark on the
boats gaily sailing along, and hie away to lands not named in any
geography.
This was forty years ago. Since then I have never set foot again in that
_champak_-shaded villa garden. The same old house and the same old
trees must still be there, but I know it cannot any longer be the
same--for where am I now to get that fresh feeling of wonder which made
it what it was?
We returned to our Jorasanko house in town. And my days were as so many
mouthfuls offered up to be gulped down into the yawning interior of the
Normal School.
(9) _Practising Poetry_
That blue manuscript book was soon filled, like the hive of some insect,
with a network of variously slanting lines and the thick and thin
strokes of letters. The eager pressure of the boy writer soon crumpled
its leaves; and then the edges got frayed, and twisted up claw-like as
if to hold fast the writing within, till at last, down what river
_Baitarani_[17] I know not, its pages were swept away by merciful
oblivion. Anyhow they escaped the pangs of a passage through the
printing press and need fear no birth into this vale of woe.
I cannot claim to have been a passive witness of the spread of my
reputation as a poet. Though Satkari Babu was not a teacher of our class
he was very fond of me. He had written a book on Natural
History--wherein I hope no unkind humorist will try to find a reason for
such fondness. He sent for me one day and asked: "So you write poetry,
do you?" I did not conceal the fact. From that time on, he would now and
then ask me to complete a quatrain by adding a couplet of my own to one
given by him.
Gobinda Babu of our school was very dark, and short and fat. He was the
Superintendent. He sat, in his black suit, with his account books, in an
office room on the second storey. We were all afraid of him, for he was
the rod-bearing judge. On one occasion I had escaped from the attentions
of some bullies into his room. The persecutors were five or six older
boys. I had no one to bear witness on my side--except my tears. I won my
case and since then Govinda Babu had a soft corner in his heart for me.
One day he called me into his room during the recess. I went in fear and
trembling but had no sooner stepped before him than he also accosted me
with the question: "So you write poetry?" I did not hesitate to make the
admission. He commissioned me to write a poem on some high moral precept
which I do not remember. The amount of condescension and affability
which such a request coming from him implied can only be appreciated by
those who were his pupils. When I finished and handed him the verses
next day, he took me to the highest class and made me stand before the
boys. "Recite," he commanded. And I recited loudly.
The only praiseworthy thing about this moral poem was that it soon got
lost. Its moral effect on that class was far from encouraging--the
sentiment it aroused being not one of regard for its author. Most of
them were certain that it was not my own composition. One said he could
produce the book from which it was copied, but was not pressed to do so;
the process of proving is such a nuisance to those who want to believe.
Finally the number of seekers after poetic fame began to increase
alarmingly; moreover their methods were not those which are recognised
as roads to moral improvement.
Nowadays there is nothing strange in a youngster writing verses. The
glamour of poesy is gone. I remember how the few women who wrote poetry
in those days were looked upon as miraculous creations of the Deity. If
one hears to-day that some young lady does not write poems one feels
sceptical. Poetry now sprouts long before the highest Bengali class is
reached; so that no modern Gobinda Babu would have taken any notice of
the poetic exploit I have recounted.