(10) _Srikantha Babu_
At this time I was blessed with a hearer the like of whom I shall never
get again. He had so inordinate a capacity for being pleased as to have
utterly disqualified him for the post of critic in any of our monthly
Reviews. The old man was like a perfectly ripe Alfonso mango--not a
trace of acid or coarse fibre in his composition. His tender
clean-shaven face was rounded off by an all-pervading baldness; there
was not the vestige of a tooth to worry the inside of his mouth; and his
big smiling eyes gleamed with a constant delight. When he spoke in his
soft deep voice, his mouth and eyes and hands all spoke likewise. He was
of the old school of Persian culture and knew not a word of English. His
inseparable companions were a hubble-bubble at his left, and a _sitar_
on his lap; and from his throat flowed song unceasing.
Srikantha Babu had no need to wait for a formal introduction, for none
could resist the natural claims of his genial heart. Once he took us to
be photographed with him in some big English photographic studio. There
he so captivated the proprietor with his artless story, in a jumble of
Hindusthani and Bengali, of how he was a poor man, but badly wanted
this particular photograph taken, that the man smilingly allowed him a
reduced rate. Nor did such bargaining sound at all incongruous in that
unbending English establishment, so naïve was Srikantha Babu, so
unconscious of any possibility of giving offence. He would sometimes
take me along to a European missionary's house. There, also, with his
playing and singing, his caresses of the missionary's little girl and
his unstinted admiration of the little booted feet of the missionary's
lady, he would enliven the gathering as no one else could have done.
Another behaving so absurdly would have been deemed a bore, but his
transparent simplicity pleased all and drew them to join in his gaiety.
Srikantha Babu was impervious to rudeness or insolence. There was at the
time a singer of some repute retained in our establishment. When the
latter was the worse for liquor he would rail at poor Srikantha Babu's
singing in no very choice terms. This he would bear unflinchingly, with
no attempt at retort. When at last the man's incorrigible rudeness
brought about his dismissal Srikantha Babu anxiously interceded for him.
"It was not he, it was the liquor," he insisted.
[Illustration: The Ganges]
He could not bear to see anyone sorrowing or even to hear of it. So when
any one of the boys wanted to torment him they had only to read out
passages from Vidyasagar's "Banishment of Sita"; whereat he would be
greatly exercised, thrusting out his hands in protest and begging and
praying of them to stop.
This old man was the friend alike of my father, my elder brothers and
ourselves. He was of an age with each and every one of us. As any piece
of stone is good enough for the freshet to dance round and gambol with,
so the least provocation would suffice to make him beside himself with
joy. Once I had composed a hymn, and had not failed to make due allusion
to the trials and tribulations of this world. Srikantha Babu was
convinced that my father would be overjoyed at such a perfect gem of a
devotional poem. With unbounded enthusiasm he volunteered personally to
acquaint him with it. By a piece of good fortune I was not there at the
time but heard afterwards that my father was hugely amused that the
sorrows of the world should have so early moved his youngest son to the
point of versification. I am sure Gobinda Babu, the superintendent,
would have shown more respect for my effort on so serious a subject.
In singing I was Srikantha Babu's favorite pupil. He had taught me a
song: "No more of Vraja[18] for me," and would drag me about to
everyone's rooms and get me to sing it to them. I would sing and he
would thrum an accompaniment on his _sitar_ and when we came to the
chorus he would join in, and repeat it over and over again, smiling and
nodding his head at each one in turn, as if nudging them on to a more
enthusiastic appreciation.
He was a devoted admirer of my father. A hymn had been set to one of his
tunes, "For He is the heart of our hearts." When he sang this to my
father Srikantha Babu got so excited that he jumped up from his seat and
in alternation violently twanged his _sitar_ as he sang: "For He is the
heart of our hearts" and then waved his hand about my father's face as
he changed the words to "For _you_ are the heart of our hearts."
When the old man paid his last visit to my father, the latter, himself
bed-ridden, was at a river-side villa in Chinsurah. Srikantha Babu,
stricken with his last illness, could not rise unaided and had to push
open his eyelids to see. In this state, tended by his daughter, he
journeyed to Chinsurah from his place in Birbhoom. With a great effort
he managed to take the dust of my father's feet and then return to his
lodgings in Chinsurah where he breathed his last a few days later. I
heard afterwards from his daughter that he went to his eternal youth
with the song "How sweet is thy mercy, Lord!" on his lips.
(11) _Our Bengali Course Ends_
At School we were then in the class below the highest one. At home we
had advanced in Bengali much further than the subjects taught in the
class. We had been through Akshay Datta's book on Popular Physics, and
had also finished the epic of Meghnadvadha. We read our physics without
any reference to physical objects and so our knowledge of the subject
was correspondingly bookish. In fact the time spent on it had been
thoroughly wasted; much more so to my mind than if it had been wasted in
doing nothing. The Meghnadvadha, also, was not a thing of joy to us. The
tastiest tit-bit may not be relished when thrown at one's head. To
employ an epic to teach language is like using a sword to shave
with--sad for the sword, bad for the chin. A poem should be taught from
the emotional standpoint; inveigling it into service as
grammar-cum-dictionary is not calculated to propitiate the divine
Saraswati.
All of a sudden our Normal School career came to an end; and thereby
hangs a tale. One of our school teachers wanted to borrow a copy of my
grandfather's life by Mitra from our library. My nephew and classmate
Satya managed to screw up courage enough to volunteer to mention this to
my father. He came to the conclusion that everyday Bengali would hardly
do to approach him with. So he concocted and delivered himself of an
archaic phrase with such meticulous precision that my father must have
felt our study of the Bengali language had gone a bit too far and was in
danger of over-reaching itself. So the next morning, when according to
our wont our table had been placed in the south verandah, the blackboard
hung up on a nail in the wall, and everything was in readiness for our
lessons with Nilkamal Babu, we three were sent for by my father to his
room upstairs. "You need not do any more Bengali lessons," he said. Our
minds danced for very joy.
Nilkamal Babu was waiting downstairs, our books were lying open on the
table, and the idea of getting us once more to go through the
Meghnadvadha doubtless still occupied his mind. But as on one's
death-bed the various routine of daily life seems unreal, so, in a
moment, did everything, from the Pandit down to the nail on which the
blackboard was hung, become for us as empty as a mirage. Our sole
trouble was how to give this news to Nilkamal Babu with due decorum. We
did it at last with considerable restraint, while the geometrical
figures on the blackboard stared at us in wonder and the blank verse of
the Meghnadvadha looked blankly on.
Our Pandit's parting words were: "At the call of duty I may have been
sometimes harsh with you--do not keep that in remembrance. You will
learn the value of what I have taught you later on."
Indeed I have learnt that value. It was because we were taught in our
own language that our minds quickened. Learning should as far as
possible follow the process of eating. When the taste begins from the
first bite, the stomach is awakened to its function before it is loaded,
so that its digestive juices get full play. Nothing like this happens,
however, when the Bengali boy is taught in English. The first bite bids
fair to wrench loose both rows of teeth--like a veritable earthquake in
the mouth! And by the time he discovers that the morsel is not of the
genus stone, but a digestible bonbon, half his allotted span of life is
over. While one is choking and spluttering over the spelling and
grammar, the inside remains starved, and when at length the taste is
felt, the appetite has vanished. If the whole mind does not work from
the beginning its full powers remain undeveloped to the end. While all
around was the cry for English teaching, my third brother was brave
enough to keep us to our Bengali course. To him in heaven my grateful
reverence.
(12) _The Professor_
On leaving the Normal School we were sent to the Bengal Academy, a
Eurasian institution. We felt we had gained an access of dignity, that
we had grown up--at least into the first storey of freedom. In point of
fact the only progress we made in that academy was towards freedom. What
we were taught there we never understood, nor did we make any attempt to
learn, nor did it seem to make any difference to anybody that we did
not. The boys here were annoying but not disgusting--which was a great
comfort. They wrote ASS on their palms and slapped it on to our backs
with a cordial "hello!" They gave us a dig in the ribs from behind and
looked innocently another way. They dabbed banana pulp on our heads and
made away unperceived. Nevertheless it was like coming out of slime on
to rock--we were worried but not soiled.
This school had one great advantage for me. No one there cherished the
forlorn hope that boys of our sort could make any advance in learning.
It was a petty institution with an insufficient income, so that we had
one supreme merit in the eyes of its authorities--we paid our fees
regularly. This prevented even the Latin Grammar from proving a
stumbling block, and the most egregious of blunders left our backs
unscathed. Pity for us had nothing to do with it--the school authorities
had spoken to the teachers!
Still, harmless though it was, after all it was a school. The rooms were
cruelly dismal with their walls on guard like policemen. The house was
more like a pigeon-holed box than a human habitation. No decoration, no
pictures, not a touch of colour, not an attempt to attract the boyish
heart. The fact that likes and dislikes form a large part of the child
mind was completely ignored. Naturally our whole being was depressed as
we stepped through its doorway into the narrow quadrangle--and playing
truant became chronic with us.
In this we found an accomplice. My elder brothers had a Persian tutor.
We used to call him Munshi. He was of middle age and all skin and bone,
as though dark parchment had been stretched over his skeleton without
any filling of flesh and blood. He probably knew Persian well, his
knowledge of English was quite fair, but in neither of these directions
lay his ambition. His belief was that his proficiency in singlestick
was matched only by his skill in song. He would stand in the sun in the
middle of our courtyard and go through a wonderful series of antics with
a staff--his own shadow being his antagonist. I need hardly add that his
shadow never got the better of him and when at the end he gave a great
big shout and whacked it on the head with a victorious smile, it lay
submissively prone at his feet. His singing, nasal and out of tune,
sounded like a gruesome mixture of groaning and moaning coming from some
ghost-world. Our singing master Vishnu would sometimes chaff him: "Look
here, Munshi, you'll be taking the bread out of our mouths at this
rate!" To which his only reply would be a disdainful smile.
This shows that the Munshi was amenable to soft words; and in fact,
whenever we wanted we could persuade him to write to the school
authorities to excuse us from attendance. The school authorities took no
pains to scrutinise these letters, they knew it would be all the same
whether we attended or not, so far as educational results were
concerned.
I have now a school of my own in which the boys are up to all kinds of
mischief, for boys will be mischievous--and schoolmasters unforgiving.
When any of us are beset with undue uneasiness at their conduct and are
stirred into a resolution to deal out condign punishment, the misdeeds
of my own schooldays confront me in a row and smile at me.
I now clearly see that the mistake is to judge boys by the standard of
grown-ups, to forget that a child is quick and mobile like a running
stream; and that, in the case of such, any touch of imperfection need
cause no great alarm, for the speed of the flow is itself the best
corrective. When stagnation sets in then comes the danger. So it is for
the teacher, more than the pupil, to beware of wrongdoing.
There was a separate refreshment room for Bengali boys for meeting their
caste requirements. This was where we struck up a friendship with some
of the others. They were all older than we. One of these will bear to be
dilated upon.
His specialty was the art of Magic, so much so that he had actually
written and published a little booklet on it, the front page of which
bore his name with the title of Professor. I had never before come
across a schoolboy whose name had appeared in print, so that my
reverence for him--as a professor of magic I mean--was profound. How
could I have brought myself to believe that anything questionable could
possibly find place in the straight and upright ranks of printed
letters? To be able to record one's own words in indelible ink--was
that a slight thing? To stand unscreened yet unabashed, self-confessed
before the world,--how could one withhold belief in the face of such
supreme self-confidence? I remember how once I got the types for the
letters of my name from some printing press, and what a memorable thing
it seemed when I inked and pressed them on paper and found my name
imprinted.
We used to give a lift in our carriage to this schoolfellow and
author-friend of ours. This led to visiting terms. He was also great at
theatricals. With his help we erected a stage on our wrestling ground
with painted paper stretched over a split bamboo framework. But a
peremptory negative from upstairs prevented any play from being acted
thereon.
A comedy of errors was however played later on without any stage at all.
The author of this has already been introduced to the reader in these
pages. He was none other than my nephew Satya. Those who behold his
present calm and sedate demeanour would be shocked to learn of the
tricks of which he was the originator.
[Illustration: Satya]
The event of which I am writing happened sometime afterwards when I was
twelve or thirteen. Our magician friend had told of so many strange
properties of things that I was consumed with curiosity to see them for
myself. But the materials of which he spoke were invariably so rare
or distant that one could hardly hope to get hold of them without the
help of Sindbad the sailor. Once, as it happened, the Professor forgot
himself so far as to mention accessible things. Who could ever believe
that a seed dipped and dried twenty-one times in the juice of a species
of cactus would sprout and flower and fruit all in the space of an hour?
I was determined to test this, not daring withal to doubt the assurance
of a Professor whose name appeared in a printed book.
I got our gardener to furnish me with a plentiful supply of the milky
juice, and betook myself, on a Sunday afternoon, to our mystic nook in a
corner of the roof terrace, to experiment with the stone of a mango. I
was wrapt in my task of dipping and drying--but the grown-up reader will
probably not wait to ask me the result. In the meantime, I little knew
that Satya, in another corner, had, in the space of an hour, caused to
root and sprout a mystical plant of his own creation. This was to bear
curious fruit later on.
After the day of this experiment the Professor rather avoided me, as I
gradually came to perceive. He would not sit on the same side in the
carriage, and altogether seemed to fight shy of me.
One day, all of a sudden, he proposed that each one in turn should jump
off the bench in our schoolroom. He wanted to observe the differences
in style, he said. Such scientific curiosity did not appear queer in a
professor of magic. Everyone jumped, so did I. He shook his head with a
subdued "h'm." No amount of persuasion could draw anything further out
of him.
Another day he informed us that some good friends of his wanted to make
our acquaintance and asked us to accompany him to their house. Our
guardians had no objection, so off we went. The crowd in the room seemed
full of curiosity. They expressed their eagerness to hear me sing. I
sang a song or two. Mere child as I was I could hardly have bellowed
like a bull. "Quite a sweet voice," they all agreed.
When refreshments were put before us they sat round and watched us eat.
I was bashful by nature and not used to strange company; moreover the
habit I acquired during the attendance of our servant Iswar left me a
poor eater for good. They all seemed impressed with the delicacy of my
appetite.
In the fifth act I got some curiously warm letters from our Professor
which revealed the whole situation. And here let the curtain fall.
I subsequently learnt from Satya that while I had been practising magic
on the mango seed, he had successfully convinced the Professor that I
was dressed as a boy by our guardians merely for getting me a better
schooling, but that really this was only a disguise. To those who are
curious in regard to imaginary science I should explain that a girl is
supposed to jump with her left foot forward, and this is what I had done
on the occasion of the Professor's trial. I little realised at the time
what a tremendously false step mine had been!
(13) _My Father_
Shortly after my birth my father took to constantly travelling about. So
it is no exaggeration to say that in my early childhood I hardly knew
him. He would now and then come back home all of a sudden, and with him
came foreign servants with whom I felt extremely eager to make friends.
Once there came in this way a young Panjabi servant named Lenu. The
cordiality of the reception he got from us would have been worthy of
Ranjit Singh himself. Not only was he a foreigner, but a Panjabi to
boot,--what wonder he stole our hearts away?
We had the same reverence for the whole Panjabi nation as for Bhima and
Arjuna of the Mahabharata. They were warriors; and if they had
sometimes fought and lost, that was clearly the enemy's fault. It was
glorious to have Lenu, of the Panjab, in our very home.
My sister-in-law had a model war-ship under a glass case, which, when
wound up, rocked on blue-painted silken waves to the tinkling of a
musical box. I would beg hard for the loan of this to display its
marvels to the admiring Lenu.
Caged in the house as we were, anything savouring of foreign parts had a
peculiar charm for me. This was one of the reasons why I made so much of
Lenu. This was also the reason why Gabriel, the Jew, with his
embroidered gaberdine, who came to sell _attars_ and scented oils,
stirred me so; and the huge Kabulis, with their dusty, baggy trousers
and knapsacks and bundles, wrought on my young mind a fearful
fascination.
Anyhow, when my father came, we would be content with wandering round
about his entourage and in the company of his servants. We did not reach
his immediate presence.
Once while my father was away in the Himalayas, that old bogey of the
British Government, the Russian invasion, came to be a subject of
agitated conversation among the people. Some well-meaning lady friend
had enlarged on the impending danger to my mother with all the
circumstance of a prolific imagination. How could a body tell from
which of the Tibetan passes the Russian host might suddenly flash forth
like a baleful comet?
My mother was seriously alarmed. Possibly the other members of the
family did not share her misgivings; so, despairing of grown-up
sympathy, she sought my boyish support. "Won't you write to your father
about the Russians?" she asked.
That letter, carrying the tidings of my mother's anxieties, was my first
one to my father. I did not know how to begin or end a letter, or
anything at all about it. I went to Mahananda, the estate munshi.[19]
The resulting style of address was doubtless correct enough, but the
sentiments could not have escaped the musty flavour inseparable from
literature emanating from an estate office.
I got a reply to my letter. My father asked me not to be afraid; if the
Russians came he would drive them away himself. This confident assurance
did not seem to have the effect of relieving my mother's fears, but it
served to free me from all timidity as regards my father. After that I
wanted to write to him every day and pestered Mahananda accordingly.
Unable to withstand my importunity he would make out drafts for me to
copy. But I did not know that there was the postage to be paid for. I
had an idea that letters placed in Mahananda's hands got to their
destination without any need for further worry. It is hardly necessary
to mention that, Mahananda being considerably older than myself, these
letters never reached the Himalayan hill-tops.
When, after his long absences, my father came home even for a few days,
the whole house seemed filled with the weight of his presence. We would
see our elders at certain hours, formally robed in their _chogas_,
passing to his rooms with restrained gait and sobered mien, casting away
any _pan_[20] they might have been chewing. Everyone seemed on the
alert. To make sure of nothing going wrong, my mother would superintend
the cooking herself. The old mace-bearer, Kinu, with his white livery
and crested turban, on guard at my father's door, would warn us not to
be boisterous in the verandah in front of his rooms during his midday
siesta. We had to walk past quietly, talking in whispers, and dared not
even take a peep inside.
On one occasion my father came home to invest the three of us with the
sacred thread. With the help of Pandit Vedantavagish he had collected
the old Vedic rites for the purpose. For days together we were taught to
chant in correct accents the selections from the Upanishads, arranged by
my father under the name of "Brahma Dharma," seated in the prayer hall
with Becharam Babu. Finally, with shaven heads and gold rings in our
ears, we three budding Brahmins went into a three-days' retreat in a
portion of the third storey.
It was great fun. The earrings gave us a good handle to pull each
other's ears with. We found a little drum lying in one of the rooms;
taking this we would stand out in the verandah, and, when we caught
sight of any servant passing alone in the storey below, we would rap a
tattoo on it. This would make the man look up, only to beat a hasty
retreat the next moment with averted eyes.[21] In short we cannot claim
that these days of our retirement were passed in ascetic meditation.
I am however persuaded that boys like ourselves could not have been rare
in the hermitages of old. And if some ancient document has it that the
ten or twelve-year old Saradwata or Sarngarava[22] is spending the whole
of the days of his boyhood offering oblations and chanting _mantras_, we
are not compelled to put unquestioning faith in the statement; because
the book of Boy Nature is even older and also more authentic.
After we had attained full brahminhood I became very keen on repeating
the _gayatri_.[23] I would meditate on it with great concentration. It
is hardly a text the full meaning of which I could have grasped at that
age. I well remember what efforts I made to extend the range of my
consciousness with the help of the initial invocation of "Earth,
firmament and heaven." How I felt or thought it is difficult to express
clearly, but this much is certain that to be clear about the meaning of
words is not the most important function of the human understanding.
The main object of teaching is not to explain meanings, but to knock at
the door of the mind. If any boy is asked to give an account of what is
awakened in him at such knocking, he will probably say something very
silly. For what happens within is much bigger than what he can express
in words. Those who pin their faith on University examinations as a test
of all educational results take no account of this fact.
I can recollect many things which I did not understand, but which
stirred me deeply. Once, on the roof terrace of our river-side villa, my
eldest brother, at the sudden gathering of clouds, repeated aloud some
stanzas from Kalidas's "Cloud Messenger." I could not, nor had I the
need to, understand a word of the Sanskrit. His ecstatic declamation of
the sonorous rhythm was enough for me.
Then, again, before I could properly understand English, a profusely
illustrated edition of "The Old Curiosity Shop" fell into my hands. I
went through the whole of it, though at least nine-tenths of the words
were unknown to me. Yet, with the vague ideas I conjured up from the
rest, I spun out a variously coloured thread on which to string the
illustrations. Any university examiner would have given me a great big
zero, but the reading of the book had not proved for me quite so empty
as all that.
Another time I had accompanied my father on a trip on the Ganges in his
houseboat. Among the books he had with him was an old Fort William
edition of Jayadeva's _Gita Govinda_. It was in the Bengali character.
The verses were not printed in separate lines, but ran on like prose. I
did not then know anything of Sanskrit, yet because of my knowledge of
Bengali many of the words were familiar. I cannot tell how often I read
that _Gita Govinda_. I can well remember this line:
The night that was passed in the lonely forest cottage.
It spread an atmosphere of vague beauty over my mind. That one Sanskrit
word, Nibhrita-nikunja-griham, meaning "the lonely forest cottage" was
quite enough for me.
I had to discover for myself the intricate metre of Jayadeva, because
its divisions were lost in the clumsy prose form of the book. And this
discovery gave me very great delight. Of course I did not fully
comprehend Jayadeva's meaning. It would hardly be correct to aver that I
had got it even partly. But the sound of the words and the lilt of the
metre filled my mind with pictures of wonderful beauty, which impelled
me to copy out the whole of the book for my own use.
The same thing happened, when I was a little older, with a verse from
Kalidas's "Birth of the War God." The verse moved me greatly, though the
only words of which I gathered the sense, were "the breeze carrying the
spray-mist of the falling waters of the sacred Mandakini and shaking the
deodar leaves." These left me pining to taste the beauties of the whole.
When, later, a Pandit explained to me that in the next two lines the
breeze went on "splitting the feathers of the peacock plume on the head
of the eager deer-hunter," the thinness of this last conceit
disappointed me. I was much better off when I had relied only upon my
imagination to complete the verse.
Whoever goes back to his early childhood will agree that his greatest
gains were not in proportion to the completeness of his understanding.
Our Kathakas[24] I know this truth well. So their narratives always have
a good proportion of ear-filling Sanskrit words and abstruse remarks not
calculated to be fully understood by their simple hearers, but only to
be suggestive.
The value of such suggestion is by no means to be despised by those who
measure education in terms of material gains and losses. These insist on
trying to sum up the account and find out exactly how much of the lesson
imparted can be rendered up. But children, and those who are not
over-educated, dwell in that primal paradise where men can come to know
without fully comprehending each step. And only when that paradise is
lost comes the evil day when everything needs must be understood. The
road which leads to knowledge, without going through the dreary process
of understanding, that is the royal road. If that be barred, though the
world's marketing may yet go on as usual, the open sea and the mountain
top cease to be possible of access.
So, as I was saying, though at that age I could not realise the full
meaning of the _Gayatri_, there was something in me which could do
without a complete understanding. I am reminded of a day when, as I was
seated on the cement floor in a corner of our schoolroom meditating on
the text, my eyes overflowed with tears. Why those tears came I knew
not; and to a strict cross-questioner I would probably have given some
explanation having nothing to do with the _Gayatri_. The fact of the
matter is that what is going on in the inner recesses of consciousness
is not always known to the dweller on the surface.
(14) _A journey with my Father_
My shaven head after the sacred thread ceremony caused me one great
anxiety. However partial Eurasian lads may be to things appertaining to
the Cow, their reverence for the Brahmin[25] is notoriously lacking. So
that, apart from other missiles, our shaven heads were sure to be pelted
with jeers. While I was worrying over this possibility I was one day
summoned upstairs to my father. How would I like to go with him to the
Himalayas, I was asked. Away from the Bengal Academy and off to the
Himalayas! Would I like it? O that I could have rent the skies with a
shout, that might have given some idea of the How!
On the day of our leaving home my father, as was his habit, assembled
the whole family in the prayer hall for divine service. After I had
taken the dust of the feet of my elders I got into the carriage with my
father. This was the first time in my life that I had a full suit of
clothes made for me. My father himself had selected the pattern and
colour. A gold embroidered velvet cap completed my costume. This I
carried in my hand, being assailed with misgivings as to its effect in
juxtaposition to my hairless head. As I got into the carriage my father
insisted on my wearing it, so I had to put it on. Every time he looked
another way I took it off. Every time I caught his eye it had to resume
its proper place.
My father was very particular in all his arrangements and orderings. He
disliked leaving things vague or undetermined and never allowed
slovenliness or makeshifts. He had a well-defined code to regulate his
relations with others and theirs with him. In this he was different from
the generality of his countrymen. With the rest of us a little
carelessness this way or that did not signify; so in our dealings with
him we had to be anxiously careful. It was not so much the little less
or more that he objected to as the failure to be up to the standard.
My father had also a way of picturing to himself every detail of what he
wanted done. On the occasion of any ceremonial gathering, at which he
could not be present, he would think out and assign the place for each
thing, the duty for each member of the family, the seat for each guest;
nothing would escape him. After it was all over he would ask each one
for a separate account and thus gain a complete impression of the whole
for himself. So, while I was with him on his travels, though nothing
would induce him to put obstacles in the way of my amusing myself as I
pleased, he left no loophole in the strict rules of conduct which he
prescribed for me in other respects.
Our first halt was to be for a few days at Bolpur. Satya had been there
a short time before with his parents. No self-respecting nineteenth
century infant would have credited the account of his travels which he
gave us on his return. But we were different, and had had no opportunity
of learning to determine the line between the possible and the
impossible. Our Mahabharata and Ramayana gave us no clue to it. Nor had
we then any children's illustrated books to guide us in the way a child
should go. All the hard and fast laws which govern the world we learnt
by knocking up against them.
Satya had told us that, unless one was very very expert, getting into a
railway carriage was a terribly dangerous affair--the least slip, and
it was all up. Then, again, a fellow had to hold on to his seat with all
his might, otherwise the jolt at starting was so tremendous there was no
telling where one would get thrown off to. So when we got to the railway
station I was all a-quiver. So easily did we get into our compartment,
however, that I felt sure the worst was yet to come. And when, at
length, we made an absurdly smooth start, without any semblance of
adventure, I felt woefully disappointed.
The train sped on; the broad fields with their blue-green border trees,
and the villages nestling in their shade flew past in a stream of
pictures which melted away like a flood of mirages. It was evening when
we reached Bolpur. As I got into the palanquin I closed my eyes. I
wanted to preserve the whole of the wonderful vision to be unfolded
before my waking eyes in the morning light. The freshness of the
experience would be spoilt, I feared, by incomplete glimpses caught in
the vagueness of the dusk.
When I woke at dawn my heart was thrilling tremulously as I stepped
outside. My predecessor had told me that Bolpur had one feature which
was to be found nowhere else in the world. This was the path leading
from the main buildings to the servants' quarters which, though not
covered over in any way, did not allow a ray of the sun or a drop of
rain to touch anybody passing along it. I started to hunt for this
wonderful path, but the reader will perhaps not wonder at my failure to
find it to this day.
Town bred as I was, I had never seen a rice-field, and I had a charming
portrait of the cowherd boy, of whom we had read, pictured on the canvas
of my imagination. I had heard from Satya that the Bolpur house was
surrounded by fields of ripening rice, and that playing in these with
cowherd boys was an everyday affair, of which the plucking, cooking and
eating of the rice was the crowning feature. I eagerly looked about me.
But where, oh, where was the rice-field on all that barren heath?
Cowherd boys there might have been somewhere about, yet how to
distinguish them from any other boys, that was the question!
However it did not take me long to get over what I could not see,--what
I did see was quite enough. There was no servant rule here, and the only
ring which encircled me was the blue of the horizon which the presiding
goddess of these solitudes had drawn round them. Within this I was free
to move about as I chose.
Though I was yet a mere child my father did not place any restriction on
my wanderings. In the hollows of the sandy soil the rainwater had
ploughed deep furrows, carving out miniature mountain ranges full of red
gravel and pebbles of various shapes through which ran tiny streams,
revealing the geography of Lilliput. From this region I would gather in
the lap of my tunic many curious pieces of stone and take the collection
to my father. He never made light of my labours. On the contrary he
waxed enthusiastic.
"How wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Wherever did you get all these?"
"There are many many more, thousands and thousands!" I burst out. "I
could bring as many every day."
"That _would_ be nice!" he replied. "Why not decorate my little hill
with them?"
An attempt had been made to dig a tank in the garden, but the subsoil
water proving too low, it had been abandoned, unfinished, with the
excavated earth left piled up into a hillock. On the top of this height
my father used to sit for his morning prayer, and as he sat the sun
would rise at the edge of the undulating expanse which stretched away to
the eastern horizon in front of him. This was the hill he asked me to
decorate.
I was very troubled, on leaving Bolpur, that I could not carry away with
me my store of stones. It is still difficult for me to realise that I
have no absolute claim to keep up a close relationship with things,
merely because I have gathered them together. If my fate had granted me
the prayer, which I had pressed with such insistence, and undertaken
that I should carry this load of stones about with me for ever, then I
should scarcely have had the hardihood to laugh at it to-day.
In one of the ravines I came upon a hollow full of spring water which
overflowed as a little rivulet, where sported tiny fish battling their
way up the current.
"I've found such a lovely spring," I told my father. "Couldn't we get
our bathing and drinking water from there?"
"The very thing," he agreed, sharing my rapture, and gave orders for our
water supply to be drawn from that spring.
I was never tired of roaming about among those miniature hills and dales
in hopes of lighting on something never known before. I was the
Livingstone of this undiscovered land which looked as if seen through
the wrong end of a telescope. Everything there, the dwarf date palms,
the scrubby wild plums and the stunted jambolans, was in keeping with
the miniature mountain ranges, the little rivulet and the tiny fish I
had discovered.
[Illustration: Singing to My Father]
Probably in order to teach me to be careful my father placed a little
small change in my charge and required me to keep an account of it. He
also entrusted me with the duty of winding his valuable gold watch for
him. He overlooked the risk of damage in his desire to train me to a
sense of responsibility. When we went out together for our morning walk
he would ask me to give alms to any beggars we came across. But I never
could render him a proper account at the end of it. One day my balance
was larger than the account warranted.
"I really must make you my cashier," observed my father. "Money seems to
have a way of growing in your hands!"
That watch of his I wound up with such indefatigable zeal that it had
very soon to be sent to the watchmaker's in Calcutta.
I am reminded of the time when, later in life, I was appointed to manage
the estate and had to lay before my father, owing to his failing
eye-sight, a statement of accounts on the second or third of every
month. I had first to read out the totals under each head, and if he had
any doubts on any point he would ask for the details. If I made any
attempt to slur over or keep out of sight any item which I feared he
would not like, it was sure to come out. So these first few days of the
month were very anxious ones for me.
As I have said, my father had the habit of keeping everything clearly
before his mind,--whether figures of accounts, or ceremonial
arrangements, or additions or alterations to property. He had never seen
the new prayer hall built at Bolpur, and yet he was familiar with every
detail of it from questioning those who came to see him after a visit to
Bolpur. He had an extraordinary memory, and when once he got hold of a
fact it never escaped him.
My father had marked his favourite verses in his copy of the
_Bhagavadgita_. He asked me to copy these out, with their translation,
for him. At home, I had been a boy of no account, but here, when these
important functions were entrusted to me, I felt the glory of the
situation.
By this time I was rid of my blue manuscript book and had got hold of a
bound volume of one of Lett's diaries. I now saw to it that my poetising
should not lack any of the dignity of outward circumstance. It was not
only a case of writing poems, but of holding myself forth as a poet
before my own imagination. So when I wrote poetry at Bolpur I loved to
do it sprawling under a young coconut palm. This seemed to me the true
poetic way. Resting thus on the hard unturfed gravel in the burning
heat of the day I composed a martial ballad on the "Defeat of King
Prithwi." In spite of the superabundance of its martial spirit, it could
not escape an early death. That bound volume of Lett's diary has now
followed the way of its elder sister, the blue manuscript book, leaving
no address behind.
We left Bolpur and making short halts on the way at Sahebganj, Dinapore,
Allahabad and Cawnpore we stopped at last at Amritsar.
An incident on the way remains engraved on my memory. The train had
stopped at some big station. The ticket examiner came and punched our
tickets. He looked at me curiously as if he had some doubt which he did
not care to express. He went off and came back with a companion. Both of
them fidgetted about for a time near the door of our compartment and
then again retired. At last came the station master himself. He looked
at my half-ticket and then asked:
"Is not the boy over twelve?"
"No," said my father.
I was then only eleven, but looked older than my age.
"You must pay the full fare for him," said the station master.
My father's eyes flashed as, without a word, he took out a currency note
from his box and handed it to the station master. When they brought my
father his change he flung it disdainfully back at them, while the
station master stood abashed at this exposure of the meanness of his
implied doubt.
The golden temple of Amritsar comes back to me like a dream. Many a
morning have I accompanied my father to this _Gurudarbar_ of the Sikhs
in the middle of the lake. There the sacred chanting resounds
continually. My father, seated amidst the throng of worshippers, would
sometimes add his voice to the hymn of praise, and finding a stranger
joining in their devotions they would wax enthusiastically cordial, and
we would return loaded with the sanctified offerings of sugar crystals
and other sweets.
One day my father invited one of the chanting choir to our place and got
him to sing us some of their sacred songs. The man went away probably
more than satisfied with the reward he received. The result was that we
had to take stern measures of self-defence,--such an insistent army of
singers invaded us. When they found our house impregnable, the musicians
began to waylay us in the streets. And as we went out for our walk in
the morning, every now and then would appear a _Tambura_,[26] slung over
a shoulder, at which we felt like game birds at the sight of the muzzle
of the hunter's gun. Indeed, so wary did we become that the twang of the
_Tambura_, from a distance, scared us away and utterly failed to bag us.
When evening fell, my father would sit out in the verandah facing the
garden. I would then be summoned to sing to him. The moon has risen; its
beams, passing though the trees, have fallen on the verandah floor; I am
singing in the _Behaga_ mode:
O Companion in the darkest passage of life....
My father with bowed head and clasped hands is intently listening. I can
recall this evening scene even now.
I have told of my father's amusement on hearing from Srikantha Babu of
my maiden attempt at a devotional poem. I am reminded how, later, I had
my recompense. On the occasion of one of our _Magh_ festivals several of
the hymns were of my composition. One of them was
"The eye sees thee not, who art the pupil of every eye...."
My father was then bed-ridden at Chinsurah. He sent for me and my
brother Jyoti. He asked my brother to accompany me on the harmonium and
got me to sing all my hymns one after the other,--some of them I had to
sing twice over. When I had finished he said:
"If the king of the country had known the language and could appreciate
its literature, he would doubtless have rewarded the poet. Since that is
not so, I suppose I must do it." With which he handed me a cheque.
My father had brought with him some volumes of the Peter Parley series
from which to teach me. He selected the life of Benjamin Franklin to
begin with. He thought it would read like a story book and be both
entertaining and instructive. But he found out his mistake soon after we
began it. Benjamin Franklin was much too business-like a person. The
narrowness of his calculated morality disgusted my father. In some cases
he would get so impatient at the worldly prudence of Franklin that he
could not help using strong words of denunciation. Before this I had
nothing to do with Sanskrit beyond getting some rules of grammar by
rote. My father started me on the second Sanskrit reader at one bound,
leaving me to learn the declensions as we went on. The advance I had
made in Bengali[27] stood me in good stead. My father also encouraged me
to try Sanskrit composition from the very outset. With the vocabulary
acquired from my Sanskrit reader I built up grandiose compound words
with a profuse sprinkling of sonorous 'm's and 'n's making altogether a
most diabolical medley of the language of the gods. But my father never
scoffed at my temerity.
Then there were the readings from Proctor's Popular Astronomy which my
father explained to me in easy language and which I then rendered into
Bengali.
Among the books which my father had brought for his own use, my
attention would be mostly attracted by a ten or twelve volume edition of
Gibbon's Rome. They looked remarkably dry. "Being a boy," I thought, "I
am helpless and read many books because I have to. But why should a
grown up person, who need not read unless he pleases, bother himself
so?"
(15) _At the Himalayas_
We stayed about a month in Amritsar, and, towards the middle of April,
started for the Dalhousie Hills. The last few days at Amritsar seemed as
if they would never pass, the call of the Himalayas was so strong upon
me.
The terraced hill sides, as we went up in a _jhampan_, were all aflame
with the beauty of the flowering spring crops. Every morning we would
make a start after our bread and milk, and before sunset take shelter
for the night in the next staging bungalow. My eyes had no rest the
livelong day, so great was my fear lest anything should escape them.
Wherever, at a turn of the road into a gorge, the great forest trees
were found clustering closer, and from underneath their shade a little
waterfall trickling out, like a little daughter of the hermitage playing
at the feet of hoary sages wrapt in meditation, babbling its way over
the black moss-covered rocks, there the _jhampan_ bearers would put down
their burden, and take a rest. Why, oh why, had we to leave such spots
behind, cried my thirsting heart, why could we not stay on there for
ever?
This is the great advantage of the first vision: the mind is not then
aware that there are many more such to come. When this comes to be known
to that calculating organ it promptly tries to make a saving in its
expenditure of attention. It is only when it believes something to be
rare that the mind ceases to be miserly in assigning values. So in the
streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine myself a foreigner, and only
then do I discover how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its
full value in attention is not paid. It is the hunger to really see
which drives people to travel to strange places.
My father left his little cash-box in my charge. He had no reason to
imagine that I was the fittest custodian of the considerable sums he
kept in it for use on the way. He would certainly have felt safer with
it in the hands of Kishori, his attendant. So I can only suppose he
wanted to train me to the responsibility. One day as we reached the
staging bungalow, I forgot to make it over to him and left it lying on a
table. This earned me a reprimand.
Every time we got down at the end of a stage, my father had chairs
placed for us outside the bungalow and there we sat. As dusk came on the
stars blazed out wonderfully through the clear mountain atmosphere, and
my father showed me the constellations or treated me to an astronomical
discourse.
The house we had taken at Bakrota was on the highest hill-top. Though it
was nearing May it was still bitterly cold there, so much so that on the
shady side of the hill the winter frosts had not yet melted.
My father was not at all nervous about allowing me to wander about
freely even here. Some way below our house there stretched a spur
thickly wooded with Deodars. Into this wilderness I would venture alone
with my iron-spiked staff. These lordly forest trees, with their huge
shadows, towering there like so many giants--what immense lives had
they lived through the centuries! And yet this boy of only the other day
was crawling round about their trunks unchallenged. I seemed to feel a
presence, the moment I stepped into their shade, as of the solid
coolness of some old-world saurian, and the checkered light and shade on
the leafy mould seemed like its scales.
My room was at one end of the house. Lying on my bed I could see,
through the uncurtained windows, the distant snowy peaks shimmering
dimly in the starlight. Sometimes, at what hour I could not make out, I,
half awakened, would see my father, wrapped in a red shawl, with a
lighted lamp in his hand, softly passing by to the glazed verandah where
he sat at his devotions. After one more sleep I would find him at my
bedside, rousing me with a push, before yet the darkness of night had
passed. This was my appointed hour for memorising Sanscrit declensions.
What an excruciatingly wintry awakening from the caressing warmth of my
blankets!
By the time the sun rose, my father, after his prayers, finished with me
our morning milk, and then, I standing at his side, he would once more
hold communion with God, chanting the Upanishads.
Then we would go out for a walk. But how should I keep pace with him?
Many an older person could not! So, after a while, I would give it up
and scramble back home through some short cut up the mountain side.
After my father's return I had an hour of English lessons. After ten
o'clock came the bath in icy-cold water; it was no use asking the
servants to temper it with even a jugful of hot water without my
father's permission. To give me courage my father would tell of the
unbearably freezing baths he had himself been through in his younger
days.
Another penance was the drinking of milk. My father was very fond of
milk and could take quantities of it. But whether it was a failure to
inherit this capacity, or that the unfavourable environment of which I
have told proved the stronger, my appetite for milk was grievously
wanting. Unfortunately we used to have our milk together. So I had to
throw myself on the mercy of the servants; and to their human kindness
(or frailty) I was indebted for my goblet being thenceforth more than
half full of foam.
After our midday meal lessons began again. But this was more than flesh
and blood could stand. My outraged morning sleep _would_ have its
revenge and I would be toppling over with uncontrollable drowsiness.
Nevertheless, no sooner did my father take pity on my plight and let me
off, than my sleepiness was off likewise. Then ho! for the mountains.
Staff in hand I would often wander away from one peak to another, but my
father did not object. To the end of his life, I have observed, he never
stood in the way of our independence. Many a time have I said or done
things repugnant alike to his taste and his judgment; with a word he
could have stopped me; but he preferred to wait till the prompting to
refrain came from within. A passive acceptance by us of the correct and
the proper did not satisfy him; he wanted us to love truth with our
whole hearts; he knew that mere acquiescence without love is empty. He
also knew that truth, if strayed from, can be found again, but a forced
or blind acceptance of it from the outside effectually bars the way in.
[Illustration: The Himalayas]
In my early youth I had conceived a fancy to journey along the Grand
Trunk Road, right up to Peshawar, in a bullock cart. No one else
supported the scheme, and doubtless there was much to be urged against
it as a practical proposition. But when I discoursed on it to my father
he was sure it was a splendid idea--travelling by railroad was not worth
the name! With which observation he proceeded to recount to me his own
adventurous wanderings on foot and horseback. Of any chance of
discomfort or peril he had not a word to say.
Another time, when I had just been appointed Secretary of the Adi Brahma
Samaj, I went over to my father, at his Park Street residence, and
informed him that I did not approve of the practice of only Brahmins
conducting divine service to the exclusion of other castes. He
unhesitatingly gave me permission to correct this if I could. When I got
the authority I found I lacked the power. I was able to discover
imperfections but could not create perfection! Where were the men? Where
was the strength in me to attract the right man? Had I the means to
build in the place of what I might break? Till the right man comes any
form is better than none--this, I felt, must have been my father's view
of the existing order. But he did not for a moment try to discourage me
by pointing out the difficulties.
As he allowed me to wander about the mountains at my will, so in the
quest for truth he left me free to select my path. He was not deterred
by the danger of my making mistakes, he was not alarmed at the prospect
of my encountering sorrow. He held up a standard, not a disciplinary
rod.
I would often talk to my father of home. Whenever I got a letter from
anyone at home I hastened to show it to him. I verily believe I was
thus the means of giving him many a picture he could have got from none
else. My father also let me read letters to him from my elder brothers.
This was his way of teaching me how I ought to write to him; for he by
no means underrated the importance of outward forms and ceremonial.
I am reminded of how in one of my second brother's letters he was
complaining in somewhat sanscritised phraseology of being worked to
death tied by the neck to his post of duty. My father asked me to
explain the sentiment. I did it in my way, but he thought a different
explanation would fit better. My overweening conceit made me stick to my
guns and argue the point with him at length. Another would have shut me
up with a snub, but my father patiently heard me out and took pains to
justify his view to me.
My father would sometimes tell me funny stories. He had many an anecdote
of the gilded youth of his time. There were some exquisites for whose
delicate skins the embroidered borders of even Dacca muslins were too
coarse, so that to wear muslins with the border torn off became, for a
time, the tip-top thing to do.
I was also highly amused to hear from my father for the first time the
story of the milkman who was suspected of watering his milk, and the
more men one of his customers detailed to look after his milking the
bluer the fluid became, till, at last, when the customer himself
interviewed him and asked for an explanation, the milkman avowed that if
more superintendents had to be satisfied it would only make the milk fit
to breed fish!
After I had thus spent a few months with him my father sent me back home
with his attendant Kishori.