 Section number 26 of glimpses of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore. This lip of box recording is in the public domain. Pattisar. 13th August 1893. Coming through these beels. Footnote 1. Translate this note. Sometimes a stream passing through the flat Bengal country encounters a stretch of low land and spreads out into a sheet of water called a beel of indefinite extent. Ranging from a large pool in the dry season to a shoreless expanse during the rains. Villages consisting of a cluster of huts built on mounds stand out here and there like islands and boats or round earthen vessels are the only means of getting about from village to village. Where the waters cover cultivated tracks the rice grows through often from considerable depths giving to the boats sailing over them the curious appearance of gliding over a cornfield. So clear is the water. Elsewhere these beels have a peculiar flora and fauna water lilies and irises and various waterfowl. As a result they resemble neither a marsh nor a lake but have a distinct character of their own. End of footnote. 2 kilogram. An idea took shape in my mind. Not that the thought was new but sometimes old idea strike one with new force. The water loses its beauty when it sees us to be defined by banks and spreads out into a monotonous vagueness. In the case of language meter serves for banks and gives form and beauty and character. Just as the banks give each river a distinct personality so does rhythm make each poem an individual creation. Pros is like the featureless impersonal beel. Again the waters of the river have movement and progress. Those of the beel engulf the country by expanse alone. So in order to give language power a narrow bondage of meter becomes necessary. Otherwise it spreads and spreads but cannot advance. The country people call these beels dumb waters. They have no language. No self-expression. The river ceaselessly babbles. So the words of the poem sing. They are not dumb words. Thus bondage creates beauty of form, motion and music. Bounds make not only for beauty but power. Poetry gives itself up to the control of meter. Not led by blind habit but because it does finds the joy of motion. There are foolish persons who think that meter is a species of verbal gymnastics or ledger domain of which the object is to win the admiration of the crowd. That is not so. Meter is born as all beauty is born the universe through. The current set up within well-defined balance gives metrical worse power to move the minds of men as vague and indefinite prose cannot. This idea became clear to me as I glided on from river to beel and beel to river. Patissier, 26th, Stravin, August 1893. For some time it has struck me that man is a rough hue and woman a finished product. There is an unbroken consistency in the manners, customs, speech and adornment of women. And the reason is that for ages nature has assigned to her the same definite role and has been adapting her to it. No cataclysm, no political revolution, no alteration of social ideal has yet diverted women from her particular functions nor destroyed their interrelations. She has loved, tended and caressed and done nothing else and the exquisite skill which she has acquired in these permeates all her being and doing. Her disposition and action have become inseparably one like the flower and its scent. She has therefore no doubts or hesitations. For the character of man has stole many hollows and protuberances. Each of the varied circumstances and forces which have contributed to his making has left its mark upon him. That is why the features of one will display an indefinite spread of forehead, of another and irresponsible prominence of nose, of a third and unaccountable hardness about the jaws. Had man with the benefit of continuity and uniformity of purpose, nature must have succeeded in elaborating a definite mold for him, enabling him to function simply and naturally without such strenuous effort. He would not have so complicated a coat of behavior and he would be less liable to deviate from the normal and disturbed by outside influences. Women was cast in the mold of mother. Man has no such primal design to go by and that is why he has been unable to rise to an equal perfection of beauty. But as sir 19th February 1894, we have two elephants which come to graze on this bank of the river. They greatly interest me to give the ground a few taps with one foot and then taking hold of the grass with the end of their trunks, wrench off an enormous piece of turf, roots, soil and all. This they go on swinging till all the earth leaves the roots. They then put it into their mouths and eat it up. Sometimes the women takes them to drop the dust into their trunks and then with a snort they squirt it all over their bodies. This is their elephantine toilet. I love to look on these overgrown bees with their wasp bodies, their immense strength, their ungainly proportions, their docile homelessness, their very size and clumsiness makes me feel like a kind of tenderness for them. Their unwieldy bulk has something infantile about it. Moreover, they have large hearts. When they get wild, they are furious, but when they calm down, they are at peace itself. The uncouthness which goes with bigness does not repel. It rather attracts. But as sir 27th February 1894, the skies every now and then overcast and again clears up. Subtle little puffs of wind make the boat lazily creak and groan in all its seams. That's the day wears on. It is now past one o'clock. Steeped in this countryside noon day with its different sounds, the quacking of ducks, the swirl of passing boats, bathers splashing the clothes they wash, the distance shouts from drawers taking cattle across the board. It is difficult even to imagine their chair and table monotonously the small routine life of Calcutta. Calcutta is as ponderously proper as a government office. Each of its days comes forth like coin from a mint clear cut and glittering. Ah, those dreary, deadly days so precisely equal in weight so decently respectable. Here I am quit of the demands of my circle and to not feel like a wound up machine each day is my own. And with leisure in my thoughts I walk the fields unfettered by bounds of space for time. The evening gradually deepens over earth and sky and water as with bowed head I stroll along. But it sir, 22nd March 1894. As I was sitting at the window of the boat looking out on the river I saw all of a sudden an odd looking bird making its way through the water to the opposite bank followed by a great commotion. I found it was a domestic foul which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley by jumping overboard and was now trying frantically to win a cross. It had almost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closed and it was brought back in triumph gripped by the neck. I told the cook I would not have any meat for dinner. I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself. The wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, customer tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow careless. Its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us. In fact anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank. How official is our apprehension of sin? I feel that the highest commandment is that of sympathy for all sentient beings. Love is the foundation for all religion. The other day I read in one of the English papers that fifty thousand pounds with animal carcasses had been sent to some army station in Africa. But the meat being found to have gone bad in arrival, the consignment was returned and was eventually auctioned off for a few pounds at Portsmouth. What a shocking waste of life. What callousness to its true worth. How many living creatures are sacrificed only to graze the dishes at a dinner party? A large proportion of which will leave the table untouched. So long as we are unconscious of our cruelty we may not be to blame. But if, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelings simply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult all that is good in us. I have decided to try vegetarian diet. Parisar 28th March 1884. It is getting rather warm here, but I do not mind the heat of the sun much. The heated wind whistles on its way, now and then pauses in a whirl, then dances away twirling its skirt of dust and sand and dry leaves and twigs. This morning, however, it was quite cold, almost like a cold weather morning. In fact, I did not feel over enthusiastic for my bath. It is so difficult to account for what veritably happens in this big thing called nature. Some obscure cause turns up in some unknown corner, and all of a sudden things look completely different. The mind of man works in just the same mysterious fashion as outside nature. So it struck me yesterday. A wondrous alchemy is being wrought in artery, vein, and nerve in brain and marrow. The bloodstream brushes on, the nerve strings vibrate, the heart muscles rises and falls, and the seasons in man's being change from one to another. What kind of breezes will blow next? When and from what quarter? Of that we know nothing. One day I am sure I shall get along splendidly. I feel strong enough to leap over all the obstructing sorrows and trials of the world. And as if I had a printed program for the rest of my life tucked safely away in my pocket, I am at ease. The next day there is a nasty wind, sprung up from some unknown inferno. The aspect of the sky is threatening, and I begin to doubt whether I shall ever weather the storm. Merely because something has gone wrong in some blood vessel or nerve fiber, all my strength and intelligence seem to fail me. This mystery within frightens me. It makes me diffident about talking of what I shall or shall not do. Why was this tacked on to me, this immense mystery which I can neither understand nor control? I know not where it may lead me or I lead it. I cannot see what is happening, nor am I consulted about what is going to happen, and yet I have to keep up an appearance of mastery and pretend to be the doer. I feel like a living piano forte with a vast complication of machinery and virus inside, but with no means of telling who the player is, and with only a guess as to why the player plays at all. I can only know what is being played, whether the mode is merry or moonful. When the notes are sharp or flat, the tune in or out of time, the key high pitched or low. But do I really know even that? 30th March 1894. Sometimes when I realize a life's journey is long and that the sorrows to be encountered are many and inevitable, a supreme effort is required to keep up my strength of mind. Some evenings as I sit alone staring at the flame of the lamp on the table, I while I will live as a brave man should, unmoved, silent, uncomplaining. The resolve puffs me up and for the moment I mistake myself for a very very brave person indeed, but as soon as the thorns in the road worry my feet, I write and begin to feel serious misgivings as to the future. The path of life again seems long, and my strength inadequate. But this last conclusion cannot be the true one, for it is these petty thorns which are the most difficult to bear. The household of the mind is a thrifty one, and only so much is spent as is necessary. There is no squandering on trifles, and its weld of strength is saved up with miserly strictness to meet the really big calamities. So any amount of weeping and wailing over the lesser griefs fails to evoke a charitable response. But when sorrow is deep as there is no stint of effort, and the surface crust is pierced, and consolation wells up, and all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. Thus great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance. One side of man's nature has the desire for pleasure. There is another side which desires self-sacrifice. When the former meets with disappointment, the latter gains strength, and on its thus finding fuller scope a grand enthusiasm fills the soul. So while we are covered before petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood. And in these, therefore, there is a joy. It is not an empty paradox to say that there is joy in sorrow, just as, on the other hand, it is true that there is a dissatisfaction in pleasure. It is not difficult to understand why this should be so. End of section 26. Section number 27 of Glimpse of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore. This liberal box recording is in the public domain. Shalida, 24 June 1894. I have been only four days here, but having lost count of the hours, it seems such a long while. I feel that if I were to return to Kolkata today, I should find much of it changed, as if I alone had been standing still outside the current of time unconscious at the gradually changing position of the rest of the world. The fact is that here, away from Kolkata, I live in my own inner world, where the clocks do not keep ordinary time. Reduration is measured only by the intensity of the feelings, where, as the outside world does not count the minutes, moments change into hours and hours into moments. So it seems to me that the subdivisions of time and space are only mental illusions. Every atom is immeasurable and every moment in finite. There is a Persian story which I was greatly taken with when I read it as a boy. I think I understood even then, something of the underlying idea, though I was a mere child. To show the illusory character of time, Afakir puts a magic water into a tub and asks the king to take a dip. The king no sooner dipped his head in than he found himself in a strange country by the sea where he spent a good long time going through a variety of happenings and doings. He married, had children, his wife and children died, he lost all his wealth and as he brightened under his sufferings, he suddenly found himself back in the room surrounded by his courtiers. On his proceedings to revile the Fikir for his misfortunes, they said, But Sire, you have only just dipped your head in and raced it out of the water. The whole of our life with its pleasures and pains is in the same way enclosed in one moment of time. However long or intense we may feel it to be while it lasts, as soon as we have finished our dip in the tub of the world, we shall find how like a slight momentary dream the whole thing has been. Shalida, 9th August 1884. I saw a dead bird floating down the current today. The history of its death may be easily defined. It had a nest in some mango tree at the edge of a village. It returned home in the evening. Nestling there against soft feather companions and resting a varied little body in sleep. All of a sudden, in the night, the mighty Padmata slightly in her bed and the earth was swept away from the roots of the mango tree. The little creature bereft of its nest awoke just for a moment before it meant to sleep again forever. When I am in the presence of the awful mystery of all destructive nature, the difference between myself and the other living things seem trivial. In town, human society is to the fore and looms large. It is cruelly callous to the happiness and misery of other creatures as compared with its own. In Europe, also, man is so complex and so dominant that the animal is too merely an animal to him. To Indians, the idea of the transmigration of the soul from animal to man and man to animal does not seem strange and so from our scriptures pity for all sentient creatures has not been banished as a sentimental exaggeration. When I am in close touch with nature in the country, the Indian in me asserts itself and I cannot remain coldly indifferent to the abounding joy of life throbbing within the soft down-covered breast of a single tiny bird. Last night, a rushing sound in the water awoke me. A sudden boisterous disturbance of the river current. Probably the onslaught of a fresh jet. A thing that often happens at this season. One sweet on the planking of the boat become aware of a variety of forces that work beneath it. Slight tremors, little rockings, gentle heavens and sudden jerks all keep me in touch with the pulse of the flowing stream. There must have been some sudden excitement in the night which sent the current racing away. I rose and sat by the window. A hazy kind of light made the turbulent river look madder than ever. The sky was spotted with clouds. The reflection of a great big star quivered on the waters in a long streak like a burning gas of pain. Both banks were vague with the dimness of slumber and between them was this wild, sleepless unrest, running and running regardless of consequences. To watch a scene like this in the middle of the night makes one feel altogether a different person and the daylight life an illusion. Then again, this morning, that midnight world faded away into some dreamland and vanished into thin air. The two are so different yet both are true for man. The day world seems to me like European music. It's con cards and discords resolving into each other in a great progression of harmony. The night world like Indian music, pure, unfettered melody, grave and poignant. What if their contrasts have been so striking? Both move us. The principle of opposites is at the very root of creation which is divided between the rule of the king and the queen. Night and day, the one and the worried, the eternal and the evolving. We Indians are under the rule of night. We are immersed in eternal, the one. Our melodies are to be sung alone, to oneself. They take us out of the everyday world into a solitude aloof. European music is for the multitude and takes them along, dancing through the ups and downs of the joys and sorrows of men. Shalida, 13th August 1894 Whatever I truly think, truly feel, truly realize, its natural destiny is to find true expression. There is some force in me which continually works towards that end, but is not mine alone. It permeates the universe. When this universal force is manifested within an individual, it is beyond his control and act according to its own nature, and in surrendering our lives to its power is our greatest joy. It not only gives us expression, but also sensitiveness and love. This makes our feelings so fresh to us every time, so full of wonder. When my little daughter delights me, she merges into the original mystery of joy which is the universe, and my loving caresses are called forth like worship. I am sure that all our love is but worship of the great mystery, only we perform it unconsciously, otherwise it is meaningless. Like universal gravitation which governs large and small alike in the world of matter, this universal joy exerts its attraction throughout our inner world, and baffles our understanding when we see it in a partial view. The only rational explanation of why we find joy in man and nature is given in the Upanishad, for of joy are born all created things. Shalita 19th August 1894 The Vedanta seems to help many to free their minds from all doubt as to the universe and its first cause, but my doubts remain undispelled. It is true that the Vedanta is simpler than most other theories. The problem of creation and its creator is more complex than appears at first sight, but the Vedanta has certainly simplified it halfway, by cutting the guardian knot and leaving out creation altogether. There is only Brahma, and the rest of us merely imagine that we are. It is wonderful how the human mind should have found room for such a thought. It is still more wonderful to think that the idea is not so inconsistent as it sounds, and the real difficulty is, rather, to prove that anything does exist. Anyhow, when as now the moon is up and with half closed eyes I am stretched beneath it, on the upper deck, the soft breeze cooling my problem vexed head, then the earth, waters and sky around, the gentle rippling of the river, the casual wave favor passing along the tow pack, the occasional dinghy gliding by, the trees across the fields, wake in the moonlight, the sleepy village beyond, bounded by the dark shadows of its growth, verily seem an illusion of Maya, and yet they cling to and draw the mind and heart more truly than truth itself, which is abstraction, and it becomes impossible to realize what kind of salvation there can be in freeing oneself from them. End of section 27 Section number 28 of Glimpses of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Shazadpur 5th September 1894 I realize how hungry for space I have become and take my fill of it in these rooms where I hold my state as a sole monarch, with all doors and windows thrown open. Here the desire and power to write our mind as they are nowhere else. The stir of outside life comes into me in waves of overdure, and with its light and scent and sound stimulated my fancy in the story writing. The afternoons have a special enchantment of their own. The glare of the sun, the silence, the solitude, the bird cries, especially the coins of the crows, and the delightful restful leisure, these conspire to carry me away all together. Just such noondays seem to have gone to the making of the Arabian Nights in Damascus, Bokhara or Summercond, with their desert roadways, files of camels, wandering horsemen, crystal springs, welling up under the shade of feathery date-groves, their wilderness of roses, songs of nightingales, wines of Shiraz, their narrow bazaar pots with bright overhanging canopies, the men in loose robes and multicolored turbans, selling dates and nuts and melons, their palaces fragrant with incense, luxurious with king-cop-covered divans and bolsters by the windowside, their Zobaria, or Amina or Sophia with gaily decorated jacket, white trousers and gold embroidered slippers, a long nergilla pipe curled up at her feet with gorgeously liveried eunuchs on guard, and all the possible and impossible tales of human deeds and desires, and the laughter unveiling of that distant mysterious region. End of section 28 Section number 29 of Glimpses of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. On the way to Diga Pattiyaya 20th September 1894 Victories of standing in the flood water, they trunks wholly submerged, their branches and foliage bending over the waters, boats are tied up under shady grooves of mango and bow tree, and people bathe screened behind them, here and there are cottages stand out in the current, their inner quadrangles under water. As my boat rustles its way through standing crops, it now and then comes across what was a pool and is still to be distinguished by its clusters of water lilies and diver birds pursuing fish. The water has penetrated every possible place. I have never before seen such a complete defeat of the land. A little more in the water will be right inside the cottages and their occupants will have to put a much end to live on. The cows will die if they have to remain standing like this in the water up to their knees. All the snakes have been flooded out to their holes and they with their sundry, other homeless reptiles and insects will have to chum with man and take refuge on the tatch of his roof. The vegetation rotting in the water, refuse of all kinds floating about, naked children with shriveled limbs and enlarged spleens splashing everywhere, the long-suffering patient housewives exposed in their wet clothes to wind and rain, wading through their daily tasks with tucked-up skirts and overall a thick pall of mosquitoes hovering in the noxious atmosphere. The sight is hardly pleasing. Coals and fevers and rheumatism in every home, the malaria-stricken infants constantly crying, nothing can save them. How is it possible for men to live in such unlovely, unhealthy, squalid, neglected surroundings? The fact is we are so used to bear everything, hands down, the ravages of nature, the oppression of rulers, the pressure of our shastras to which we have not a word to say while they keep eternally grinding us down. End of section 29. Section number 30 of Glimpses of Bengal by Rabina Nathagore. This liberal arts recording is in the public domain. On the way to Bualia, 22nd September 1894. It feels strange to be reminded that only 32 autumns have come and gone in my life for my memory seems to have receded back into the dimness of time immemorial. And when my inner world is flooded with a light, as of an unclouded autumn morning, I feel I am sitting at the window of some magic palace, gazing entranced on a scene of distant reminiscence, soothed with soft breezes laden with the faint perfume of all the past. Goethon his deathbed wanted more light. If I have any desire left at all at such a time, it will be for more space as well for I dearly love both light and space. Many look down on Bengal as being only a flat country, but that is just what makes me revel in its scenery all the more. Its unobstructed sky is filled to the brim like an amethyst cup. With a descending twilight and peace of the evening and the golden skirt at the still, silent noonday spreads over the whole of it without let or hindrance. Where is there another such country for the eye to look on? The mind to take him. End of section 30. Section number 31 of Glimpse of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Kolkata, 5th October 1894. Tomorrow is the Durga festival. As I was going to Ess's yesterday, I noticed images being made in almost every big house on the way. It struck me that during these few days of pujas, old and young alike had become children. When we come to think of it, all preparation for enjoyment is really a playing with toys which are of no consequence in themselves. From outside it may appear wasteful, but can that be called futile, which raises such a wave of feeling through and through the country? Even the driest of worldly wise people are moved out of their self-centered interests by the rush of the pervading emotion. Thus, once every year there comes a period when all minds are in a melting mood, fit with the springing of love and affection and sympathy. The songs are welcome and farewell to the goddess, the meeting of loved ones, the strains of the festive pipes, the limpid sky and molten gold of autumn are all pots of one great pay-in of joy. Pure joy is the children's joy. They have the power of using any and every trivial thing to create their world of interest, and the ugliest doll is made beautiful with their imagination and lives with their life. He who can retain this faculty of enjoyment after he has grown up is indeed the true idealist. For him, things are not merely visible to the eye or audible to the ear, but they are also sensible to the heart, and their narrowness and imperfections are lost in the glad music which he himself supplies. Everyone cannot hope to be an idealist, but a whole people approaches near rest to this blissful state at such seasons of festivity. And then what may ordinarily appear to be a mere toy loses its limitations and becomes glorified with an ideal radiance. End of section 31 A portion of the picture remains darkly confused and uncertain. If, then, our best friends are only pieces of broken outline strung on a thread of imagination, do we really know anybody at all? Or does anybody know us except in the same disjointed fashion? But perhaps it is these very loopholes, allowing entrants to each other's imagination, which make for intimacy, otherwise, each one, secure in his inviolate individuality, would have been unapproachable to all but the dweller within. Our own self too, we know only in bits, and with these scraps of material, we have to shape the hero of our life story, likewise with the help of our imagination. Providence has, doubtless, deliberately omitted portions so that we may assist in our own creation. Bulpur 31st October 1894 The first of the North winds has begun to blow today, shiveringly. It looks as if there had been a visitation of the tax-gatherer in the unlucky grooves, everything beside itself, sighing, trembling, withering. The tired impassiveness of the noonday sunshine with its monotonous cooing of the dowse, in the dense shade of the mango tops, seems to overcast the drowsy watches of the day with a pang, as are some impending parting. The ticking of the clock on my table, and the pattering of the squirrels with scamper in and out of my room, are in harmony with all other midday sounds. It amuses me to watch these soft, gray and black striped, furry squirrels with their bushy tails, their twinkling bead-like eyes, their gentle yet busily practical demeanor. Everything eatable has to be put away in the wire-gauze cupboard in the corner, safe from these greedy creatures. So, sniffing with irrepressible eagerness, they come nosing round and round the cupboard, trying to find some hole for entrance. If any grain or crump has been dropped outside, they are sure to find it, and taking it between their forepaws, nibble away with great industry, turning it over and over to adjust it to their mouths. At the least movement of mine, up go their tails, over their backs and off they run, only to stop short half way, sit up on their tails on the door mat, scratching their ears with their hind paws, and then come back. Thus, little sounds continue all day, knowing teeth, scampering feet, and the tinkling of the china on the shelves. End of section 32. Section number 33 of Climbs is a Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore. This is the bevels recording as in the public domain. Shalida. 7th September, 1894. As I walk on the moon, light sands. s usually comes up for a business talk. He came last evening, and when silence fell upon me after the talk was over, I became aware of the eternal universe standing before me in the evening light. The trivial chatter of one person had been enough to obscure the presence of its all-pervading manifestation. As soon as the pattern of words came to an end, the piece of the stars descended and filled my heart to overflowing. I found my seat in one corner. We desassembled millions of shining orbs in the great mysterious conclave of being. I have to start out early in the evening so as to let my mind absorb the tranquility outside before S comes along with his jarring inquiries as to whether the milk has agreed with me and if I have finished going through the annual statement. How curiously plays RV between the eternal and the ephemeral? Any allusion to the affairs that the stomach sounds so hopelessly discordant when the mind is dwelling on the things of the spirit, and yet the soul and the stomach have been living together so long. The very spot on which the moonlight falls is my land and property, but the moonlight tells me that my Zamindari is an illusion, and my Zamindari tells me that this moonlight is all emptiness. And as for poor me, I remain distracted between the two. I grow quite absent-minded when I try to write for the sadhana magazine. I raise my eyes to every passing boat and keep staring at the ferry going to and fro. And then, on the bank, close to my boat, there are herded buffaloes thrusting their masses' mouths into the garbage, wrapping their tongues around it to get it into their mouths, and then munching away, blowing hard with great big gasps of contentment and flicking the flies off their backs with their tails. All of a sudden a naked weakling of a human cub appears on the scene, makes sundry noises, and pokes one of the patient bees with a cutgill, whereupon, throwing occasional glasses at the human sprig out of a corner of its eye, and snatching at tufts of leaves or grass here and there on the way, the unruffled beast leisurely moves on a few paces, and that imp of a boy seems to feel that his duty, as herdsman, has been done. I fail to penetrate this mystery of the boy covered's mind. Whenever a coward or buffalo has selected a spot to its liking and is comfortably grazing there, I cannot divine what purpose is served by worrying it, as he insists on doing, till it shifts somewhere else. I suppose it is man's masterfulness, glorying in triumph over the powerful creature it has tamed. Anyhow, I love to see these buffaloes amongst the lush grass. But this is not what I started to say! I wanted to tell you how the least thing distracts me nowadays from my duty to the sadhana. In my last letter, footnote 1, not included in this selection, end of footnote, I told you of the bumblebees which hover round me in some fruitless quest to the tune of meaningless humming with tireless acidity. They come every day at about 9 or 10 in the morning, dart up to my table, shoot down under the desk, go bang onto the colored glass window pane, and then with a circuit or two, round my head or off again with a whiz. I could easily have taught them to be departed spirits who had left this world unsatisfied, and so keep coming back to it again and again in the guise of bees, paying me an inquiring visit and passing. But I think nothing of the kind. I'm sure they are real bees, otherwise known, in Sanskrit as honeysuckers or on still rare occasions as double... provosidians. Shalida, 16th, Falgun, February 1895 We have to treat every single moment of the way as we go on living our life, but when taken as a whole, it is such a very small thing. Two hours uninterrupted thought can hold all of it. After 30 years of strenuous living, Shali could only supply material for two volumes of biography, of which, moreover, a considerable space is taken up by Dodin's chatter. The 30 years of my life would fill even one volume. What a to-do there is over this tiny bit of life. To think of the quantity of land and trade and commerce which go to furnish its commissariat alone, the amount of space occupied by each individual throughout the world, the one little chair, is large enough to hold the whole of him? Yet, after all is over and done, there remains only material for two hours taught. Some pages of writing. What a negligible fraction of my few pages with this one lazy day of mine occupy. But then, will not this peaceful day, on the desolate sands by the placid river, leave nevertheless a distinct little gold mark even upon the scroll of my eternal past and eternal future? Shalida, 28th, February 1895 I have got an anonymous letter today which begins to give up one's self at the feet of another is the truest of all gifts. The writer has never seen me but knows me from my writings and goes on to say, however pity or distant, the sun. Footnote 1 Rabi, the author's name, means the sun. End of footnote Worshiper gets a share of the sun's rays. You are the world's poet, yet to me it seems you are my own poet. And more in the same strain. Man is so anxious to bestow his love on some object that he ends by falling in love with his own ideal. But why should we suppose the idea to be less true than the reality? We can never know for certain the truth of the substance underlying what we get through the senses. Why should the doubt be greater in the case of the entity behind the ideas which are the creation of mind? The mother realizes in her child a great idea which is in every child, the ineffableness of which, however, is not revealed to anyone else. Rabi to say that what draws forth the mother's very life and soul is illusory, but what fails to draw the rest of us to the same extent is the real truth? Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love. The beauty of his soul knows no limit. But I am departing into generalities. What I wanted to express is that in one sense I have no right to accept this offering of my admirer's heart. That is to say, for me, seen within my everyday covering, such a person could not possibly have had these feelings. But there is another sense in which I am worthy of all this, or of even greater adoration. End of section 33 Section number 34, Eglipsons of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. On the way to Pubna, 9th of July, 1895. I am gliding through this winding little Ichamati, this streamlet of the rainy season. With rows of villages along its banks, its fields of jute and sugarcane, its reed patches, its green bathing slopes, it is like a few lines of a poem, often repeated and as often enjoyed. One cannot commit to memory a big river like the Padma. But this meandering little Ichamati, the flow of whose syllables is regulated by the rhythm of the rains, I am gradually making my very own. It is dusk, the sky getting dark with clouds, the thunder rumbles fitfully, and the wild kasuarina clumps bend in waves to the stormy gusts, which pass through them. The depths of bamboo tickets look black as ink. The pallet twilight glimmers over the water like the herald of some weird event. I am bending over my desk in the dimness, writing this letter. I want a whisper low toned, intimate talks and keeping with this phenomena of the dusk. But it is just wishes like these which baffle all effort. They either get fulfilled of themselves or not at all. That is why it is a simple matter to warm up to a grim battle, but not to an easy inconsequent talk. End of section 34 Section number 35 of Glimpse is a Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Shalida 14th August 1895 One great point about work is that for its sake the individual has to make light of his personal joys and sorrows. Indeed, so far as may be to ignore them. I am reminded of an incident at Shazidpur. My servant was late one morning and I was greatly annoyed at his delay. He came up and stood before me with his usual salam and with a slight catch in his voice explained that his eight-year-old daughter had died last night. Then with his duster he set a tidying of my room. When we look at the field of work we see some at their trades, some tilling the soil, some carrying burdens and yet underneath death sorrow and loss are flowing in an unseen undercurrent every day, the privacy not intruded upon. If ever these should break forth beyond control and come to the surface, then all this work would at once come to a stop. Over the individual sorrows flowing beneath is a hard stone track across which the trains of duty with their human load thunder their way, stopping for none save at appointed stations. This very cruelty of work proves perhaps man's sternest consolation. End of section 35 Section number 36 of Glimpses of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Kushtia 5th October 1895 The religion that only comes to us from external scriptures never becomes our own. Our only tie with it is that of habit. To gain religion within is man's great lifelong adventure. In the extremity of suffering must it be born. On his lifeblood it must live. And then whether or not it brings him happiness, the man's journey shall end in the joy fulfillment. We rarely realize how false for us is that which we hear from other lips or keep repeating with our own while all the time the temple of our truth is building within us brick by brick day after day. We fail to understand the mystery of this eternal building when we view our joys and sorrows apart by themselves. In the midst of fleeting time, just as a sentence becomes unintelligible if one has to spell through every word of it. When we once perceive the unity of the scheme of that creation which is going on in us, we realize our relation to the ever unfolding universe. We realize that we are in the process of being created in the same way as are the glowing heavenly orbs which revolve in their courses, our desires, our sufferings, all finding their proper place within the whole. We may not exactly know what is happening. We do not know exactly even about a speck of dust. But when we feel the flow of life in us to be one with the universal life outside, then all our pleasures and pains are seen strung upon one long thread of joy. The facts I am, I move, I grow, are seen in all their immensity in connection with the fact that everything else is there along with me, and not the tiniest atom can do without me. The relation of my soul to this beautiful autumn morning, this vast radiance, is one of intimate kinship, and all this color sent to music is but the outward expression of our secret communion. This constant communion, whether realized or unrealized, keeps my mind and movement out of this intercourse between my inner and outer worlds I gain such religion, be it much or little, as my capacity allows, and in its light I have to test scriptures before I can make them really my own. End of section 36 Section number 37 of Glimpses of Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Shalida, 12th December, 1895 The other evening I was reading an English book of criticisms full of all manner of disputations about poetry, art, beauty and so forth and so on. As I plotted through these artificial discussions my tired faculty seemed to have wandered into a region of empty mirage filled with presence of mocking demon. The night was far advanced. I closed the book with a bang and flung it on the table. Then I blew out the lamp with the idea of turning into bed. No sooner had I done so, then, through the open windows the moonlight burst into the room with a shock of surprise. That little bit of a lamp had been sneering dryly at me, like some meffi-stoffless, and the tiniest sneer had screened off this infinite light of joy issuing forth from the deep love which is in all the world. What? For sooth, had I been looking for in the empty wordiness of the book, there was the very thing itself filling the skies, silently waiting for me outside, all these hours. If I had gone off to bed leaving the shutters closed, and thus missed this vision, it would have stayed there all the same without any protest against the mocking lamp inside. Even if I had remained blind to it all my life, letting the lamp triumph to the end till for the last time I went darkling to bed, even then the moon would have still been there. Sweetly smiling, unbetrubed and unobtrusive, waiting for me as she has throughout the ages. End of section 37 End of Glimpse of the Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore