The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore (elon musk reading list TXT) π
The grandmother, in her old age, was very fond of me. At the bottom of her fondness was the thought that, with the conspiracy of favourable stars which attended me, I had been able to attract my husband's love. Were not men naturally inclined to plunge downwards? None of the others, for all their beauty, had been able to prevent their husbands going headlong into the burning depths which consumed and destroyed them. She believed that I had been the means of extinguishing this fire, so deadly to the men of the family. So she kept me in the shelter of her bosom, and trembled if I was in the least bit unwell.
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night, it would take an eternity to do it. But the sun rises and
the darkness is dispelled--a moment is sufficient to overcome an
infinite distance.
One day there came the new era of Swadeshi [8] in Bengal;
but as to how it happened, we had no distinct vision. There was
no gradual slope connecting the past with the present. For that
reason, I imagine, the new epoch came in like a flood, breaking
down the dykes and sweeping all our prudence and fear before it.
We had no time even to think about, or understand, what had
happened, or what was about to happen.
My sight and my mind, my hopes and my desires, became red with
the passion of this new age. Though, up to this time, the walls
of the home--which was the ultimate world to my mind--remained
unbroken, yet I stood looking over into the distance, and I heard
a voice from the far horizon, whose meaning was not perfectly
clear to me, but whose call went straight to my heart.
From the time my husband had been a college student he had been
trying to get the things required by our people produced in our
own country. There are plenty of date trees in our district. He
tried to invent an apparatus for extracting the juice and boiling
it into sugar and treacle. I heard that it was a great success,
only it extracted more money than juice. After a while he came
to the conclusion that our attempts at reviving our industries
were not succeeding for want of a bank of our own. He was, at
the time, trying to teach me political economy. This alone would
not have done much harm, but he also took it into his head to
teach his countrymen ideas of thrift, so as to pave the way for a
bank; and then he actually started a small bank. Its high rate
of interest, which made the villagers flock so enthusiastically
to put in their money, ended by swamping the bank altogether.
The old officers of the estate felt troubled and frightened.
There was jubilation in the enemy's camp. Of all the family,
only my husband's grandmother remained unmoved. She would scold
me, saying: "Why are you all plaguing him so? Is it the fate of
the estate that is worrying you? How many times have I seen this
estate in the hands of the court receiver! Are men like women?
Men are born spendthrifts and only know how to waste. Look here,
child, count yourself fortunate that your husband is not wasting
himself as well!"
My husband's list of charities was a long one. He would assist
to the bitter end of utter failure anyone who wanted to invent a
new loom or rice-husking machine. But what annoyed me most was
the way that Sandip Babu [9] used to fleece him on the pretext of
Swadeshi work. Whenever he wanted to start a newspaper,
or travel about preaching the Cause, or take a change of air by
the advice of his doctor, my husband would unquestioningly supply
him with the money. This was over and above the regular living
allowance which Sandip Babu also received from him. The
strangest part of it was that my husband and Sandip Babu did not
agree in their opinions.
As soon as the Swadeshi storm reached my blood, I said to
my husband: "I must burn all my foreign clothes."
"Why burn them?" said he. "You need not wear them as long as
you please."
"As long as I please! Not in this life ..."
"Very well, do not wear them for the rest of your life, then.
But why this bonfire business?"
"Would you thwart me in my resolve?"
"What I want to say is this: Why not try to build up something?
You should not waste even a tenth part of your energies in this
destructive excitement."
"Such excitement will give us the energy to build."
"That is as much as to say, that you cannot light the house
unless you set fire to it."
Then there came another trouble. When Miss Gilby first came to
our house there was a great flutter, which afterwards calmed down
when they got used to her. Now the whole thing was stirred up
afresh. I had never bothered myself before as to whether Miss
Gilby was European or Indian, but I began to do so now. I said
to my husband: "We must get rid of Miss Gilby."
He kept silent.
I talked to him wildly, and he went away sad at heart.
After a fit of weeping, I felt in a more reasonable mood when we
met at night. "I cannot," my husband said, "look upon Miss Gilby
through a mist of abstraction, just because she is English.
Cannot you get over the barrier of her name after such a long
acquaintance? Cannot you realize that she loves you?"
I felt a little ashamed and replied with some sharpness: "Let her
remain. I am not over anxious to send her away." And Miss Gilby
remained.
But one day I was told that she had been insulted by a young
fellow on her way to church. This was a boy whom we were
supporting. My husband turned him out of the house. There was
not a single soul, that day, who could forgive my husband for
that act--not even I. This time Miss Gilby left of her own
accord. She shed tears when she came to say good-bye, but my
mood would not melt. To slander the poor boy so--and such a fine
boy, too, who would forget his daily bath and food in his
enthusiasm for Swadeshi.
My husband escorted Miss Gilby to the railway station in his own
carriage. I was sure he was going too far. When exaggerated
accounts of the incident gave rise to a public scandal, which
found its way to the newspapers, I felt he had been rightly
served.
I had often become anxious at my husband's doings, but had never
before been ashamed; yet now I had to blush for him! I did not
know exactly, nor did I care, what wrong poor Noren might, or
might not, have done to Miss Gilby, but the idea of sitting in
judgement on such a matter at such a time! I should have refused
to damp the spirit which prompted young Noren to defy the
Englishwoman. I could not but look upon it as a sign of
cowardice in my husband, that he should fail to understand this
simple thing. And so I blushed for him.
And yet it was not that my husband refused to support
Swadeshi, or was in any way against the Cause. Only he
had not been able whole-heartedly to accept the spirit of
Bande Mataram. [10]
"I am willing," he said, "to serve my country; but my worship I
reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To
worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it."
The Nationalist movement, which began more as an economic thana political one, having as its main object the encouragement of
indigenous industries [Trans.].
"Babu" is a term of respect, like "Father" or "Mister," buthas also meant in colonial days a person who understands some
English. [on-line ed.]
Lit.: "Hail Mother"; the opening words of a song by BankimChatterjee, the famous Bengali novelist. The song has now become
the national anthem, and Bande Mataram the national cry,
since the days of the Swadeshi movement [Trans.].
Chapter Two
Bimala's Story
IV
THIS was the time when Sandip Babu with his followers came to our
neighbourhood to preach Swadeshi.
There is to be a big meeting in our temple pavilion. We women
are sitting there, on one side, behind a screen. Triumphant
shouts of Bande Mataram come nearer: and to them I am
thrilling through and through. Suddenly a stream of barefooted
youths in turbans, clad in ascetic ochre, rushes into the
quadrangle, like a silt-reddened freshet into a dry river-bed at
the first burst of the rains. The whole place is filled with an
immense crowd, through which Sandip Babu is borne, seated in a
big chair hoisted on the shoulders of ten or twelve of the
youths.
Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram! It seems
as though the skies would be rent and scattered into a thousand
fragments.
I had seen Sandip Babu's photograph before. There was something
in his features which I did not quite like. Not that he was bad-
looking--far from it: he had a splendidly handsome face. Yet, I
know not why, it seemed to me, in spite of all its brilliance,
that too much of base alloy had gone into its making. The light
in his eyes somehow did not shine true. That was why I did not
like it when my husband unquestioningly gave in to all his
demands. I could bear the waste of money; but it vexed me to
think that he was imposing on my husband, taking advantage of
friendship. His bearing was not that of an ascetic, nor even of
a person of moderate means, but foppish all over. Love of
comfort seemed to ... any number of such reflections come back
to me today, but let them be.
When, however, Sandip Babu began to speak that afternoon, and the
hearts of the crowd swayed and surged to his words, as though
they would break all bounds, I saw him wonderfully transformed.
Especially when his features were suddenly lit up by a shaft of
light from the slowly setting sun, as it sunk below the roof-line
of the pavilion, he seemed to me to be marked out by the gods as
their messenger to mortal men and women.
From beginning to end of his speech, each one of his utterances
was a stormy outburst. There was no limit to the confidence of
his assurance. I do not know how it happened, but I found I had
impatiently pushed away the screen from before me and had fixed
my gaze upon him. Yet there was none in that crowd who paid any
heed to my doings. Only once, I noticed, his eyes, like stars in
fateful Orion, flashed full on my face.
I was utterly unconscious of myself. I was no longer the lady of
the Rajah's house, but the sole representative of Bengal's
womanhood. And he was the champion of Bengal. As the sky had
shed its light over him, so he must receive the consecration of a
woman's benediction ...
It seemed clear to me that, since he had caught sight of me, the
fire in his words had flamed up more fiercely. Indra's [11]
steed refused to be reined in, and there came the roar of thunder
and the flash of lightning. I said within myself that his
language had caught fire from my eyes; for we women are not only
the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul
itself.
I returned home that evening radiant with a new pride and joy.
The storm within me had shifted my whole being from one centre to
another. Like the Greek maidens of old, I fain would cut off my
long, resplendent tresses to make a bowstring for my hero. Had
my outward ornaments been
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