Glimpses of Bengal — Shelidah
_31st Jaistha (June)1892. _ I hate these polite formalities.
Nowadays I keep repeating the line: "Much rather would I be an Arab Bedouin!"
A fine, healthy, strong, and free barbarity.
I feel I want to quit this constant ageing of mind and body, with incessant argument and nicety concerning ancient decaying things, and to feel the joy of a free and vigorous life; to have,--be they good or bad,--broad, unhesitating, unfettered ideas and aspirations, free from everlasting friction between custom and sense, sense and desire, desire and action.
If only I could set utterly and boundlessly free this hampered life of mine, I would storm the four quarters and raise wave upon wave of tumult all round; I would career away madly, like a wild horse, for very joy of my own speed!
But I am a Bengali, not a Bedouin!
I go on sitting in my corner, and mope and worry and argue.
I turn my mind now this way up, now the other--as a fish is fried--and the boiling oil blisters first this side, then that.
Let it pass.
Since I cannot be thoroughly wild, it is but proper that I should make an endeavour to be thoroughly civil.
Why foment a quarrel between the two?
SHELIDAH,
_16th June 1892. _ The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearer it becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform the ordinary duties of one's daily life simply and naturally.
From the grasses in the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; and there is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because none of these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations.
Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment.
The grass has to put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green.
And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to big doings and fine talk.
Perhaps because the whole of our life is not vividly present at each moment, some imaginary hope may lure, some glowing picture of a future, untrammelled with everyday burdens, may tempt us; but these are illusory.
SHELIDAH,
_2nd Asarh (June) 1892. _ Yesterday, the first day of _Asarh_,[1] the enthronement of the rainy season was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance.
It was very hot the whole day, but in the afternoon dense clouds rolled up in stupendous masses.
[Footnote 1: June-July, the commencement of the rainy season.
] I thought to myself, this first day of the rains, I would rather risk getting wet than remain confined in my dungeon of a cabin.
The year 1293 [1] will not come again in my life, and, for the matter of that, how many more even of these first days of _Asarh_ will come?
My life would be sufficiently long could it number thirty of these first days of _Asarh_ to which the poet of the _Meghaduta_[2] has, for me at least, given special distinction.
[Footnote 1: Of the Bengal era.
] [Footnote 2: In the _Meghaduta_ (Cloud Messenger) of Kalidas a famous description of the burst of the Monsoon begins with the words: _On the first day of Asarh_.
] It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white flower in the moonlight.
What untold wealth!
A thousand years ago Kalidas welcomed that first day of _Asarh_; and once in every year of my life that same day of _Asarh_ dawns in all its glory--that self-same day of the poet of old Ujjain, which has brought to countless men and women their joys of union, their pangs of separation.
Every year one such great, time-hallowed day drops out of my life; and the time will come when this day of Kalidas, this day of the _Meghaduta_, this eternal first day of the Rains in Hindustan, shall come no more for me.
When I realise this I feel I want to take a good look at nature, to offer a conscious welcome to each day's sunrise, to say farewell to each day's setting sun, as to an intimate friend.
What a grand festival, what a vast theatre of festivity!
And we cannot even fully respond to it, so far away do we live from the world!
The light of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot reach our hearts--so many millions of miles further off are we!
The world into which I have tumbled is peopled with strange beings.
They are always busy erecting walls and rules round themselves, and how careful they are with their curtains lest they should see!
It is a wonder to me they have not made drab covers for flowering plants and put up a canopy to ward off the moon.
If the next life is determined by the desires of this, then I should be reborn from our enshrouded planet into some free and open realm of joy.
Only those who cannot steep themselves in beauty to the full, despise it as an object of the senses.
But those who have tasted of its inexpressibility know how far it is beyond the highest powers of mere eye or ear--nay, even the heart is powerless to attain the end of its yearning.
_P.
S.
_--I have left out the very thing I started to tell of.
Don't be afraid, it won't take four more sheets.
It is this, that on the evening of the first day of _Asarh_ it came on to rain very heavily, in great lance-like showers.
That is all.
