On a semester holiday, I reacquainted myself with an old familiar. His luminous work was hidden away in a prosaic green-covered text. But then, brilliance can seldom disguise itself, no matter what the outer cover. Reading the book, away from the textbook/classroom setting, where it was prescribed reading, made all the difference.
The book is Gitanjali . The writer, Rabindranath Tagore.
To see god in every person, in every profession — that takes a unique world view. And a certain sensibility and open heartedness. Rabindranath Tagore came from a family of privilege. In such circumstances, it's easy to be isolated, removed from the realities of the majority. It's possible to be insulated in all the comforts taken for granted. And yet we see the poet not just sympathising, but empathising with the stone cutter, the road layer, the gardener, the labourer.
Gurudev, as he is popularly known, is a towering personality in his state of West Bengal. It’s impossible to encompass in five hundred words, the sheer volume of his work — poetry, paintings, prose, essays, music, novels and stories. Gitanjali carries an introduction by W.B. Yeats whose admiration and respect is clearly evident in every sentence.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote poetry that is other-worldly, and yet, in a language simple enough for the common man and woman to follow and internalise. Indeed, in one of the songs of Gitanjali , the poet says, “My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come/ between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.”
In Gardener 85 , the poet addresses us — his admirers from many years later. He wonders who the reader of his poems is. The poet laments at his inability to send to the reader even a, “single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.” But he urges the reader to, “gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.”
The word, ‘lyrical,’ is clichéd in its use to describe poetry. But how else can I describe writing like this? Suffused with the fragrance of flowers and illuminated with the light of floating lamps making their way to an unknown destination. Perhaps I can call his work, rhapsodic, idyllic, song-like — but none of the words feels right.
However, I remember the way I felt almost two decades ago. Was it the snob in the literature student who felt Indian writers weren’t to be exalted? Or was it the arrogance of youth that discarded the classic for the contemporary? Reading through the text made me feel alive. It made me realise that yes, it is possible to express so much in so little and in so simple a way. That maybe, it’s the only way.
Gitanjali also left me not a little embarrassed. How senseless and ignorant of me to not understand the poems, the gentle preaching of the words that teach the reader to appreciate the little things in life. Imagine a world where knowledge is truly free and where words have honesty.
Way before Nirvana, it was Rabindranath Tagore who told us, “Come as you are.” A lesson we will do well to remember.
(Rabindranath Tagore was born on May 7th 1861.)
Srividya is a poet. Read her work at www.rumwrapt.blogspot.in
