A Timeless Tryst with tegore

Roy is a well-published author who covers many genres, fiction, biography and translation. In this translation of eight Tagore short stories, all of more or less the same length save one that is longer at 30 pages, he successfully evokes the sense of mystery and suspense. At the same time, Roy has expertly handled the human relationships so marvelously evoked by Tagore – “the warmth between a mother and a child which was akin to the early morning sunlight of springtime… the only ties that take root are those born of love and affection.”And “it is true that the feminine gender cannot tolerate suspense… it is impossible to run household affairs when suspense and mystery takes centre stage.”

One might cavil at the term horror in the title; perhaps mysteries, riddles or suspense would have been more accurate in describing these stories. Certainly, there is excitement, and even a surprise twist at the end in the story A Yielded Wealth, while Tagore’s intentions are also shown as moralistic, anti-capital, anti-greed, with respect for religion and religious practices. In his telling, wealth can lead to self-delusion and poverty – “The colossal treasure loomed around him like a monstrous grin … it lacked everything that defines life. It was dead, a creature from the realm of death, a phantom.” Human tendencies to jealousy and suspicions are portrayed, as are Tagore’s frequent references to societal strata, caste, the priesthood and Brahminism.

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As also Tagore’s metaphysical observations, from nearly being cremated while still alive to the reality of life; from fear of death to fear of life itself. And Tagore’s teasing assertions – “women don’t make mistakes. And even if they do, it is not the job of an intelligent man to point it out to them… And as is the sarcastic truth of existence, the world around continued at its usual pace.” There are some solecisms and misusages in the text, which are aberrational since the translation is otherwise excellent and accurately reflects Tagore’s lofty prose; much more so than other, much inferior, translations that have appeared even recently of some of the same stories.

Prasun Roy is to be complimented for bringing some of Tagore’s short stories to the English-speaking audience with a superb rendering. The Bard in Love is in the form of a biography and covers the young, middle-aged and elder Tagore’s various infatuations. In terms of chronology, they might be summarized as six, starting with when he was still a child and focused on his elder sister-in-law Kadambari then 11, two years older than him, who resided in the same house and suffered from neglect by her negligent husband. The second was the daughter of a family friend in Bombay named Annapurna; the third an English young woman called Lucy with whose family he lodged in London. The fourth was his wife Mrinalini who was 10 when Tagore married her at age 23.

She had five children and long predeceased him. There next was Ranu from Banaras who started as a pen friend aged 11 and later became the famed patron of the arts Lady Ranu Mukherjee in Calcutta. The last, when Tagore was of an advanced age and in poor health, was the Argentine Victoria Ocampo. From the authors’ telling, and by inference, it appears that all these relationships, save with the wife, were platonic though intensely felt by both the parties involved. The limitations and burdens of living in a large joint family are well recorded. Much of the reported dialogue and incidents of the early period are necessarily fictional but it is clear that as a boy, Tagore was lonely and seemingly had few male friends. He was thrown into the ‘sweet honey of friendship’ with Kadambari ‘the first person who lent him confidence [and] his severest critic.’

Travelling to London in 1878 aged 16 with his elder brother, a relationship developed between Tagore and the proverbial landlady’s daughter Lucy Scott even as the boy ‘began to grasp the wonderful freedom that women could enjoy in England.’ By nature, write the authors, ‘he was fearful of women’ but in his letters home he ‘started to frankly compare the orthodox culture back home with the free-minded …fresh behaviour seen in the Western world.’ This alarmed the Calcutta family, and Tagore was recalled home leaving ‘without degree or distinction’.

It needs to be noted that for all his admiration of female freedom, he was socially reactionary and his daughters were married to male partners when they were only children. Tagore, say the authors, was ‘completely under the spell of his father’s persona.’ When his marriage was arranged to a girl from a ‘rustic background’, Kadambari, still childless, was heartbroken, the more so because of her husband’s neglect in favour of other women. She committed suicide four months after Tagore’s marriage, a tragic figure in this narrative. Tagore’s wife herself died aged 29 in 1902. Tagore was a relentless traveller struck by wanderlust, both within and outside India, but from 1901 he was focused on his school at Shantiniketan.

He won the Nobel Prize in 1913 and despite the attendant fame, the authors assert Tagore was lonely, and even tried to raise his dead wife through seances. In 1924, aged 63, he met the Argentinian Victoria Ocampo, who urged him to sketch and then paint; ‘I have awakened a great painter within the soul of a great poet,’ she stated. The book states ‘The doodling he had taken up in the company of Victoria became a means of expression. At almost 70, he immersed himself in the world of painting.’ Tagore enjoys such status in Bengal and indeed in India that any effort to interpret or humanize him risks becoming controversial. In these two books the authors have approached the subject with skill and delicacy, and in the second, adroitly combining fact and fiction.

The prose is usually fluent save for some idiomatic and stylistic errors which required correction. A negative feature of the second text is the excessive use of adjectives; any noun hardly exists without a descriptor, which becomes irritating. The authors would have done better in avoiding yearning for purple prose. A glossary and index would have been useful if not essential. These are faults attributable to the publishers. Readers, even familiar with Tagore’s work, will derive considerable enjoyment and something new from both these works

(THE WRITER IS A FORMER FOREIGN SECRETARY)