The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

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I thought that my husband was going to continue the discussion,
but he rose silently from his seat and left us.

The thing that was agitating me within was merely a variation of
the stormy passion outside, which swept the country from one end
to the other. The car of the wielder of my destiny was fast
approaching, and the sound of its wheels reverberated in my
being. I had a constant feeling that something extraordinary
might happen any moment, for which, however, the responsibility
would not be mine. Was I not removed from the plane in which
right and wrong, and the feelings of others, have to be
considered? Had I ever wanted this--had I ever been waiting or
hoping for any such thing? Look at my whole life and tell me
then, if I was in any way accountable.

Through all my past I had been consistent in my devotion--but
when at length it came to receiving the boon, a different god
appeared! And just as the awakened country, with its __Bande
Mataram__, thrills in salutation to the unrealized future
before it, so do all my veins and nerves send forth shocks of
welcome to the unthought-of, the unknown, the importunate
Stranger.

One night I left my bed and slipped out of my room on to the open
terrace. Beyond our garden wall are fields of ripening rice.
Through the gaps in the village groves to the North, glimpses of
the river are seen. The whole scene slept in the darkness like
the vague embryo of some future creation.

In that future I saw my country, a woman like myself, standing
expectant. She has been drawn forth from her home corner by the
sudden call of some Unknown. She has had no time to pause or
ponder, or to light herself a torch, as she rushes forward into
the darkness ahead. I know well how her very soul responds to
the distant flute-strains which call her; how her breast rises
and falls; how she feels she nears it, nay it is already hers, so
that it matters not even if she run blindfold. She is no mother.
There is no call to her of children in their hunger, no home to
be lighted of an evening, no household work to be done. So; she
hies to her tryst, for this is the land of the Vaishnava Poets.
She has left home, forgotten domestic duties; she has nothing but
an unfathomable yearning which hurries her on--by what road, to
what goal, she recks not.

I, also, am possessed of just such a yearning. I likewise have
lost my home and also lost my way. Both the end and the means
have become equally shadowy to me. There remain only the
yearning and the hurrying on. Ah! wretched wanderer through the
night, when the dawn reddens you will see no trace of a way to
return. But why return? Death will serve as well. If the Dark
which sounded the flute should lead to destruction, why trouble
about the hereafter? When I am merged in its blackness, neither
I, nor good and bad, nor laughter, nor tears, shall be any more!

------

18. The condition of the curse which had reduced them to ashes
was such that they could only be restored to life if the stream
of the Ganges was brought down to them. [Trans.].

XII

In Bengal the machinery of time being thus suddenly run at full
pressure, things which were difficult became easy, one following
soon after another. Nothing could be held back any more, even in
our corner of the country. In the beginning our district was
backward, for my husband was unwilling to put any compulsion on
the villagers. "Those who make sacrifices for their country's
sake are indeed her servants," he would say, "but those who
compel others to make them in her name are her enemies. They
would cut freedom at the root, to gain it at the top."

But when Sandip came and settled here, and his followers began to
move about the country, speaking in towns and market-places,
waves of excitement came rolling up to us as well. A band of
young fellows of the locality attached themselves to him, some
even who had been known as a disgrace to the village. But the
glow of their genuine enthusiasm lighted them up, within as well
as without. It became quite clear that when the pure breezes of
a great joy and hope sweep through the land, all dirt and decay
are cleansed away. It is hard, indeed, for men to be frank and
straight and healthy, when their country is in the throes of
dejection.

Then were all eyes turned on my husband, from whose estates alone
foreign sugar and salt and cloths had not been banished. Even
the estate officers began to feel awkward and ashamed over it.
And yet, some time ago, when my husband began to import country-
made articles into our village, he had been secretly and openly
twitted for his folly, by old and young alike. When
__Swadeshi__ had not yet become a boast, we had despised it
with all our hearts.

My husband still sharpens his Indian-made pencils with his
Indian-made knife, does his writing with reed pens, drinks his
water out of a bell-metal vessel, and works at night in the light
of an old-fashioned castor-oil lamp. But this dull, milk-and-
water __Swadeshi__ of his never appealed to us. Rather, we
had always felt ashamed of the inelegant, unfashionable furniture
of his reception-rooms, especially when he had the magistrate, or
any other European, as his guest.

My husband used to make light of my protests. "Why allow such
trifles to upset you?" he would say with a smile.

"They will think us barbarians, or at all events wanting in
refinement."

"If they do, I will pay them back by thinking that their
refinement does not go deeper than their white skins."

My husband had an ordinary brass pot on his writing-table which
he used as a flower-vase. It has often happened that, when I had
news of some European guest, I would steal into his room and put
in its place a crystal vase of European make. "Look here,
Bimala," he objected at length, "that brass pot is as unconscious
of itself as those blossoms are; but this thing protests its
purpose so loudly, it is only fit for artificial flowers."

The Bara Rani, alone, pandered to my husband's whims. Once she
comes panting to say: "Oh, brother, have you heard? Such lovely
Indian soaps have come out! My days of luxury are gone by;
still, if they contain no animal fat, I should like to try some."

This sort of thing makes my husband beam all over, and the house
is deluged with Indian scents and soaps. Soaps indeed! They are
more like lumps of caustic soda. And do I not know that what my
sister-in-law uses on herself are the European soaps of old,
while these are made over to the maids for washing clothes?

Another time it is: "Oh, brother dear, do get me some of these
new Indian pen-holders."

Her "brother" bubbles up as usual, and the Bara Rani's room
becomes littered with all kinds of awful sticks that go by the
name of __Swadeshi__ pen-holders. Not that it makes any
difference to her, for reading and writing are out of her line.
Still, in her writing-case, lies the selfsame ivory pen-holder,
the only one ever handled.

The fact is, all this was intended as a hit at me, because I
would not keep my husband company in his vagaries. It was no
good trying to show up my sister-in-law's insincerity; my
husband's face would set so hard, if I barely touched on it. One
only gets into trouble, trying to save such people from being
imposed upon!

The Bara Rani loves sewing. One day I could not help blurting
out: "What a humbug you are, sister! When your 'brother' is
present, your mouth waters at the very mention of __Swadeshi__
scissors, but it is the English-made article every time when you
work."

"What harm?" she replied. "Do you not see what pleasure it
gives him? We have grown up together in this house, since he was
a boy. I simply cannot bear, as you can, the sight of the smile
leaving his face. Poor dear, he has no amusement except this
playing at shop-keeping. You are his only dissipation, and you
will yet be his ruin!"

"Whatever you may say, it is not right to be double-faced," I
retorted.

My sister-in-law laughed out in my face. "Oh, our artless little
Chota Rani!--straight as a schoolmaster's rod, eh? But a woman
is not built that way. She is soft and supple, so that she may
bend without being crooked."

I could not forget those words: "You are his dissipation, and
will be his ruin!" Today I feel--if a man needs must have some
intoxicant, let it not be a woman.

XIII

Suksar, within our estates, is one of the biggest trade centres
in the district. On one side of a stretch of water there is held
a daily bazar; on the other, a weekly market. During the rains
when this piece of water gets connected with the river, and boats
can come through, great quantities of cotton yarns, and woollen
stuffs for the coming winter, are brought in for sale.

At the height of our enthusiasm, Sandip laid it down that all
foreign articles, together with the demon of foreign influence,
must be driven out of our territory.

"Of course!" said I, girding myself up for a fight.

"I have had words with Nikhil about it," said Sandip. "He tells
me, he does not mind speechifying, but he will not have
coercion."

"I will see to that," I said, with a proud sense of power. I
knew how deep was my husband's love for me. Had I been in my
senses I should have allowed myself to be torn to pieces rather
than assert my claim to that, at such a time. But Sandip had to
be impressed with the full strength of my __Shakti__.

Sandip had brought home to me, in his irresistible way, how the
cosmic Energy was revealed for each individual in the shape of
some special affinity. Vaishnava Philosophy, he said, speaks of
the __Shakti__ of Delight that dwells in the heart of
creation, ever attracting the heart of her Eternal Lover. Men
have a perpetual longing to bring out this __Shakti__ from the
hidden depths of their own nature, and those of us who succeed in
doing so at once clearly understand the meaning of the music
coming to us from the Dark. He broke out singing:

/*
"My flute, that was busy with its song,
Is silent now when we stand face to face.
My call went seeking you from sky to sky
When you lay hidden;
But now all my cry finds its smile
In the face of my beloved."
*/

Listening to his allegories, I had forgotten that I was plain and
simple Bimala. I was __Shakti__; also an embodiment of
Universal joy. Nothing could fetter me, nothing was impossible
for me; whatever I touched would gain new life. The world around
me was a fresh creation of mine; for behold, before my heart's
response had touched it, there had not been this wealth of gold
in the Autumn sky! And this hero, this true servant of the
country, this devotee of mine--this flaming intelligence, this
burning energy, this shining genius--him also was I creating from
moment to moment. Have I not seen how my presence pours fresh
life into him time after time?

The other day Sandip begged me to receive a young lad, Amulya, an
ardent disciple of his. In a moment I could see a new light
flash out from the boy's eyes, and knew that he, too, had a
vision of __Shakti__ manifest, that my creative force had
begun its work in his blood. "What sorcery is this of yours!"
exclaimed Sandip next day. "Amulya is a boy no longer, the wick
of his life is all ablaze. Who can hide your fire under your
home-roof? Every one of them must be touched up by it, sooner or
later, and when every lamp is alight what a grand carnival of a
__Dewali__ we shall have in the country!"

Blinded with the brilliance of my own glory I had decided to
grant my devotee this boon. I was overweeningly confident that
none could baulk me of what I really wanted. When I returned to
my room after my talk with Sandip, I loosed my hair and tied it
up over again. Miss Gilby had taught me a way of brushing it up
from the neck and piling it in a knot over my head. This style
was a favourite one with my husband. "It is a pity," he once
said, "that Providence should have chosen poor me, instead of
poet Kalidas, for revealing all the wonders of a woman's neck.
The poet would probably have likened it to a flower-stem; but I
feel it to be a torch, holding aloft the black flame of your
hair." With which he ... but why, oh why, do I go back to all
that?

I sent for my husband. In the old days I could contrive a
hundred and one excuses, good or bad, to get him to come to me.
Now that all this had stopped for days I had lost the art of
contriving.

Nikhil's Story

VI

Panchu's wife has just died of a lingering consumption. Panchu
must undergo a purification ceremony to cleanse himself of sin
and to propitiate his community. The community has calculated
and informed him that it will cost one hundred and twenty-three
rupees.

"How absurd!" I cried, highly indignant. "Don't submit to this,
Panchu. What can they do to you?"

Raising to me his patient eyes like those of a tired-out beast of
burden, he said: "There is my eldest girl, sir, she will have to
be married. And my poor wife's last rites have to be put
through."

"Even if the sin were yours, Panchu," I mused aloud, "you have
surely suffered enough for it already."

"That is so, sir," he naively assented. "I had to sell part of
my land and mortgage the rest to meet the doctor's bills. But
there is no escape from the offerings I have to make the
Brahmins."

What was the use of arguing? When will come the time, I
wondered, for the purification of the Brahmins themselves who can
accept such offerings?

After his wife's illness and funeral, Panchu, who had been
tottering on the brink of starvation, went altogether beyond his
depth. In a desperate attempt to gain consolation of some sort
he took to sitting at the feet of a wandering ascetic, and
succeeded in acquiring philosophy enough to forget that his
children went hungry. He kept himself steeped for a time in the
idea that the world is vanity, and if of pleasure it has none,
pain also is a delusion. Then, at last, one night he left his
little ones in their tumble-down hovel, and started off wandering
on his own account.

I knew nothing of this at the time, for just then a veritable
ocean-churning by gods and demons was going on in my mind. Nor
did my master tell me that he had taken Panchu's deserted
children under his own roof and was caring for them, though alone
in the house, with his school to attend to the whole day.

After a month Panchu came back, his ascetic fervour considerably
worn off. His eldest boy and girl nestled up to him, crying:
"Where have you been all this time, father?" His youngest boy
filled his lap; his second girl leant over his back with her arms
around his neck; and they all wept together. "O sir!" sobbed
Panchu, at length, to my master. "I have not the power to give
these little ones enough to eat--I am not free to run away from
them. What has been my sin that I should be scourged so, bound
hand and foot?"

In the meantime the thread of Panchu's little trade connections
had snapped and he found he could not resume them. He clung on
to the shelter of my master's roof, which had first received him
on his return, and said not a word of going back home. "Look
here, Panchu," my master was at last driven to say. "If you
don't take care of your cottage, it will tumble down altogether.
I will lend you some money with which you can do a bit of
peddling and return it me little by little."

Panchu was not excessively pleased--was there then no such thing
as charity on earth? And when my master asked him to write out a
receipt for the money, he felt that this favour, demanding a
return, was hardly worth having. My master, however, did not
care to make an outward gift which would leave an inward
obligation. To destroy self-respect is to destroy caste, was his
idea.

After signing the note, Panchu's obeisance to my master fell off
considerably in its reverence--the dust-taking was left out. It
made my master smile; he asked nothing better than that courtesy
should stoop less low. "Respect given and taken truly balances
the account between man and man," was the way he put it, "but
veneration is overpayment."

Panchu began to buy cloth at the market and peddle it about the
village. He did not get much of cash payment, it is true, but
what he could realize in kind, in the way of rice, jute, and
other field produce, went towards settlement of his account. In
two month's time he was able to pay back an instalment of my
master's debt, and with it there was a corresponding reduction in
the depth of his bow. He must have begun to feel that he had
been revering as a saint a mere man, who had not even risen
superior to the lure of lucre.

While Panchu was thus engaged, the full shock of the
__Swadeshi__ flood fell on him.

VII

It was vacation time, and many youths of our village and its
neighbourhood had come home from their schools and colleges.
They attached themselves to Sandip's leadership with enthusiasm,
and some, in their excess of zeal, gave up their studies
altogether. Many of the boys had been free pupils of my school
here, and some held college scholarships from me in Calcutta.
They came up in a body, and demanded that I should banish foreign
goods from my Suksar market.

I told them I could not do it.

They were sarcastic: "Why, Maharaja, will the loss be too much
for you?"

I took no notice of the insult in their tone, and was about to
reply that the loss would fall on the poor traders and their
customers, not on me, when my master, who was present,
interposed.

"Yes, the loss will be his--not yours, that is clear enough," he
said.

"But for one's country . ."

"The country does not mean the soil, but the men on it,"
interrupted my master again. "Have you yet wasted so much as a
glance on what was happening to them? But now you would dictate
what salt they shall eat, what clothes they shall wear. Why
should they put up with such tyranny, and why should we let
them?"

"But we have taken to Indian salt and sugar and cloth ourselves."

"You may do as you please to work off your irritation, to keep up
your fanaticism. You are well off, you need not mind the cost.
The poor do not want to stand in your way, but you insist on
their submitting to your compulsion. As it is, every moment of
theirs is a life-and-death struggle for a bare living; you cannot
even imagine the difference a few pice means to them--so little
have you in common. You have spent your whole past in a superior
compartment, and now you come down to use them as tools for the
wreaking of your wrath. I call it cowardly."

They were all old pupils of my master, so they did not venture to
be disrespectful, though they were quivering with indignation.
They turned to me. "Will you then be the only one, Maharaja, to
put obstacles in the way of what the country would achieve?"

"Who am I, that I should dare do such a thing? Would I not
rather lay down my life to help it?"

The M.A. student smiled a crooked smile, as he asked: "May we
enquire what you are actually doing to help?"

"I have imported Indian mill-made yarn and kept it for sale in my
Suksar market, and also sent bales of it to markets belonging to
neighbouring __zamindars__."

"But we have been to your market, Maharaja," the same student
exclaimed, "and found nobody buying this yarn."

"That is neither my fault nor the fault of my market. It only
shows the whole country has not taken your vow."

"That is not all," my master went on. "It shows that what you
have pledged yourselves to do is only to pester others. You want
dealers, who have not taken your vow, to buy that yarn; weavers,
who have not taken your vow, to make it up; then their wares
eventually to be foisted on to consumers who, also, have not
taken your vow. The method? Your clamour, and the
__zamindars'__ oppression. The result: all righteousness
yours, all privations theirs!"

"And may we venture to ask, further, what your share of the
privation has been?" pursued a science student.

"You want to know, do you?" replied my master. "It is Nikhil
himself who has to buy up that Indian mill yarn; he has had to
start a weaving school to get it woven; and to judge by his past
brilliant business exploits, by the time his cotton fabrics leave
the loom their cost will be that of cloth-of-gold; so they will
only find a use, perhaps, as curtains for his drawing-room, even
though their flimsiness may fail to screen him. When you get
tired of your vow, you will laugh the loudest at their artistic
effect. And if their workmanship is ever truly appreciated at
all, it will be by foreigners."

I have known my master all my life, but have never seen him so
agitated. I could see that the pain had been silently
accumulating in his heart for some time, because of his
surpassing love for me, and that his habitual self-possession had
become secretly undermined to the breaking point.

"You are our elders," said the medical student. "It is unseemly
that we should bandy words with you. But tell us, pray, finally,
are you determined not to oust foreign articles from your
market?"

"I will not," I said, "because they are not mine."

"Because that will cause you a loss!" smiled the M.A. student.

"Because he, whose is the loss, is the best judge," retorted my
master.

With a shout of __Bande Mataram__ they left us.

Chapter Six

Nikhil's Story

VIII

A FEW days later, my master brought Panchu round to me. His
__zamindar__, it appeared, had fined him a hundred rupees, and
was threatening him with ejectment.

"For what fault?" I enquired.

"Because," I was told, "he has been found selling foreign cloths.
He begged and prayed Harish Kundu, his __zamindar__, to let
him sell off his stock, bought with borrowed money, promising
faithfully never to do it again; but the __zamindar__ would
not hear of it, and insisted on his burning the foreign stuff
there and then, if he wanted to be let off. Panchu in his
desperation blurted out defiantly: "I can't afford it! You are
rich; why not buy it up and burn it?" This only made Harish
Kundu red in the face as he shouted: "The scoundrel must be
taught manners, give him a shoe-beating!" So poor Panchu got
insulted as well as fined.

"What happened to the cloth?"

"The whole bale was burnt."

"Who else was there?"

"Any number of people, who all kept shouting __Bande
Mataram__. Sandip was also there. He took up some of the
ashes, crying: 'Brothers! This is the first funeral pyre lighted
by your village in celebration of the last rites of foreign
commerce. These are sacred ashes. Smear yourselves with them in
token of your __Swadeshi__ vow.'"

"Panchu," said I, turning to him, "you must lodge a complaint."

"No one will bear me witness," he replied.

"None bear witness?--Sandip! Sandip!"

Sandip came out of his room at my call. "What is the matter?"
he asked.

"Won't you bear witness to the burning of this man's cloth?"

Sandip smiled. "Of course I shall be a witness in the case," he
said. "But I shall be on the opposite side."

"What do you mean," I exclaimed, "by being a witness on this or
that side? Will you not bear witness to the truth?"

"Is the thing which happens the only truth?"

"What other truths can there be?"

"The things that ought to happen! The truth we must build up
will require a great deal of untruth in the process. Those who
have made their way in the world have created truth, not blindly
followed it."

"And so--"

"And so I will bear what you people are pleased to call false
witness, as they have done who have created empires, built up
social systems, founded religious organizations. Those who would
rule do not dread untruths; the shackles of truth are reserved
for those who will fall under their sway. Have you not read
history? Do you not know that in the immense cauldrons, where
vast political developments are simmering, untruths are the main
ingredients?"

"Political cookery on a large scale is doubtless going on, but--"

"Oh, I know! You, of course, will never do any of the cooking.
You prefer to be one of those down whose throats the hotchpotch
which is being cooked will be crammed. They will partition
Bengal and say it is for your benefit. They will seal the doors
of education and call it raising the standard. But you will
always remain good boys, snivelling in your corners. We bad men,
however, must see whether we cannot erect a defensive
fortification of untruth."

"It is no use arguing about these things, Nikhil," my master
interposed. "How can they who do not feel the truth within them,
realize that to bring it out from its obscurity into the light is
man's highest aim--not to keep on heaping material outside?"

Sandip laughed. "Right, sir!" said he. "Quite a correct speech
for a schoolmaster. That is the kind of stuff I have read in
books; but in the real world I have seen that man's chief
business is the accumulation of outside material. Those who are
masters in the art, advertise the biggest lies in their business,
enter false accounts in their political ledgers with their
broadest-pointed pens, launch their newspapers daily laden with
untruths, and send preachers abroad to disseminate falsehood like
flies carrying pestilential germs. I am a humble follower of
these great ones. When I was attached to the Congress party I
never hesitated to dilute ten per cent of truth with ninety per
cent of untruth. And now, merely because I have ceased to belong
to that party, I have not forgotten the basic fact that man's
goal is not truth but success."

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