HERE ARE OUR MEMBERS' FAVOURITE POEMS BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE!!!
SMT KALYANI BOSE'S CHOICE -
GITANJALI
Where The Mind Is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
Into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms
Towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habits;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into
Ever-widening thought and action
Into that Heaven of Freedom, my Father,
Let my country Awake.
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SHARAT KUMAR BHUSHAN'S CHOICE -
PRANIK - POEM 2
O you eternal beggar,let your begging bowl
Stretching into the ancient past,before creation,
Find,at last,its fulfilment.
Let all the garbage of desire,
And the untidy crowd of bushes,
Storing the unholy treasures of our hungry vanities-
Burn up in the beningn fire of Death.
Let it be blessed by the gift of light,
And illuminate the path of Life's last journey,
And fade away,silently,in the wondrous elevated peaks
Of the mountains beyond the eastern seas,
In the immortal dawn of the rising Sun
- Gurudev Tagore
DAN DUNCAN'S CHOICE -
THE LAST BARGAIN
"Come and hire me," I cried, while in the morning I was walking on the stone-paved road.
Sword in hand, the King came in his chariot.
He held my hand and said, "I will hire you with my power."
But his power counted for nought, and he went away in his chariot.
In the heat of the midday the houses stood with shut doors.
I wandered along the crooked lane.
An old man came out with his bag of gold.
He pondered and said, "I will hire you with my money."
He weighed his coins one by one, but I turned away.
It was evening. The garden hedge was all aflower.
The fair maid came out and said, "I will hire you with a smile."
Her smile paled and melted into tears, and she went back alone into the dark.
The sun glistened on the sand, and the sea waves broke waywardly.
A child sat playing with shells.
He raised his head and seemed to know me, and said, "I hire you with nothing."
From thenceforward that bargain struck in child's play made me a free man.
AJU MUKHOPADHYAY’S CHOICE -
GITANJALI - POEM NO. 97
When my play was with thee I never questioned who thou wert. I knew not shyness nor fear, my life was boisterous.
In the early morning thou wouldst call me from my sleep like my own comrade and lead me running from glade to glade.
On those days I never cared to know the meaning of songs thou sangest to me. Only my voice took up the tunes, and my heart danced in their cadance.
Now, when the playtime is over, what is this sudden sight that is come upon me? The world with eyes bent upon they feet stands in awe with all its silent stars.
ABHIJYOTI DUTTA BORAH'S CHOICE -
SUBHASHISH BORAH'S CHOICE -
AN ESSAY - THE PROBLEM OF EVL" From 'Sadhana- The Realization of Life'
- Please read this in the BLOG POSTS.
SRI PRITHWINDRA MUKHERJEE HAS NOT ONLY CHOSEN HIS FAVOURITE POEMS FROM RABINDRANATH TAGORE, HE HAS ALSO TRANSLATED THEM!!! WE ARE PRIVILEGED BY HIS KIND PERMISSION TO POST HIS CHOICES!
THIRTY POEMS
BY
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
SELECTED
&
TRANSLATED
BY
PRITHWINDRA MUKHERJEE
Thu May 23 07:13:42 2009
staff@kaurab.com
visitor_name: William Radice
I've looked through your website. The Rabindranath translation page by Prithwindranath Mukhopadhyay [Prithwindra Mukherjee] is an impressive and generous selection, and it's particularly good to see those youthful, erotic poems... The poems from Kanika are very familiar to me ...
William Radice
1. The Waking of a Cascade
(Fragment)
This morning how could the rays of the sun
Penetrate inside the heart,
How did songs of the morning birds
Enter the cavern ?
I wonder why after such a long time
The heart has woken up.
The heart has woken up,
O waters keep on swelling,
The desires and the impulsions of the heart
I can restrain no more.
From the trembling mountain
Slide heaps of rocks,
Surging and surging the foaming waters
Keep on hissing vehemently.
Turning and turning, maddened they rush
Here and there,
In an urge to escape they cannot find
The exit of their prison.
As if to snatch the morning, as if
To shred the sky,
They shoot up towards the void
Before falling a-whimpering.
The ecstasy of heart drives them to run,
To tear the mountain’s core asunder,
Amorous with their uplifted arms
They seek to climb up to the sky.
[Prabhat-Samgit, ‘Morning Songs’, 1883]
2. Life
I do not want to die out in this beautiful world,
I long to live among men,
Under this sunlight, in this grove of flowers
If I find a place inside a living heart.
The play of life is ever flowing on earth,
Separation, reunion accompanying laughter and tears,
If I can create an immortal abode
By composing a song with human joy and sorrow.
If I cannot, let me have my refuge
In your midst for the rest of my life :
May I help blossoming flowers of ever new songs
For you to pluck at dawn and at dusk.
After accepting those flowers with a smiling face
Throw them away once the flowers will have faded.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
3. Breasts (II)
Sacred summits[1] where gods revel,
Mountains of gold.
Upraised breasts of Sati[2] with their heavenly rays
Illuminates the mortal home of man.
Thereon the little sun rises to bid good morning,
Wearied in the evening it sets thereon.
Apples of the eyes of God on vigil throughout the night
On the sacred twin peaks immaculate.
They keep on sprinkling the lips of the universe.
With the nectar-fountain of eternal love.
Ever awake above the slumbering earth,
They are vast solace for the helpless world.
Inhabiting the earth they embrace heaven,
Motherland of men who are children of God.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
4. Nude
Shed your garments, drop the veil.
Be just clad in naked beauty’s robe
Attire of a heaven-lass dressed in light.
The buxom body like a full-blossomed lotus,
A feast of life and youth and grace.
Come and stand alone in the wonder, this world.
Let permeate your limbs with the beams of your moon,
Let permeate your limbs with zephyr’s caress.
Plunge into the infinite blue of the sky
Like naked Nature spangled with stars.
Let Atanu[3] conceal his face with his tunic’s fold,
With bended head ashamed of the body’s bloom.
Invite immaculate dawn at men’s abode,
Shameless virginity, white, naked.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
5. Bodies meeting
Each limb craves for every limb.
Union of spirit looks for union of bodies.
Body possessed by heart with the weight of heart
Longs to faint into your body.
Eyes endlessly drawn by your eyes,
Lips want to die inside your lips.
Thirsty the soul is bitterly wailing
To contemplate you with every limb.
Heart concealed in the pool of body,
Eternally I keep on weeping on its bank.
Pouring all my limbs in the yearning heart
I shall plunge into the mystery of body.
Day and night, my mind, my body for ever
Will get absorbed in each of your limbs.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
6. Memory
On looking at that body it comes to my mind
Memories of hundreds of life, it seems.
Those eyes conceal thousands of pleasure forgotten
Like songs of springtime life after life.
As if you were my self-oblivion,
For time immemorial my pleasure and pain,
A host of flower groves of a new land,
A host of moonbeam of a new sky.
You are like suffering of days of separation,
You are the bashful nights of love,
All that laughter, those tears, those flashes
Have assumed that honeyed body this day.
Therefore, night and day, by contemplating your face
Life appears to melt into an elsewhere.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
7. Beauty asleep : still life
The evening twilight is bound by a spell.
On the canvas the evening star has not set.
Having undone her undulating locks
She sleeps resting her head on an arm.
Who is it who has helped her to fall asleep
In the midst of a permanent vigil on earth ?
Having culled from nowhere murmurs of silence
And has poured them for ever inside her ears.
An unending waterfall behind the image
Keeps on gushing in silent songs.
For ever the silent rustling of the forest,
For ever stands the bashful presence,
As soon as she wakes up, ashamed
She will cover her breast with her robe.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
8. Total union
Night and day, I weep, O Love, for a union,
Union resembling a hungry death.
Come and bind me, pluck me away,
Strip me of modesty, of raiment, of screen.
Come and steal this juvenile body,
Bereave my eyes of sleep, of dream of sleeping.
Rob this universe vast and awake,
My life and my death, for an eternity.
At the crematorium of union amid a solitary world
Where the creation has fainted with the extinction of the sun,
Shameless unclothed in two naked hearts
Let you and me become beauty infinite.
What an audacious dream, O Lord,
Where lies this union without You ?
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
9. Infinity, Miniscule
Infinite day and night in an effusion of Time,
Only one glimpse in its midst,
A lovely evening, a breeze,
The drunkenness of union between soft darkness and light :
Right at its core merely a tiny jasmine,
A shade of perfume with a drop of smile
Hardly approachable its tiny lips
Keeps on blossoming out of its joy
Before it falls even out of its joy.
Entire Infinity within that glimpse
Becomes a jasmine by the side of a forest.
Infinity manifests at the heart of the moment.
With the passing of the moment falls the flower,
Infinity returns within itself.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
10. Meditation
Ceaselessly with all my heart
I remember You,
In the solitude beyond the world
I accost You,
Having robbed me of my life and death
You are there.
I find you shoreless,
My love, too, is matchless
That I carry within myself.
My whole heart
Like the sun at the peak of rising
Keeps on gazing like an eye
Momentarily dead.
Unfathomable, endless, a vagabond vision
Admits no barrier.
As if you were this generous sky,
As if I were this shoreless ocean,
In the midst of it rejoices the moonbeam of joy.
You are ever serene night and day,
Restless I am relentless,
Agitated, irresistible :
As far as I perceive from horizon to horizon,
You and I are one.
[Manasi, ‘Mind-born Muse’, 1889]
11. Parting Gift
I am Night, you are Flower. As long as you were a bud
Covering the dark sky, awake, hiding you on my breast
I kept watch on you with my legion of constellations.
As you blossomed with that beautiful juvenile face,
Dawn came, my term was over.
The nocturnal intimacy was rent by light.
You belong to the world now; bees humming all around
Resound in overtones of awe;
Birds sing, the wind blows; currents of felicity
Perplex the sprouting life.
I never possessed so much light and happiness
And song and life, I had offered
Mere sleep, mere peace, an affectionate quiet,
Merely a vigilant gaze, mere dialogue from mind to mind.
Did I offer nothing more ? When greedy dawn
Looked at you, in hundred voices hundreds of birds
Uttered your name, a drop of dew at that moment
Fell from mine eyes to yours. I disappeared.
That drop of melancholy, the parting gift
Will protect keeping moist your youthful face
From the glare of delight; flashing on that tear of Night
The smile of dawn will impart a peerless grace
Turning more beautiful your beauty in bloom.
[Manasi, ‘Mind-born Muse’, 1890][4]
12. Modesty
I have surrendered all –
My heart, my life –
Only retaining modesty for myself.
Night and day with precaution
Watching my own self
Carefully I keep myself covert.
O my Friend, this transparent raiment
Taunts me incessantly,
I cannot wear it always :
With a slanting glance
Secretly You smile
And it drives me sick with shame.
When the west wind ruffles
A flap of my robe,
I cannot control it,
Athirst for rapture
My heart animates the limbs
Before I get suddenly aware.
When I feel suffocated
Within my four walls,
Undoing half of my clothing
I sit by the window,
In the pleasant breeze of twilight
To forget myself for a while.
Beams of the full moon
Come to faint
On these blossoms of youth,
My love-laden limbs
Conceal them with a smile
Under their veil of grace.
Playful the wind blows
On my face, my breast and my hair,
Perfuming the air with flowers :
When you appear
As though in a dream,
I can recall nothing more.
Stop, O Friend, now spare
This trifle, do not rob it
Let me keep this modesty for myself,
Remnant of everything else
Let this shame be
Capable of hiding it imperfectly.
Eyes replete with tears
Do not you grudge me,
I too have wept for nights;
I fail to explain why
Having offered everything
I attach all of it with shame :
Why do I conceal
This bit from you,
Slightly turning my face away ?
I am not at all diffident,
Nor even am I jocular,
I am not toying with you.
In this night of springtide
Enjoy the fragrance, enjoy the honey
Tenderly gazing at my face.
Call me with soft names,
Rock me on all sides,
Respecting only this stem.
Counting on it alone,
With such sweetness
I remain blooming for you,
In this seduction
My limbs are bathed with
A youthful grace :
Such a frolic with the wind
Through all hours night and day
A fair of vernal flowers.
Listen, O Friend, now listen :
Everything will be yours,
Spare only my modesty.
[Sonar Tari, “The Golden Bark”, 1893]
13. Impromptu
On my lap the lute had been tuned,
Varied melodies crowded my mind,
I had never imagined
That the string would sever.
Blow out the lamp today, I pray,
Close the door :
Cancelling the concert, disperse
O my heart.
I have not been able
To fulfil all that you wished :
Who knew that the string would break
Before the music was over.
I had hoped to pour out my mind
Flooding in ten directions[5] :
Blended with fragrance and joy
The full moon night would be fuller.
I had hoped you all would come
And sit all around,
You would bedeck after the music
My neck with garlands,
I would spend up all my speech
All my tales :
I had never imagined
That the string would sever.
Today onward, have mercy, all of you
Forget everything, return home :
Do not take me to task
For my interruption.
I want by this evening
In silence, all alone
Sleep on the floor
Fainted, mute.
I long for a peace without glory,
A serene darkness.
Much before all music could be played,
The string severed.
[Chitra[6], “The Painted Woman”, 1895]
14. Urvashi[7]
Neither mother, nor daughter, nor even wife, beautiful and fair,
Urvashi, inhabitant of Paradise !
When the pasture is in twilight, by draping your weary limbs in a golden robe
You do not appear at the edge of a household to light the evening lamp,
The feet entwined with hesitation, bashful you do not enter a nuptial bed
By a silent midnight.
Unveiled like the rising dawn
You are beyond all shame.
Budding within yourself like a stemless flower,
Urvashi, when did you blossom !
You emerged out of the churned ocean on a morning of primitive Spring,
Carrying a pitcher of nectar on your right and venom on the left,
The great sea lay prostrate like a spell-bound viper
With hundreds and millions of hoods
Bended at your feet.
Lily-white all naked, worshipped by kings among gods,
You are beyond blame.
Have you never been a burgeoning adolescent,
Urvashi, with eternal youth !
Whose was the home where you sat alone below the dark waters
Busy in a childish play with gems and pearls,
Lamps of jewel lighting the dwelling with echoes of the surges singing,
Whose was the lap where on a couch of corals
You slept.
When you woke up to the world, in full maturity,
In plenteous youth.
From age to age you are the beloved of the world,
Urvashi, in unprecedented glamour !
Roused from trance the sages offer at your feet the fruits of their quest,
A side glance from you drives the three worlds bubbling with youth,
The blind breeze blows on all sides with your maddening scent,
Like a bee satiated with honey, the poet, enchanted, moves about in lust
With an impetuous song.
The anklets ringing, a passionate veil,
O lightning-quick.
Exulted in rapture when you dance in the assembly of gods,
O undulating Urvashi,
Beat by beat, a team of waves set to dancing in the sea,
The veil of the earth starts trembling on the spikes of corn,
Stars shoot down the lace from your breast all around the sky :
All of a sudden man feels rapt inside his heart,
While boils his blood.
Unexpectedly your girdle is rent at the horizon,
O surprised soul.
Dawn personified, you stand on the sun-rise peak of Heaven,
Urvashi, O enticer of the spheres !
The corporeality of your frame is laved by the tears of the world,
Your crimson feet have been painted with the blood of the triune realms[8].
Space-clad and wind-blown locks, you have posed your lotus feet
At the heart of the blossoming lotus of cosmic desire
Most delicately :
Eternal reveller in the psychic paradise of men,
O companion of dreams.
Listen, on all sides the sky is longing for you,
Urvashi, O cruel, O deaf !
Will the ancient primitive world ever return on earth ?
Drenched hair, will it rise any more from the depthless sea ?
Will that first silhouette appear on that first of dawns,
All your limbs weeping, having hurt the universal eye,
Causing to shed tears :
Suddenly the great waters will be rocked
By an uncommon song.
No more, it will return no more : that moon of glamour has set,
Urvashi dwells on the peak of the setting sun !
Therefore in the midst of men’s springtime festivity today
Blows the prolonged sigh of someone’s perennial separation,
On full moon nights when all sides are invaded by laughter,
A distant memory from somewhere plays a nostalgic flute :
Causing to shed tears.
Yet hope lingers in the whining of the heart :
O untameable.
[Chitra, “The Painted Woman”, 1895]
15. God, Forsaken
Inside God’s temple a veteran devotee
Was busy turning his beads night and day
When in the evening with dust-covered limbs
Therein entered a poor man weary and naked.
He uttered in plight : “I have no home,
Have pity and find me a corner here.”
Full of compunction, the devotee replied :
“Be off, impious, rid me of your presence.”
He accepted : “So I go !” And in no time
The beggar assumed the Divine’s form.
Sighing, the devotee gasped : “What a deceit, O Lord !”
The God said : “You have turned me out.
I move on throughout the world in disguise of the poor,
I feel at home when the homeless finds a shelter.”
[Chaitali[9], "Late Spring", 1896]
16. Duty
My servant did not turn up in the morning.
The door remains open ajar. No water waiting for my bath,
The imbecile was absent last night.
I do not know where He keeps my clean clothes,
Nor how to prepare my breakfast!
The clock goes on tick tocking In extreme annoyance
I wait for my turn to censure him.
Very late, at last He appears with a salute
And stands with folded hands.
At the top of my anger I bid him : “Get out,
I do not want to see you any more.”
On hearing this, dumb-founded For a very short while
He gazes at my face,
Before uttering in a broken voice : “In the dead of last night
My little daughter is dead.”
Immediately, on announcing this He takes the duster on his shoulder
To attend his lonely chore.
Like all other days Scrubbing, cleaning, sweeping, all
He leaves nothing undone.[10]
[Chaitali, "Late Spring", 1896]
17. Warning to Civilisation
Give us back that forest, take this city away,
Take away all this iron, brick, wood and stone,
O young civilisation ! All-devouring, O merciless,
Give back that sacred and shadowy hermitage,
Days immaculate, evenings spent in bathing,
That pasture, that solemn chanting of hymns,
Handfuls of that wild rice, that bark-made loin-cloth,
Plunged in the self, the accustomed dialogue
On the great principles. Inside your stony cage
We refuse a newfangled secure and regal feast :
We want liberty, we want vast wingspan,
We want to recover in the chest our strength,
We want to feel in the heart by shattering all bonds
The heart-beats of this endless universe.
[Chaitali, "Late Spring", 1896]
18. Princess Puntu
The noon of April keeps on lingering.
The earth is thirsty by the scorching day.
At such a moment I heard outside
Someone summoning : “Come, Princess Puntu.”
Near the solitary river-bank under midday heat
My curiosity cropped up by that affectionate voice.
On closing my book I rose leisurely,
Half opened the door to peep outside.
An enormous buffalo smeared with mud
Was waiting on the riverside with tender eyes.
Standing in the water, a young man was calling
For bathing her : “Come, O Princess Puntu !”
On gazing at that young man and gazing at his Princess
My amusement was moist with serenity.
[Chaitali, "Late Spring", 1896]
19. The Ignorant
Let those who with eyes closed wish to meditate
Acquire the knowledge whether the creation is real or an illusion.
In the meanwhile sitting with my insatiate gaze
I contemplate the creation in broad daylight.
[Chaitali, "Late Spring", 1896]
20. The Muse[11]
You have not been created by God alone, O Woman,
Man has moulded you by culling from within
Your beauty. An assembly of poets
Weave a web with golden threads of similes,
By superimposing an ever-new glamour on you
Sculptors go on immortalising your image.
Ever so many hues and perfumes and ornaments –
Pearls from oceans and gold from mines,
Wreathes of flowers from springtime woods,
Insects shed their lives to redden your feet.[12]
Bestowing on you modesty and decoration and garments
He has rarefied you by concealing.
An ardent desire deflecting on you,
By half you are human, and imagination by half.
[Chaitali, "Late Spring", 1896]
21. True Relation
The infatuated pumpkin considers
Its bamboo trellis to be a mythical aeroplane.[13]
By contempt never looks down on earth,
Saluting as brothers the moon, the sun and the stars.
Convinced to be a celestial being,
It sighs while contemplating the Void.
It thinks that only the stem, too coarse,
Clings it to the earth as its kith and kin.
In no time, once getting rid of that stem
It can soar at will to its luminous sphere.
Once the stem severed, it understood well
The sun is not its relative, the earth is its all in all.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
22. Rivalry
There was contest between a hornet and a bee,
Both disputing to determine who was the stronger.
The hornet argued : there are thousand proofs
That you cannot sting as hard as I do.
The bee remained speechless with tearful eyes.
The Goddess of the forest came to whisper in her ears :
Why are you crestfallen ? It is true, O Child,
You lag behind in poison, but you are victorious in honey.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
23. Diplomacy
The axe proposed : I beg of you, O Sal[14] !
I have no handle, spare me a branch.
As soon as the branch took the shape of a handle,
The beggar forgot to think anymore :
It started hewing the trunk right from the root,
The poor Sal lost its notion of beginning and end.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
24. Relationship
A kerosene flame threatens the oil lamp :
If you call me brother, I shall throttle you.
Meanwhile, as the moon rises in the sky,
The kerosene calls out : Welcome, big brother !
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
25. Gift of the humble
The desert regrets : You bring so much water for me, a poor creature,
What can I offer you in return ? I possess nothing !
Replies the cloud : I ask nothing, O desert,
You grant me the pleasure of making you a gift.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
26. Transmission
Who will continue my work ? asked the setting sun.
The world remained speechless as an image.
The oil lamp in the corner replied : O Lord,
I shall execute the little I can.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
27. The Mystery
The flute admits : I cannot take any pride,
It is the breath alone that turns me eloquent.
The breath adds : I am void, I am mere wind :
Nobody quite knows who the real player is.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
28. The Hidden Cause
Secretly in the bower, from branch to twig,
Having set the buds to bloom, disappears Night.
On awakening, the flowers claim : We are blossoms of Dawn !
Eloquent, Dawn replies : There is no error in it.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
29. Restrain, Truth
Dream proclaims : I am free, I do not follow
Any injunction… Truth replies : Therefore you are vain.
Dream proclaims : You are bound with countless chains.
Truth replies : Therefore people call me Truth.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
30. Life
Birth and death both are plays of this life
Just as walking consists of stepping up and down.
[Kanika, “Morsels”,1899]
[1] Sumeru : “A fabulous mountain in the navel or centre of the earth, on which is situated Swarga, the Heaven…” (John Dowson, Hindu Mythology, 10th Edition, 1961, p.208)
[2] Young Durgâ, the Divine Bride, exclusively surrendered to Shiva her spouse
[3] Eros in Indian literature ; the word means ‘deprived of body’
[4] Composed on board the Tames (25 October, 1890) on his return trip from Europe, while crossing the Red Sea ; Tagore recognises that originally the poem had been written in English by his friend Lokendranath Palit.
[5] East, West, North, South, their intersections, the Zenith and the Nadir
[6] 14th among the 27 constellations – wives of the Moon, a god – situated at the south of the zodiac, corresponding to the Alpha of Virgo; it represents the second half of the 12th month (Chaitra) in Bengali calendar.
[7] Heavenly nymph (apsaras) born of the thigh of Narayana; prototype of Beauty, she is reputed to have been wooed by the gods Mitra and Varuna : their wrath caused by her refusal exiled her on earth. She is supposed to be the mother of Agastya and Vasistha. Kalidasa the great has immortalised her love for the king Pururavas in his opus Vikramorvashi.
[8] The Nether world, the Earth and Heaven
[9] « Written in Chaitra » (the last month of the Bengali year and the tail end of Spring)
[10] In a letter dated 14 August 1895, from Shilaidah, Tagore mentioned how one morning he had got crossed with his khansama’s coming late; having informed him of his daughter’s death, the man had silently resumed his chores. Elsewhere Tagore recognised that the functional distance that had existed between them was lifted at once, in the solidarity of two men, both of them fathers of young daughters.
[11] Manasi, ”She who is born out of Manas” : in Indian Philosophy, Manas is the 6th Sense which precedes and guides the five others
[12] Lac (alaktak or alta) , secreted by an insect, used as cosmetics
[13] Pushpaka ratha, in the epics
[14] Shorea robusta Gaetern, tall and robust trees : the leaves are used for packing eatables.
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MRINALINI'S CHOICE -
Fruit Gathering http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/tagore/frutgath.htm
POEM XXXVII
Upagupta, the disciple of Buddha, lay asleep on the dust by the city wall of Mathura.
Lamps were all out, doors were all shut, and stars were all hidden by the murky sky of August.
Whose feet were those tinkling with anklets, touching his breast of a sudden?
He woke up startled, and the light from a woman's lamp struck his forgiving eyes.
It was the dancing girl, starred with jewels, clouded with a pale-blue mantle, drunk with the wine of her youth.
She lowered her lamp and saw the young face, austerely beautiful.
"Forgive me, young ascetic," said the woman; "graciously come to my house. The dusty earth is not a fit bed for you."
The ascetic answered, "Woman, go on your way; when the time is ripe I will come to you."
Suddenly the black night showed its teeth in a flash of lightning.
The storm growled from the corner of the sky, and the woman trembled in fear.......
The branches of the wayside trees were aching with blossom.
Gay notes of the flute came floating in the warm spring air from afar.
The citizens had gone to the woods, to the festival of flowers.
From the mid-sky gazed the full moon on the shadows of the silent town.
The young ascetic was walking in the lonely street, while overhead the lovesick koels urged from the mango branches their sleepless plaint.
Upagupta passed through the city gates, and stood at the base of the rampart.
What woman lay in the shadow of the wall at his feet, struck with the black pestilence, her body spotted with sores, hurriedly driven away from the town?
The ascetic sat by her side, taking her head on his knees, and moistened her lips with water and smeared her body with balm.
"Who are you, merciful one?" asked the woman.
"The time, at last, has come to visit you, and I am here," replied the young ascetic.
O FOOL
O Fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders!
O beggar, to come beg at thy own door!
Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all,
and never look behind in regret.
Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath.
It is unholy---take not thy gifts through its unclean hands.
Accept only what is offered by sacred love.
VOCATION
When the gong sounds ten in the morning and I walk to school by our
lane.
Every day I meet the hawker crying, "Bangles, crystal
bangles!"
There is nothing to hurry him on, there is no road he must
take, no place he must go to, no time when he must come home.
I wish I were a hawker, spending my day in the road, crying,
"Bangles, crystal bangles!"
When at four in the afternoon I come back from the school,
I can see through the gate of that house the gardener digging
the ground.
He does what he likes with his spade, he soils his clothes
with dust, nobody takes him to task if he gets baked in the sun or
gets wet.
I wish I were a gardener digging away at the garden with
nobody to stop me from digging.
Just as it gets dark in the evening and my mother sends me to
bed,
I can see through my open window the watchman walking up and
down.
The lane is dark and lonely, and the street-lamp stands like
a giant with one red eye in its head.
The watchman swings his lantern and walks with his shadow at
his side, and never once goes to bed in his life.
I wish I were a watchman walking the streets all night,
chasing the shadows with my lantern.
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