Tagore's Demon Love - V

 The death of the young daughter-in-law of Bengals's first family threatened to and did in fact draw out tales from the woodwork. The fact the Jyotindranath and Kadambari's marriage was loveless was a known fact. Within Jorasanko, Kadambari was never allowed to forget the fact that she had failed to provide an heir to her husband. Post her death, all of a sudden this angle was elevated to  centre stage, more so as she had adopted a relative's child after more than a decade of childlessness. However the child had died and it was stressed that this had led Kadambari to depression, in addition to Rabi's marriage and her own marital failures. A woman who had overflowed with music and poetry, a lover of nature and flowers had been suddenly cast into the light of a raving manic depressive to explain away her suicide.

 

However, there was another story that circulated like wild fire, but died in the aftermath of Rabindra's ascent as Rabindranth Tagore, the Nobel Laureate, the Shakespearean bard of Bengal and India's first international intellectual mammoth. It was rumoured that Kadambari, who had endured a loveless marriage for more than a decade and had been deemed infertile by the Jorasanko crowd for her childlessness was in fact at the time of her suicide, pregnant. And a scandal of epic proportions and consequences about to erupt such that would besmirch the Tagore name for generations. One can only imagine, the toll such a predicament, even sans the societal consequences would have taken on a long suffering woman. Of course this is all speculation and conjecture until we examine the finer details of the incident that strongly support this theory.

For one, why would the Tagore family in an open case of suicide, suppress all the facts and even record in their ledger that an amount of 52 Rupees was spent to do so ?  And why, in a case of known opium overdose was the coroner's report and the suicide letter destroyed ?  Did both these mandatory documents contain a fact that was deemed so dangerous as to require a blatant suppression of the regular suicide formalities by open bribery  ?   But the annihilation of documents didn't stop there. Kadambari's journals, her own written poetry and  countless books were destroyed. Even today her room in Jorasanko is an attic closed to the public whereas the rest is open to tourists. Why single out a family member for such open venomous disdain ? More so one whom the most prodigal son constantly continued to credit his work to ?

Again, the above arguments remain in the realm of speculation. Until we turn to Bhanu Simha, Rabindra himself for answers. If we are to move logically in the light of Rahur Prem and his constant dedications of his work to Lady He - it is most logical to assume that Rabindra would have hinted at such a powerful fact of his relationship through his work ?

Indeed, he did.

In one of his novels Jogajog, the lead heroine by the name of Kumudini is a passionate woman, trapped by pregnancy, torn in a conflict between love and social honor. Not only is the name Kumudini eerily similar to Kadambari, BOTH these Hindi names mean White Lotus and imply the goddess Saraswati ! 

But let's go back to 1884. Post Kadambari's death Rabindra himself slipped into suicidal depression and took 3 years to recover. His own words express his turmoil ...

""That there could be any gap in the unbroken procession of the joys and sorrows of life was a thing I had no idea of. I could therefore see nothing beyond, and this life I had accepted as all in all. When of a sudden death came and in a moment made a gaping rent in its smooth-seeming fabric, I was utterly bewildered. All around, the trees, the soil, the water, the sun, the moon, the stars, remained as immovably true as before; and yet the person who was as truly there, who, through a thousand points of contact with life, mind, and heart, was ever so much more true for me, had vanished in a moment like a dream. What perplexing self-contradiction it all seemed to me as I looked around! How was I ever to reconcile that which remained with that which had gone?

The terrible darkness which was disclosed to me through this rent, continued to attract me night and day as time went on. I would ever and anon return to take my stand there and gaze upon it, wondering what there was left in place of what had gone. Emptiness is a thing man cannot bring himself to believe in; that which is not, is untrue; that which is untrue, is not. So our efforts to find something, where we see nothing, are unceasing.  ""

In fact this emptiness would be his lifelong friend, erupting as bouts of depression that would be accompanied by feverish creative output. The Rahur Prem that had erupted in his heart and found expression in the form of Kadambari now turned inward and become both his demon and his drive.For if there was one thing, that he knew that would please the living and the dead Kadambari it was the Word, in verse or prose. The innumerable heroines  who dominate his stories and novels are all blatant doppelgangers of Kadambari. They, very often are socially isolated, unloved by their husbands, childless and deemed sexually dangerous by their families and society.  As if Rabindra was trying, feverishly to exorcise the woman who ceasing to be a human had come to possess him through his obsessive love for her.

Even in his seventies, Rabindra admitted to artist Nandalal Bose that Kadambari's eyes lay behind the hundreds of haunting portraits of women he painted in old age.  Sigmund Freud himself was invited  to look into his obsessive compulsions with his muse. His dreams and nightmares were an unchanging landscape where Kadambari continued to engulf him as Rahu. And if you still have any more doubts examine these paintings  by Rabindra in  sequence.

 

Perhaps there is little that is as precious or as poisonous as the obsessive love that can erupt as a flame in a man's heart when his soul is so touched by a woman. That Tagore loved, lost and carried the cross for life is one of those bittersweet ironies. Because if this tragic tale of love and loss hadn't played out we wouldn't have the thousands of priceless poems, songs, stories, novels and sketches.

Tis better to have loved and lost. Than to never have loved at all ......

Tagore's Demon Love - IV

Maharishi Tagore, beloved spiritual leader for the time aspired that Rabi be the first barrister in the family and soon he was dispatched to England.  Here Tagore's eldest sister-in-law and his niece and nephew who were close to him in age, were sent to live with him and keep him company - an uncharacteristic move considering the same thoughtfulness had been absent for most of his childhood. Perhaps to ensure that he didn't leave school out of home-sickness. Or possibly, the family  had awakened to his extraordinary bond with Kadambari and wanted to ensure he didn't run back to her and resume a path that would lead to the unthinkable. Nevertheless,  after reading briefly at University college Tagore left school yet again for an independent study. He returned in 1880 without the degree his father had hoped, but resolute in his ambition to blend European novelty with Brahmo customs. He moved in with his elder brother and Kadambari yet again.


There is no information on his activities in the three years spanning his return to Kolkata in 1880 until 1883. That is the year when things finally came to a steam. The calculated silence of the Tagore family and the absence of data seem to indicate that the three years following his disappointing return sans education were one during something so powerful had happened as to warrant a blackout. All we know is that in 1883, one fine day the Maharishi summoned Tagore to see him in Shimla. No one knows what happened but a few days later Rabi was married to a hastily procured bride, a child of one of their estate hands. An illiterate, uncultured 10 year old who was dispatched to a Loreto convent immediately for education.

Two months following this hasty marriage Rabindra published his next collection of poems and songs under the title " Chabi O Gaan " . As in the past and as would be in the future, this book was also dedicated to Lady He. What Kadambari felt about his marriage is unclear. Some say that she herself was involved in the selection of Bhabatarini, hoping that a thin, unattractive girl would be rejected by Rabi but was taken aback by his acceptance and had spiralled into depression. Some say she was the one person in the Tagore Manor who was uninterested in seeing him get married or being of aid in the matter. But all the above are mere speculations and fade in the light of a poem that was included in Rabi's first book post  marriage.


Rahur Prem.


Rahu, in Hindu mythology is the name of the demon who swallows the moon as eclipse through his shadow. Ponder, if you will the lyrics of this poem ....


"I am your companion from the beginning of time, for I am your own shadow. 
In your laughter, in your tears, you shall sense my dark self hovering near you, now in front, now behind.
 At the dead of night when you are lonely and dejected, you’ll be startled to find how near I am seated by you, gazing into your face


Wherever you turn, you will see me. My shadow will taper off to the sky but it will enshroud the whole world. 
My miserable voice and sinister smile will resound in all directions because I am the hunger never appeased, the thirst never quenched.
 I am always there, a dagger in your breast, a poison in your mind, a disease in your body.


Just as the night comes at the end of the day, I am behind you and that is your destiny".
("Rahu"s love).


Imagine, if you will, a woman trapped in a loveless, childless marriage, perhaps broken hearted at the marriage of her childhood lover. Imagine her inner turbulence caused by a dilemma of the highest moral order, her increasingly feeble attempts at propriety. Her  self-denial and helplessness in  fighting off the passion of her childhood playmate, friend and soul mate.


 Then imagine, this woman reading the verse above.


For the first time in the history of poetry, a bard had compared the all-consuming obsessive love that blossoms between two souls with the consumption of the beautiful, virginal moon by the shadow of the eclipse, the demon Rahu. Here, unlike his earlier romantic works there was no talk of sentiments. Rahu's love is not the platonic love of friends or playmates.


Rahu's Love is the insatiable hunger of frustrated desire, pursuing the object of it's passion ,as dark as his own shadow self. The imagery that Rabindra used in this poem was not only crude and sordid, it was blatant to the point of mockery. Whether directed at his father and family or at Kadambari herself we will never know. But we have to be blind to not know that the poem was a counter assault in response to his forced marriage and separation from his beloved.


Through this poem Rabi the boy was asserting the end of his boyhood romanticism and tenderness that marked his poems. Gone was the shy boy whose poems spoke of platonic and universal love. Rahu's love, his declaration of his inner self was his war cry. Rahu's love, declares that it is the love that is all consuming, devoid of discipline and kindness towards the moon, the object of passion.  He declares that he will hang about her, his dark love a knot that will never be untied, his ruthless desire to consume her again and again in his shadow will be an iron chain fastened to her feet. Whether she likes him or not, there is no escape for her, for his shadow is her fate, her companion and soul mate since the beginning of time.


Hekate, the moon goddess however would have the last say over the love of the Demon, she wouldn't be the prisoner of his desire. She would change her fate. She would end her inner conflict between love and family honour on her own terms, leaving Rahu, Bhanu Simha, Rabi and Ravindra, all composites of her  soulmate in an agony worse than death.







Two months after the publication of Rahur Prem, Jorasanko manor was shaken to it's core when it's young, beautiful 25 year old daughter-in-law took her own life through an opium overdose and Rabindra's criticism of his family business as Death Trade became the greatest irony of his life.

Tagore's Demon Love - III

She quickly became his first and only childhood playmate. And if you believe in coincidences it was at this point that Tagore's first poem was written. Nevertheless, his abstinence from schooling and determined avoidance of  education remained unchanged. With death of his mother at 13, his playmate graduated to the responsibility of being little Rabi's caretaker. She would cook tasty dishes for him. Most of all her aplomb in handling this problem child is revealed by her one move that Rabi would recollect for years. She loved books, both prose and poetry and every time she procured a new one she would send for the maverick who hated school books to read one to her while she fanned herself.


Tagore recollects   "  No electric fans were available that time. While I was reading aloud, I was tickled by the soft swish of wind coming from my sister-in-law's fan.


The touch of the wind on my face had an extraordinary aroma". 

One of his innumerable sketches of women include this moment, such was the effect on him, decades later.
Such was her expertise in handling him with affection as well as her subtle manipulation in keeping him in check. " Neither your looks nor your poetry impress me." was her disdainful retort if ever he seemed arrogant or precocious.


  Rabi, after the death of his mother was now nurtured by the affection of this playmate and friend with whom he shared so many passions. As like him, Kadambari loved nature and birds, even turning the terrace into a beautiful garden. She was a voracious reader and she and Rabi spent many an hour nose deep in literature, poetry and music. She was the first to read his poems and dispelled his shyness in sharing his poetry. But as is the case with any two souls who share such levels of intimacy over the years, their relationship, as their adolescence progressed was evolving into an alchemical resonance. 


Rabi now started calling her He, for Hekate, the primordial Graeco-Roman goddess of the Moon, the goddess who held dominion over all things feminine and yin. Even to the novice this nomenclature of his friend reveals the metamorphosis of a platonic equation - when one considers that Ravindra's own name means, literally, Sun-God !!!. 


And Kadambari herself started calling him by the name Bhanu-Simha ( Sun-Lion). This was the name under which Tagore published his first book of poems in 1877  at the age of 16 rather than his own given name. And the dedication of the book , translated from Bengali reads ...


" For Lady He "

Was the metamorphosis of this erstwhile trouble maker who had escaped school after prestigious school rooted in his desire to please the one woman, the one soul who had cared for him and showered her nurturing and affection ? For if there was one thing Bhanu knew that pleased Hekate, it was the Word, prose or poem, followed by song and music. In fact his first poem that he showed Kadambari, shyly, celebrated the love between Radha and Krishna and it was she who goaded him to explore and display his talent.


Platonic yet precariously perched on the line of propriety, morality and societal norms, their bond was starting to attract attention within the Jorasanko crowd. Those who had never really cared or paid attention to this immensely gifted child subject to bullying by servants, friendless, trapped in a palace,  now became aware of him. Thanks to a child bride who had helped him blossom by being his playmate, friend, sister and mother, who was ignored all this while but now because of their chemistry was attracting attention and criticism. Rabi's escape from a prestigious European college and back into Kadambari's company was nothing but a prelude to an explosion waiting to happen. 

Tagore's Demon Love Part II

The name Tagore is synonymous with creativity infused with unnatural contemplation. It is also synonymous with the Word, prose,poem or song - for all Bengalis and the average cultured Indian. Few can hope to parallel Rabindranath's output and stature, his status as a polymoth through his work and his background as one of the Brahmo Samaj royalty shaped much of educated Indian thought in his age. To think that such a literary genius despised schooling and the mechanical assembly process that passes for education !

Born to a family of untold riches and unsurpassed intellectual genius, the young Rabi's grandfather, Prince Dwarkanath Tagore was a trader of opium and dined with Victorian royalty, amongst the first Indians to travel Europe.  Ravindra called their family business " Death Trade " - an irony that will be revealed by this series.His own father, inheritor of this fiefdom chose to follow his spiritual calling and founded the Brahmo Samaj, an institution  that was an instrument of intellectual, moral and spiritual Renaissance for the contemporary Bengal. He was called Maharishi by the populace, such was his zeal and he retired to the Himalayas for months at a time.  Father to 13 children, of whom many turned to literature and the arts and became pioneers, he begot Ravindra as his youngest son. Their home was a lavish manor called Jorasanko, a staggeringly expansive collection of wings and mansions that housed the large Tagore joint family, it was their own version of the Buckingham palace and they the undisputed first family of Bengal.

Surrounded by poverty and prostitution, the neighbourhood was not something a child was allowed to venture and least of all have friends to play with. On the other hand, the age gap between him and his siblings was too disparate. The young Rabi, was a prince trapped in a bubble, with no child to play within Jorasanko. Schools were chosen for him and he escaped all of them successfully, his aversion to mechanical education was even pronounced at that young age. Reacting to his stifling home environment and lack of a real childhood he was bullied by the servants and would later acidly term that phase " Servocracy". His head would be dunked in water to discipline him and he would be confined to chalk circles. One can almost laugh out loud at the thought of this  paragon of learning being such a handful and  relegated like Sita to a line he wasn't to cross.

But his life changed irrevocably when the 9 year old bride of his older brother entered Jorasanko as the latest daughter-in-law and his sister- in-law.






Kadambari.


The White Lotus, synonymous with the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music and the fine arts.

Tagore's Demon Love

As I grew up reading his poems and soaking in his effulgence, even in that pre-adolescent phase the undertones of disappointment in his poems never escaped me. Tagore's love poems, under layers of romance,passion and erotic drama almost always have an undercurrent of regret, disappointment and sadness. 
Sample the lines ...
..... How can the body touch the flower that only the spirit may touch ?
......Free me from the bonds of your sweetness, my love! ... Free me from your spells, and give me back my manhood to offer you my  freed heart ...


In more than a few thousand poems, stories and songs that explore the intricate dynamics between lovers, Tagore's always seemed to return time and time again to explore the deathly bondage that hides in erotic attachments and the spiritual tests that can wreak havoc on mere mortals in the garb of the sweetest, most innocent romance. As it is with bards, writers and geniuses of all shapes and forms, this strain of sorrow seemed somehow to form the crux of this artist who won us a Nobel and inspired doppelgangers in Latin America and Spain and possibly many other places.


It was my trip to Shantiniketan that finally once and for all laid bare the mystery shrouding my beloved bard. 


A poem next to the portrait of a  beautiful women, full of love,hope and goodness - in short an exception.

I have made you the pole star of my life,
I shall never lose my way in this sea.


Wherever I go,You always shine in my view
And shed light from your anxious eyes.


Secretly in my mind,Your image is always alive 
I lose my mind,When I lose your sight.


When my heart wants to stray,Along a wrong way
Your remembrance fills it with shame.


The first reading of this unfamiliar verse filled me with the lightness of spring and I hungrily devoured the portrait and the eulogy next to it.  


Kadambari Tagore, Muse and Mentor. Sister-in-law.


I couldn't wait to unravel this puzzle .... To think it was this woman, who Tagore declared his muse and the force behind his work, thus implying her hand in the undercurrent of the frustrated, melancholic and dark erotica behind his life's work. A huge portion of it, at least.


A mystery I unravelled in the days to come, through research, discussions and reasoning so as to arrive at a coherent if closely speculative simulation and understanding of this enigma..... 

Adventures of a Single,Female Backpacker - VII

Shantiniketan Calling




I remember I was a 10 year old when I first found out there was a school where classes were conducted under the shade of margosa trees, the names of flowers were learnt from observation rather than rote, children were taught to sing as the birds that surrounded them and competition was an absent entity. I begged,pleaded and whined to no avail. My parents couldn't bear the thought of sending away their only daughter to a school on the opposite end of the nation. In a village nonetheless. My father was unamused.  Ambitious parents dreamt of an American or British education for their budding prodigies and here I was begging to be educated under a tree in a village.

Flash forward to 2012. I am walking towards the gates that contain the life I so longingly begged for, the masterpiece of my most admired cultural polymoth. Tagore's undying legacy in the form of an educational institution coloured in his vision and sensibility even to this day. I could only watch the goings on of the school from outside as is policy. A bunch of third graders were frolicking around a tree between classes. Another group under another tree had a music class while a third was studiously nodding at a blackboard I couldn't read. All the while the contrast between the sterile,walled education I endured and this free, liberated and human environment was glaring me in the face. 


Tagore was an anti-traditionalism, anti-structure rebel much unlike his paternal visage and cultural role. He despised classical structures and anything that stood in the way of universal humanism  aspiring to blend the best of the East and West thanks to his brief stint at a British educational institution . Be it a stifling classroom that  functioned like an assembly line or an educational system that was founded on conformity. His own college education was a single day at the Presidency College which was his last. I can only imagine him walking out it's gates fuming and defiantly decided as to his course of action.

 As I walk past the breathtaking mural work that adorns the many buildings of his Art Institute Kala Bhavan I can visualise his satisfied profile. Students cycle past me in traditional Bengali garb around a university that had churned out many of our nation's most prolific artists and thinkers. There is no sound of the bell signalling the clockwork of a routine in action. Many are gathered under trees in like minded groups discussing things that I in Mumbai never had time or space for and neither did my friends. Once again, confronted by moments and experiences that were stolen from me ....

Adventures of a Single, Female Backpacker - VI

My time in Bolpur, home to the legendary Shantiniketan was spent like an idyllic hour at an opera. Thanks to the efforts of my friend I had procured a room, nay a cottage on the bank of a lake with a deer park on the other shore. Nirvana !!!

My journey in a passenger local was an exciting ride, the sights and smells of an India that is missing from our cities. I spent 3 hours savouring local delicacies courtesy the vendors and downing cups of lemon tea that is the local speciality. By the time I landed in Bolpur and my forest getaway I was well and truly disconnected from ... well ... everything. Bolpur, timeless and ethereal has a charm that eludes our travels to places like Dubai and Bangkok. As if the view of the lake was not seductive enough, morning brought with it a species of Siberian birds, gracefully feeding on the fish and resuming a nirvanic asana on lotus stalks post feeding. I was watching the whole exercise open mouthed while my morning coffee lying untouched.


My lunch at a roadside eatery was the condition on which my trip was planned by my friend. There was a list of eateries to visit and a list of items to try. My meal on a leaf, rice with vegetables and a cold sprite was .... surreally simple yet divine. Of course as a Mumbaikar my tryst with street food can fill pages. But this was different. I was not grabbing a bite to rush off somewhere. I felt like I had come from nowhere and had nowhere to go. Then came my trip around the Shantiniketan grounds.


Bari after beautiful bari .... divinely simple sculptures by legendary artists, artifacts and relics from Tagore's life ..all added up to an afternoon I will never forget. Most stirring of all was to read the poem that Tagore dedicated to his muse, the love of his life Kadambari ... his pole star and light. Their tragic romance will be, has to be discussed for it's sheer prosaic drama and tragedy. All of which added up in creating the Tagore  we all grew to love and admire. The genius who won the hearts of many around the world had his own broken into pieces. But then, if it weren't for tragedy where would all the great artists be ?


 A collection of Shantiniketan images ...