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 ...

Who moved my trees II ?

Take a look at the almost - Kwoi pond and guess where could I be ?


Obviously following from the last post you will guess it's yet another nook of my green,so green neighborhood.


No.


Look at the pics below and guess again.

After the neighborhood, it's time to see what a normal college in Kolkata looks like. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. Anyone who has been to Varanasi and taken the long, really long walk around the BHU campus knows what I am talking about. Fellow Podarites and sundry Mumbaikars. Colleges around the world are not always buildings with classrooms where bored students and their boring teachers saunter in and out of. Labs and libraries aren't always rooms and a garden is not a 10 feet by 25 feet plot with ugly grass and weeds interspersed with the odd flowers.If you look through colleges like the ones in the U.S. or Europe, the average college campus is the size of a small town, students cycle a kilometer to class, each subject has it's own building and group study does not mean greasy meals in the canteen but a group of students huddled together chewing on their pens in the shade of sturdy trees and well manicured gardens. Even at Benares Hindu University I was left with my jaw hanging at the well planned campus layout, the beautiful lawns and almost Boston-esque feel. 


I felt betrayed and cheated.


A die-hard romantic-quasi nature lover and pseudo intellectual, I would have died for a college experience that dripped the romance of cycling across campus, studying in the company of rose bushes and ogling crushes from behind the secure cover of trees. But just like our neighborhoods, our colleges are a real estate conspiracy. Even the older ones that could have demanded more land from the government settled for a hasty pudding because quite frankly if our homes aren't green why should our colleges be ? Why not allot the space to real estate developers who can actually squeeze every paisa's worth from every cubic millimeter. Why shoulder costs of scenic beauty and tranquility for a bunch of students ?


I pinched myself for the 10 th time as I sat strumming my Spanish Guitar under a tree next to a lotus  pond. I was let in the sprawling university campus adorned with graffiti, not so much as an ID check even as I clicked away to my hearts content. There were buildings for the Arts, Commerce and Science streams. And then when I came to the building that housed the Heat and Power Lab I felt like I had been slapped across my face. A building for experiments in heat and power, in the middle of prime South Kolkata property.


Friends, our government has made fools out of us, they have taken our basic rights and made a mockery of town and infrastructure planning. I doubt I will ever be able to look at our skyline with the same fondness now that I know I have been cheated out of simple natural beauty and space. 


Meanwhile,  I am waiting for Aamir to bring up this elephant of a fraud involving deep pockets and political mafia on his show. 


But I know the wait could be forever ......

Who moved my trees ?

Have a look at the scene above and guess where I could be ? Sample the ones below if you need more help. 


















..... Keep going at it .... No, not a hill station..... no, not a resort .... ........ Darjeeling ? Not yet, probably next month. ..... Keep going ....








This ladies and gentlemen is my .... neighborhood.













Yes, green, very green, highly oxygenated, bustling with the sounds of more than 200 bird species, my  strictly middle class neighbourhood. Lake Gardens. A planned development in the heart of South Kolkata . And literally that is what we have, two lakes and a whole lot of gardens, trees with varied colourful flowers on them that scent my morning walk. Lakes where birds take their early morning dips and meals, a rowing club where you can learn to row crew and solo...... All this at middle class property rates with a 5 minute walk to bus stops and metro stations. How did I get so lucky !!!




My fellow Mumbaiites - savour the flavour of our defrauded, oxygen deprived lives. Our land sharks and politicos have made sure we have a single row of ugly trees and plants on our roads and neighbourhoods, every other centimetre  of space is devoured to make ridiculously expensive apartments and complexes. Half the real estate in Central Mumbai is lying vacant. Our Mithi is a joke of a ecological blunder. The space these land grabbers can spare is allotted to our ugly, filthy slums a.k.a vote banks. Us, tax-paying, responsible citizens, we get a concrete jungle that we are expected to think is a thing of beauty.


 We take shallow breaths and spend the mornings in bed when we could have been strolling through gardens flushing ourselves with freshly squeezed morning oxygen.No, thats what we get when we make expensive trips to hill stations or Kerala, our cheeks flush with the pink of our deep, oxygenated breaths and we feel ... alive. That's what fresh air, low on carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and flush with oxygen does for us. 


Only we pay a premium price for what is our right.