Tagore in love with the Padma

Maswood Alam Khan

On the 16th May, 1893 Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bangla a letter to Indira Debi, his niece from his Kuthibari in Selaidah, Kushtia: "Often I wonder, will I ever be reborn under this sky studded with so many stars? If yes, will that be the same quiet evening in the same corner of Bangladesh where I could lie back on my cozy bed - satiated and carefree in my jollyboat floating on the placid Gorai river? I will perhaps never again meet this beauty of evening in my reincarnated life. Scenario would be changed. And then will I be in the same frame of mind? Who knows? Well, I might meet many an evening like this, but none of those, I am sure, would be like the tranquil evening that so lovingly alighted upon my chest embracing me with tufts of her dense hair spread out wide!”
   I am not sure whether any lady from Bangladesh will ever be crowned as a Miss World for her physical beauty. But, if there were a competition for a Mr. World who always visualised a lady in anything - a unpredictable river hurrying fast, an evening looming up or a patch of dark cloud with silvery frills floating in the azure sky - the golden crown would go to Rabindranath Tagore.
   The river Padma, to Tagore, was such a lady. Tagore even made his wife Mrinalini's life simply cheerless by his obsession with the river Padma so much so that Mrinalini compelled her husband to leave Selaidah for Calcutta on the excuse of their daughter's impending marriage with the hope that he would never come back to the Padma; after all, no lady wants her husband spending most of his creative time for anything or anybody outside of home. But this crazy guy bounced back to Padma time and again whenever there was a chance he could steal.
   The Padma was all in Tagore's life, dream and imagination. He fell in love with Padma when as a child visiting Selaidah he first found the frolicsome river behaving like a whimsical damsel--sometimes quiet, composed and drowsy and at other times restless, furious and hungry. It was in Selaidah, once a silent and remote hamlet, where Rabindranath as an adult first made an eye contact with Padma sleekly dressed in her red-bordered off-white silk 'shari'. All his life Tagore was infatuated with Padma. One year before his death while musing over his bygone days he wrote: "Selaidah with Padma, always skimming and smooching each other, was the only venerable place where first as an adolescent and later as an elderly I immersed myself to drink my literary nectar.”
   
   Song Offerings
   It was inside a small compact room on the second floor of Kuthibari where Rabindranath gleaned pearls from a select of his works and translated those into English in a collection titled "Song Offerings”, an English phrase he found for the Bangla counterpart "Gitanjali”. No Bangla word other than Gitanjali could better describe the assortment of his poems, but 'Songs Offerings' unfortunately could not convey the essence in the true sense of the term. What else can you find in English for Gitanjali? Nothing. The best option open to Tagore could perhaps be a formal consultation with Oxford University to coin "Gitanjali” itself as an English word to do justice to its deeper meaning.
   A foreigner eager to learn the meaning of Gitanjali must be with us for a couple of months and see for himself the degree of veneration by which a widow with sheer trepidation offers Pushpanjali (offerings of flowers) at the altar of an idol in a copper plate full of freshly plucked assorted flowers--her face completely veiled, drops of tears rolling down her cheeks, begging blessings from the Providence for an early cure of her only baby fighting death. Gitanjali or Pushpanjali, by the way, is not an offering like that of a fiance handing his new date a cut rose across a coffee table inside a crowded cafe.
   Translation usually dilutes emotions to a great extent and no translator under the sun can retain original density of feelings in its totality. Only Rabindranath Tagore perhaps could retain density of his emotional solution nearly 90 per cent as he personally sieved his works into English, a language of aliens who were different from Bengalis to the point of 180 degrees, if not more, in the early part of the last century when Tagore penned his works in English.
   Though poorer by more than 10 per cent than the original Bangla works the English version of 'Song Offerings' punched a heavyweight blow on those Nobel Prize jurists; their heads reeled, they couldn't believe their own eyes, they were stunned as they were poring over the writings of Gitanjali; they simply failed to find a better set of literature while choosing the best in 1913. A towering figure, a pair of rimless glasses partly hiding his mesmerizing eyes, emerged onto the global theatre of literature right from the shore of Padma.
   Bangla or English or French, no language can really express what we feel as we observe and imagine about life and its accompaniments to melody and tragedy. Literary prophets like Tagore simply painted some abstract sketches and dotted their cryptic messages with strokes of their brushes, pens and pencils half completing the picture; readers', singers', fans' and fanatics' fancy and imagination in fact conjured up the other half.
   Chander haashi baadh vengechhey, uchley porey aloo, o rajanigandhaa tomaar gandho shudhaa dhaloo (Floodgate of the moon's smile has been smashed apart; lights are spilling over. Oh Rajanigandhaa! pour out your fragrant ale). All these words of Tagore would have been like 'casting pearls before swine' if readers and singers and onlookers, however erudite, illiterate, foolish or idiot, were not impelled to peel their eyes wide open to rediscover the moon costumed in her new ornament of smile and sniff deep to inebriate themselves with smells of Rajanigandhaa (tuberose) sprinkled with a new intoxicant--all under the solemn nose of Tagore.
   Rabindranath Tagore was biologically born as a son of a zamindar at Jurashanko; but as a poet he was virtually born in Selaidah where between 1891 till 1921 he had his wings fully fledged to sour high above in the sky of literature. More than half of all his masterpieces, including those treasures that enriched him to win the Nobel Prize, were conceived, flowered and fruited in Selaidah when Padma was flowing at a stone's throw, only a quarter of a mile away. Rising and setting of sun and waxing and waning of moon over the horizon were the soul-throbbing sights Tagore used to relish from the 2 nd floor of his Kuthibari as he trained his gaze far away in the north to a thin line of stream he could well recognize: 'his darling Padma'.
   Kuthibari was very near to the confluence of Padma and Gorai. In the early part of the last century the river Gorai gradually fizzled out and Padma started turning her flow away from the side of Selaidah. The poet philosopher couldn't reconcile himself with the nature's fickle as to why Padma, the river he adored so much, should shy away. If there were any anguish of separation that wrenched Tagore most it was Padma's gradual distancing away from him.
   An average of one hundred and fifty thousand individuals go on pilgrimage to Kuthibari at Selaidah every year to quench their curiosities about a man, as the legend goes, who used to spend most of his solitary time in a sailing vessel called "Padma Boat” trailing on her stern two jollyboats: one was 'chapala' and the other 'chanchala'. More curious is the fact that when this guy absorbed himself in writing stories and composing poems inside his plying boat the river Padma (spinster Padma, more approriately) could sense his mood and accordingly used to rock his boat in syncopated rhymes. Starry-eyed village women even whispered among themselves about hobnobbing of this tall son of a zamindar from Jurashaku with Lady Padma of their village Selaidah; they couldn't however fathom out how a princely man gets anchored in love with a turbulent river!
   Not all the visitors who buy 5-taka tickets to enter the Kuthibari are serious students of literature. On the first floor of the Kuthibari I found one middle-aged lady, vermilion spots (red colored mercuric sulfide) on her forehead and the middle parting of her hair (a signature that she is married), silently standing before a life-size portrait of Rabindranath Tagore--her head bowed, palms folded, lips shivering - perhaps absorbed in a worship.
   On a concrete bench atop the flight of stairs on the western pond of Kuthibari in the shade of a 'Bakul' plant I took my seat near to a couple (the boy in his early teens and the girl a little younger). Having munched on 'chinabadam' (peanuts) while chatting the girl was serious in explaining to the boy (perhaps her fiance in the making) the literary backgrounds of Rabindranath Tagore. Her explanation as I overheard: "Tagore was completely illiterate; he never enrolled in a school. But he was a great worshiper. Every morning he used to take a bath in this pond before meditation. He used to absorb in meditation sitting in yoga posture on the very bench we are now sitting on. With his eyes closed and his right hand holding a pen over a piece of paper he used to whisper vedic texts when a God-sent parrot, perched on this 'bakul' plant, used to read out aloud a variety of Bangla poems and stories for Tagore to copy every morning. Nobody knew the secret as Tagore didn't allow anybody to stand by during his morning meditations.” The boy wowed: "Great!”
   Bidding adieu to my three hour sojourn in "Kuthibari” as I was returning back to Kushtia via the six mile long (perhaps Rabindra Road) narrow road torrential rains punctuated with thunders were blurring the green panorama with dark clouds gradually blacking out the afternoon of the 4 th of July, 2007 (Ashar 20, 1414). Comfortably ensconced inside my robust office jeep as I was enjoying heavy rains pouring down on the other side of the glasses my mind hovered back over those distant days when Tagore on such a rainy day, drenched in romance, used to dance inside the lighted corridor of his heart in harmony with musical raindrops pelting down on the tiled rooftop of his second floor study room in Kuthibari or the arched metal roof of his Padma Boat.
   Amid muffled sounds of the engine revving, air venting in controlled temperature, wheels negotiating the snaky turns and twists, windshield wipers rapidly whishing to clear up visibility through the heavy rain came out Debabrata's elegant and lofty tone in stereophonic sounds - digitally seperating sounds of voice from music - sneaking out from hidden speakers singing in synch with 'tabla' beating, 'sitar' stringing and 'khanjana' tolling a song Rabindranath Tagore composed 95 years back: Tumi kemon korey gaan koro hey gooni, Aami obaak hoye shuni, kebol shuni! (Oh virtuoso! I wonder how can you sing such a melody? Hypnotised, I listen again and again your harmony!)
   The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank.

^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE

US economy needs bottom-up rebuilding

Richard C. Cook

The US, as the only so-called superpower, exerts a decisive influence on the fate of the world. Today peace and stability are threatened by three giant problems whose outcome depends a great deal on US decisions. These problems are linked to each other synergistically in ways that increase the overall danger.
   The first problem is the peril to the world's economies from the massive worldwide pyramid of speculation and debt, a.k.a., the financial bubble. Moreover, we have not seen the end of the fallout from the deflation of the US housing bubble of the mid-2000s. The Federal Reserve facilitated this bubble to fill the void left by the bursting of the dot.com bubble of the 1990s. That one followed on the heels of the 1980s buyout-merger-acquisition bubble.
   Officials with a vested interest in the status quo claim that the global economy is still fundamentally sound. In the face of the financial crisis of July-August, 2007, the Federal Reserve seemed to succeed, at least temporarily, in using its available tools to reassure the financial markets. This included the interest rate cut that spurred the stock market back into record territory. But when dollars are used to float a bubble, it eventually means a lot of trouble.
   The second problem is the US march toward military conquest of the Middle East. Even while the takeover of Iraq seems to hang in the balance, an attack on Iran may be next. The US action is obviously connected with hunger for gasoline, oil company profits, and the central role of the petrodollar in international commerce. In a now-famous phrase, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan states in his new book, Age of Turbulence that the Iraq War is "largely about oil.”
   But is Greenspan's characterisation a red herring? Are oil and dollars the full explanation? Would there have been no other way for the US to secure its strategic interests in that part of the world, such as through multilateral cooperation with other powers like Russia and China? Isn't it a fact that the neocons who control foreign policy within the Bush administration have steered a program of pre-emptive warfare clearly aligned with the more radical elements of Israel?
   The third problem is that global warming seems to be proceeding at a more rapid pace than anyone previously thought. Weather patterns are clearly being affected, with many areas of the continental US now locked in severe drought. Much of the Midwest and West are running dangerously low on water. The possibility that sometime this century sea level could rise up to one meter could be devastating to a nation like the US where fifty per cent of GDP is produced along its coasts.
   If we began now, major infrastructure investments might help us prepare. But we already have an infrastructure maintenance deficit in the trillions of dollars. New large-scale expenditures are inconceivable for a government whose budget has been trashed by tax cuts for the rich, a trillion dollars spent on "wars of choice,” commodity price inflation, and stagnant tax revenues in the face of a recovery which looks a lot like a recession.
   Bad as these three problems are, they are the tip of the iceberg. What really controls the fate of nations is money. And what looms beneath the surface is that we have in the US and elsewhere a monetary system which is fundamentally flawed. It is a system that creates money almost exclusively through debt, one that has the net effect over time of funnelling much of the world's wealth from the hands of those who earn their living in the producing economy of goods and services into the bank accounts and investment funds of those who lend money at interest.
   The recent actions of the Federal Reserve have been largely a refinancing of debt. The hope has been to realise the axiom of American billionaire Warren Buffett: "A rolling loan gathers no loss.” And government borrowing to wage war has always been good business for the banks as well.
   But refinancing of debt does not change the overall purposes, operation, and outcome of the system. What we need to understand now is that the system itself can and must be changed. This should be done by establishing a more democratic and equitable world financial paradigm. Such a change can only be accomplished through fundamental monetary reform that would make credit-creation less the private property of financiers and more in the nature of a public utility.
   The US should start by 1) calling off our military adventures and replacing them with new efforts at multilateral solutions, including a negotiated two-state solution for Israel and Palestine; and 2) rebuilding our public and private infrastructure through low-cost government-provided credit. Individuals carrying unsustainable debt burdens or trapped in the collapsing housing bubble should be given relief. A basic income guarantee, not tied to employment, should be provided to all citizens as advocated by many economists going back to the 1960s. Infrastructure investment should include a massive program to deal with the present and future effects of global warming and climate change. Such a program would also help restore our tax base along with adding to consumer purchasing power.
   To accomplish this program would require a shift in the control of monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, which only seems good at inflating and deflating bubbles, to a Congress and Executive Branch with the same degree of determination, vision, and authority we saw during the New Deal. The US economy needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up. This means political leadership, not the monetarist games of technocrats who really work for the financiers.
   A change of this order of magnitude requires a revolution at the ballot box in 2008. The Republican Party has fatally compromised itself by playing host to the neocon Trojan horse. The Democratic Party, which has failed to act on the voter demand in the 2006 mid-term elections that we get out of Iraq, doesn't look much better. In just three months, in Iowa and New Hampshire, something profound and unprecedented must start to happen. If it doesn't, things figure to get much worse in four more years.
   *Richard C. Cook is a retired federal analyst, whose career included service with the US Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, and NASA, followed by twenty-one years with the US Treasury Department. His articles on economics and space policy have appeared on numerous websites. He is the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, "the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years.” His website is at www.richardccook.com.

^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE