The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore (children's ebooks online .txt) 📖

mist of the ideas which he is breathing out.

His real land and water remain hidden, and he appears to be made

of only lights and shadows.

It seems to me, in this story of my life, that, like a living

plant, I am displaying the picture of an ideal world. But I am

not merely what I want, what I think--I am also what I do not

love, what I do not wish to be. My creation had begun before I

was born. I had no choice in regard to my surroundings and so

must make the best of such material as comes to my hand.

My theory of life makes me certain that the Great is cruel To be

just is for ordinary men--it is reserved for the great to be

unjust. The surface of the earth was even. The volcano butted

it with its fiery horn and found its own eminence--its justice

was not towards its obstacle, but towards itself. Successful

injustice and genuine cruelty have been the only forces by which

individual or nation has become millionaire or monarch.

That is why I preach the great discipline of Injustice. I say to

everyone: Deliverance is based upon injustice. Injustice is the

fire which must keep on burning something in order to save itself

from becoming ashes. Whenever an individual or nation becomes

incapable of perpetrating injustice it is swept into the dust-bin

of the world.

As yet this is only my idea--it is not completely myself. There

are rifts in the armour through which something peeps out which

is extremely soft and sensitive. Because, as I say, the best

part of myself was created before I came to this stage of

existence.

From time to time I try my followers in their lesson of cruelty.

One day we went on a picnic. A goat was grazing by. I asked

them: "Who is there among you that can cut off a leg of that

goat, alive, with this knife, and bring it to me?" While they

all hesitated, I went myself and did it. One of them fainted at

the sight. But when they saw me unmoved they took the dust of my

feet, saying that I was above all human weaknesses. That is to

say, they saw that day the vaporous envelope which was my idea,

but failed to perceive the inner me, which by a curious freak of

fate has been created tender and merciful.

In the present chapter of my life, which is growing in interest

every day round Bimala and Nikhil, there is also much that

remains hidden underneath. This malady of ideas which afflicts

me is shaping my life within: nevertheless a great part of my

life remains outside its influence; and so there is set up a

discrepancy between my outward life and its inner design which I

try my best to keep concealed even from myself; otherwise it may

wreck not only my plans, but my very life.

Life is indefinite--a bundle of contradictions. We men, with our

ideas, strive to give it a particular shape by melting it into a

particular mould--into the definiteness of success. All the

world-conquerors, from Alexander down to the American

millionaires, mould themselves into a sword or a mint, and thus

find that distinct image of themselves which is the source of

their success.

The chief controversy between Nikhil and myself arises from this:

that though I say "know thyself", and Nikhil also says "know

thyself", his interpretation makes this "knowing" tantamount to

"not knowing".

"Winning your kind of success," Nikhil once objected, "is success

gained at the cost of the soul: but the soul is greater than

success."

I simply said in answer: "Your words are too vague."

"That I cannot help," Nikhil replied. "A machine is distinct

enough, but not so life. If to gain distinctness you try to know

life as a machine, then such mere distinctness cannot stand for

truth. The soul is not as distinct as success, and so you only

lose your soul if you seek it in your success."

"Where, then, is this wonderful soul?"

"Where it knows itself in the infinite and transcends its

success."

"But how does all this apply to our work for the country?"

"It is the same thing. Where our country makes itself the final

object, it gains success at the cost of the soul. Where it

recognizes the Greatest as greater than all, there it may miss

success, but gains its soul."

"Is there any example of this in history?"

"Man is so great that he can despise not only the success, but

also the example. Possibly example is lacking, just as there is

no example of the flower in the seed. But there is the urgence

of the flower in the seed all the same."

It is not that I do not at all understand Nikhil's point of view;

that is rather where my danger lies. I was born in India and the

poison of its spirituality runs in my blood. However loudly I

may proclaim the madness of walking in the path of self-

abnegation, I cannot avoid it altogether.

This is exactly how such curious anomalies happen nowadays in our

country. We must have our religion and also our nationalism; our

Bhagavadgita and also our Bande Mataram. The result is that

both of them suffer. It is like performing with an English military

band, side by side with our Indian festive pipes. I must make it

the purpose of my life to put an end to this hideous confusion.

I want the western military style to prevail, not the Indian.

We shall then not be ashamed of the flag of our passion, which

mother Nature has sent with us as our standard into the

battlefield of life. Passion is beautiful and pure--pure as the

lily that comes out of the slimy soil. It rises superior to its

defilement and needs no Pears' soap to wash it clean.

V

A question has been worrying me the last few days. Why am I

allowing my life to become entangled with Bimala's? Am I a

drifting log to be caught up at any and every obstacle?

Not that I have any false shame at Bimala becoming an object of

my desire. It is only too clear how she wants me, and so I look

on her as quite legitimately mine. The fruit hangs on the branch

by the stem, but that is no reason why the claim of the stem

should be eternal. Ripe fruit cannot for ever swear by its

slackening stem-hold. All its sweetness has been accumulated for

me; to surrender itself to my hand is the reason of its

existence, its very nature, its true morality. So I must pluck

it, for it becomes me not to make it futile.

But what is teasing me is that I am getting entangled. Am I not

born to rule?--to bestride my proper steed, the crowd, and drive

it as I will; the reins in my hand, the destination known only to

me, and for it the thorns, the mire, on the road? This steed now

awaits me at the door, pawing and champing its bit, its neighing

filling the skies. But where am I, and what am I about, letting

day after day of golden opportunity slip by?

I used to think I was like a storm--that the torn flowers with

which I strewed my path would not impede my progress. But I am

only wandering round and round a flower like a bee--not a storm.

So, as I was saying, the colouring of ideas which man gives

himself is only superficial. The inner man remains as ordinary

as ever. If someone, who could see right into me, were to write

my biography, he would make me out to be no different from that

lout of a Panchu, or even from Nikhil!

Last night I was turning over the pages of my old diary ... I

had just graduated, and my brain was bursting with philosophy.

Even so early I had vowed not to harbour any illusions, whether

of my own or other's imagining, but to build my life on a solid

basis of reality. But what has since been its actual story?

Where is its solidity? It has rather been a network, where,

though the thread be continuous, more space is taken up by the

holes. Fight as I may, these will not own defeat. Just as I was

congratulating myself on steadily following the thread, here I am

badly caught in a hole! For I have become susceptible to

compunctions.

"I want it; it is here; let me take it"--This is a clear-cut,

straightforward policy. Those who can pursue its course with

vigour needs must win through in the end. But the gods would not

have it that such journey should be easy, so they have deputed

the siren Sympathy to distract the wayfarer, to dim his vision

with her tearful mist.

I can see that poor Bimala is struggling like a snared deer.

What a piteous alarm there is in her eyes! How she is torn with

straining at her bonds! This sight, of course, should gladden

the heart of a true hunter. And so do I rejoice; but, then, I am

also touched; and therefore I dally, and standing on the brink I

am hesitating to pull the noose fast.

There have been moments, I know, when I could have bounded up to

her, clasped her hands and folded her to my breast, unresisting.

Had I done so, she would not have said one word. She was aware

that some crisis was impending, which in a moment would change

the meaning of the whole world. Standing before that cavern of

the incalculable but yet expected, her face went pale and her

eyes glowed with a fearful ecstasy. Within that moment, when it

arrives, an eternity will take shape, which our destiny awaits,

holding its breath.

But I have let this moment slip by. I did not, with

uncompromising strength, press the almost certain into the

absolutely assured. I now see clearly that some hidden elements

in my nature have openly ranged themselves as obstacles in my

path.

That is exactly how Ravana, whom I look upon as the real hero of

the Ramayana, met with his doom. He kept Sita in his

Asoka garden, awaiting her pleasure, instead of taking her

straight into his harem. This weak spot in his otherwise grand

character made the whole of the abduction episode futile.

Another such touch of compunction made him disregard, and be

lenient to, his traitorous brother Bibhisan, only to get himself

killed for his pains.

Thus does the tragic in life come by its own. In the beginning

it lies, a little thing, in some dark under-vault, and ends by

overthrowing the whole superstructure. The real tragedy is, that

man does not know himself for what he really is.

VI

Then again there is Nikhil. Crank though he be, laugh at him as

I may, I cannot get rid of the idea that he is my friend. At

first I gave no thought to his point of view, but of late it has

begun to shame and hurt me. Therefore I have been trying to talk

and argue with him in the same enthusiastic way as of old, but it

does not ring true. It is even leading me at times into such a

length of unnaturalness as to pretend to