India-Books/Psychology/Literature/Arts
By Madhusree
Chatterjee
New Delhi
The grand
monarch of modern Indian literature, Rabindranath Tagore, has been one of the
most oft-visited muse for scholars, who have
deliberated on his writing and art in somber
treatises and cerebral commentaries.
But very few
have tried to probe the mind of the icon behind the pen —which earned India its
first Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for the poetry-lyrics anthology, “Gitanjali”.
A new and unique psycho-biography of the
Nobel Laureate, “Young Tagore : Making of a Genius”, describes Tagore as a sensitive wordsmith, who
could hammer feelings into wreaths of verbiage and a pragmatist with a modern
outlook of the world that was ahead of time.
His world
view combined an astute farsightedness and a profound spirituality that — unlike
those who branded him as elitist — took the common in its stride. A romantic,
he loved the world and all things beautiful, creative and new.
But the child
“Rabi” that the poet was before he became the icon — was a conflicting mystery.
He was lonely but a creative child in love with the natural bounty around him.
His estrangement from his mother early in life — being the youngest in a brood
of 14 — bred in him a longing for maternal care and a melancholy that honed his
sensitivities. He was brought up by a posse of domestic help, far away from the
women of the household who lived in the “andarmhal”- inner quarters.
Tagore, as a
boy, spent time by himself – reflecting upon the world through the trivial
events in his cloistered world. But his mother’s sudden demise at the age of 14
cast an indelible shadow on his life tempering his creative experiences with
fine etchings of “pain”, “loss” and bewilderment that seeped into his fragile consciousness
in misty details.
He describes
Sarada Devi (his mother)’s passing away like a six-year-old— crushed and
desolate. It heightened the strain of mysticism around young Rabi, weaning him
away from worldly realities for a while.
“Tagore was a man of many dualities — he was sensuous, spiritual and material at
the same time. Exploring this duality makes his work so interesting. He was a
milestone in the ongoing encounter between the east and the west. However, as a
young man, he was unhappy who was hurting a lot,” says noted writer Sudhir
Kakar, one of the country’s foremost psycho-analysts and social thinker.
In his new
psycho-biography (Kakar is known the world over for dissecting the minds of cross-sections
of society including the greater Indian psyche in non-fictional accounts like
the “Inner World: A Psycho-Analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India”, “Shamans,
Mystics and Doctors”, “The Indian Psyche”) , the author has reconstructed the
Nobel Laureate’s childhood and youth — and
has tried to tap into the secret pools of Tagore’s creative energy.
Two decisive
experiences influenced the minds of young Rabi — the death of his mother and
his infatuation for his sister-in-law Kadambari Devi, the wife of his elder
sibling Jyotorindranath Tagore. However, who was two years older than Rabi
committed suicide after battling against chronic melancholia and depression.
The young
poet’s journey to England at 17 was an intellectual and sensory watershed as well—
bringing out the amiable extrovert in the lonely young man. ‘Tagore suddenly realized
that he was good looking and was admired by the English ladies,” Kakar
analyses. Tagore was taken up with the west inspired by its literature-
especially poetry — and progressive ideas.
But as he
grew up, Rabi retreated into a world of solitude rather than isolation and alienation. Kakar
describes this solitude as a state of being when the mind is peopled by beloved
characters even away cut off from their company. This solitude bred
introspection — in a rather Wordsworthian tradition encouraging creativity from
sources of happy recollections. As a
result, bulk of his poetry is replete with deep philosophy, ruminations and
sublime comments on the world and its cosmic connections at large.
Kakar’s
pre-occupation with Tagore began two years ago when the National Gallery of
Modern Art (NGMA) asked Kakar if he could comment on his paintings (a vocation
that the poet began to pursue at the age of 60).
“That was
when I began to know Tagore. I was mesmerized by his art and I began to read
him,” Kakar said. As he delved deeper into Tagore, Kakar began to plumb his “unexpected fathoms and probe
the delicate nuances of his literary philosophy”. “I began to read his essays
and realised that they could make a wonderful psychobiography,” the writer
divulged, answering a query on how the seeds of “Tagore’s psychobiography” were
sown.
Kakar says Tagore’s sister-in-law fuelled his
art. The long ovoid faces — sad and dark— with their wide-set eyes and straight
black hair framing the visage like an Indian Madonna were those of Kadambari Devi.
“But behind those eyes were the eyes of his mother,” Kakar observed.
He hated
school because “his wild imagination bothered him”. The imagination was the well-spring of his poetic activity as
well — which the poet identified at the age of eight. When he came closer to
his sister-in-law after the demise of his mother, Rabi (Tagore) matured as a poet.
In a chapter,
“Kadambari and the Smell of Buttered Toast”, (the chapter cues its name from
the small of buttered toast in the Tagore household kitchen in Jorasanko every
morning) Kakar says the “main actor in the inner theatre of Rabi’s adolescence and early youth — playing a crucial role in
the remembered happiness of those years and the consolidation of his identity as
a poet and writer — was his sister in-law Kadambari Devi. His first memory of Kadambari Devi is of a
10-year-old girl with thin gold bangles on her slender dark wrists. He circled her from afar – afraid to come
close.
Four years
later, she emerged from her childhood sheltered in the women’s quarters – as a
young woman — opening up closed dams of emotions in the poet’s young (12 year
old) heart.
Tagore
describes his love-struck heart “like a
breed of a grasshopper that blends its
hue with colour of the dry leaves” that had for so many years worn “ a faded
tint’….
Kadambari
Devi, an illiterate woman born to poor Pirali Brahmin (Pirali – a village in present-day
Bangladesh) parents employed in the Tagore
home, educated herself in the refined intellectual environs of Jorasanko and
even learnt to ride a horse— on which she cantered everyday to the “Maidan(the modern
day Eden Gardens ground) ” in Kolkata.
Tagore’s friendship
with Kadambari Devi flourished in the afternoons, when Jyotirindranth was away
from home. Young Rabi read out to Kadambari — thus opening a tentative intellectual
exchange that carried Tagore far in life as a liberal humanist in approach to
literature and in life.
But by the time,
Tagore married Mrinalini Devi — an arranged bride — he had drifted from Kadambari
that was rumoured to have caused her considerable distress. Four months after Rabi’s marriage, Kadambari
swallowed an overdose of opium.
Kakar ends
his book at the point where the young Rabi is ready to take on filial responsibilities
as a young man- and spread his wings in the world as a landlord and writer. But grief remained the underpinning of his musings.
“Kadambari’s
early death cast an indelible shadow on
Rabindranath’s psyche that would endure through the rest of his life. The mourning
of Kadamabri’s absence snd the summoning of her presence keep recurring in Rabindranath’s
poems, song , fictions and later in old age, also in his paintings,” Kakar said.
This
emptiness lent Tagore the emotional edge — that suffering suffuses creative endeavours
with to rise out of the droll and the trivial to scale realms of godly excellence.
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