The following piece is
an old one about a trip to Shantiniketan while as a college student. I wrote it
back in 2011 on September, 21st. I was in the midst of writing my Ph.D. thesis and reading a lot of Tagore’s writings back then. I’ve edited some bits from the
first paragraph for this public post.
9/21/2011
It's funny how some
memories need to be written about. I’ve been immersed in reading Tagore and his
writings and piles of writings and writings about him and his writings but I
know not whether I’m reading the right stuff or the right way. How am I going
to approach his chapter really. My main self is disgruntled and keeps wanting
to go back to Suvro da's chapter and extend it and fine-tune it...I’ll do
that after I have some more stuff on Robi-kobi. He identifies himself as a poet
and very clearly and staunchly in Atma-parichay.
As in his identity. The Buddha is yet to make an appearance. He simply seems to
be standing at the side of my vision somewhere and smiling. Yes, yes – I’m mad.
You don’t have to tell me. If I can pull this off – then you won’t think or say
I’m mad, will you? See? – and I will. I don’t know how exactly as yet – but I
will. I’ve been writing yards in my diary too…Honestly though reading his
letters and all – Tagore’s I mean, not
The Buddha’s – he sometimes sounds rather barmy – I swear. Eccentric, delightful
and strange. Barmy too. The one that I shan’t forget: in one place he tells his niece that
he’d rather be a Bedouin than a Bengali (now tell me who does that sound like?).
But then elsewhere he muses dreamily if he were to be born again – he’d not want
to be born as anything but a Bengali! As for one little piece that he says
about little children – I don’t think I’ll include that. Most improper. I’ll
forget this later but did you know he wrote ‘boli o amar golaap bala’ at 17 or
thereabouts? – You would know of course. I somehow thought he’d been older when
he’d written that…17 though. Which immediately brings to mind a comparison –
yes, Sir...I can see why my main self wants to get back to the first proper chapter. Anyway, I’m taking a break here. I’m reminded of that old college
trip to Shantiniketan. We had gone to Shantinektan for that college-trip, and
that trip has been buzzing in my ears. I can’t remember any longer whether it
was in the first year or second year. It was probably towards the end of the
first year, I guess. No surprises as to why I’ve been thinking of it. It’s been
in my head since May and now with Robi flitting about – I’m reminded of it
again. But I’ve also been thinking or having images of Manjira flitting through
too. I think had Tagore known her – he may have written some poems or songs
about her…maybe he did somewhere else. Anyway, let me not spin daydreams here
wondering about Rabindranath and Manjira. I’ll write a bit about the trip
instead – as much as I can remember of it.
1. There was our old
professor and our Stats professor in charge of a gaggle of 18 or so girls. One
boy in our class had already dropped out from our batch, I think by then, and
the only remaining boy in our class didn't even think of joining the crew.
2. We took the
Shantiniketan Express and had reservations and all. I don't remember who
actually got the tickets. I know it wasn't me. I had though at some point the
evening before our departure bought a bottle of vodka and had carefully mixed
vodka and some orangeade into two big bottles. Unfortunately one of them had
spilt and made a mess in my bag which I discovered later but one bottle had
survived, which I promptly deposited into the fridge of the government lodge
where we stayed, very sweetly asking one of the obliging waiters whether I
could keep a bottle of Mirinda in their fridge.
3. The train journey
was very comfortable and sunny. Some folks had gotten some goodies from home
and they very kindly shared their goodies all around.
4. That was the trip
when I systematically sought out and made good friends with a girl who had
appealed to me in one instant some months ago through her disarming frankness
and honesty even though everybody else around had thought she had come across
as being plain rude. It was just before the college elections and I’d been
going around canvassing for votes and she had said she didn’t see
any reason that she should vote for me just because I was a classmate. I made
pretty good friends with her during that trip though I must say.
5. An old
school-friend I knew was studying in Shantiniketan and I had bored everybody by
telling them that I had a friend there, and that I would meet her. At some
point, one of the quiet girls in our group of seven asked me whether I had told
her that I was coming. No, I hadn't. Did I know where she lived? Somewhere in
one of the hostels. Did I remember the address? No. Everybody gave me the look.
6. The first
afternoon after visiting the dorm and depositing our luggage and after lunch at
the guest house, we walked around through the town just for a walk-around. Our
old prof - an absolute favourite amongst his girls - was never allowed to keep
to himself. He was always surrounded by some group of girls and he listened
with what sometimes felt like a piercing attention – even to something that
didn’t seem important – and most often with a half smile and when he talked
everybody around listened. Some gaped. Some gushed. I admired him a lot and even talked a
fair bit on that trip. He made amusing observations. Now I'm hard-pressed to remember
all he said on that trip but there are a couple I remember.
7. So there we were
roaming around in the late afternoon, all of us, with no particular aim in mind
- a gaggle of girls with one old professor impeccably dressed as always in his
regular white dhoti and white panjabi and one young professor also immaculately
dressed in her pleated sari - when all of a sudden there were two shots heard.
"Manjira!" "Nipa!" and a slamming hug. And so there it was
that out of the sun and the blue breeze, I met my school-friend. Both of us
were excitedly yakking away, and we hadn't kept in touch as well as we had
through our high-school years through regular letters, and so we were trying to
get everything in all at once and finally we simply said, ‘we'll meet tomorrow.
Yes, we'll meet tomorrow. We have to meet tomorrow.’ At some point I'd managed
to disentangle our old prof. from the rest of the girls and had introduced him
to Manjira and Manjira to him, and he looking on with much quiet mirth at our
grinning faces, waiting for the excitement to abate while realising that we hadn’t
exactly planned a meeting. So he asked us to do that with his half-smile on his face since as he put it, 'serendipity will most likely not
strike twice in less than 24 hours'. I nodded. But Manjira and I were simply
grinning at each other and looked at Sir in between like fools. So Sir made the
suggestion. He pointed out that we were going to visit the 'kopai' sometime in
the morning so maybe I could come over for a couple of hours during the
afternoon after our lunch at the guest-house. That worked fine.
8. The evening was a
lovely one as some of us sat and talked with our old prof. out in the open. The
guest-house was a nice one, and it had a pretty garden with stone seats and
trees and a riot of flowers in full bloom. I believe there was even a playground
of sorts with a slide (there was one crazy picture of the seven of us all
balanced on that children's slide...). We played dumb-charades, talked about
books and Sir spoke and we listened and different stories were shared. There was some conversation about professions and careers and about parents. I wasn't too vocal but one silly and annoying girl said, "Shilpi - tore ma baba dujone daktar - issh tui daktari porli na kano?!" (your parents are both doctors, why didn't you study medicine?!) I had no response to such a dumb question and was mute. Our Sir very quietly said and with a smile in my direction, 'Shilpi can still be a Doctor without studying daktari." I smiled in return. My memory doesn't serve me well about the whole conversation but at some point one bright girl brought up Kahlil Gibran and The Prophet and Sir and she discussed bits and some of us pitched in. Then
very late we bade good night to Sir, and departed to our dorm room. The room
was hot. The fans didn't seem to do much good. And the mosquitoes were swarming
the place. Once most of the girls dozed off or at least weren't casting their
prying eyes at us seven, I got the bottle out (which I'd gotten from the
fridge) and we took some swigs and some more. There wasn't much and it wasn't even
half-way cold and could hardly pass off as a screwdriver but so what. We were
doing something forbidden and that was good enough for me. At some point we
were boiling in that stuffed room. I don't know how many from the seven felt
they simply had to go out and breathe in the open. But some of us did and some,
I think, fell asleep like little babies. Out there in the open - the night was
still. The stars were high in the sky. A couple of my friends used to smoke
back then, and I couldn’t stand the smoke even as a passive smoker because it
used to make my throat burn. What happened there I know not. After sitting awhile
with them, I borrowed a cigarette from one of them and loped off by myself, found
a water tank and sat on top of it, and smoked. I remember the star studded
night sky. And I was hooked.
9. By the time I
slipped back into our silent dorm room and had a shower and finally went to
sleep it was past dawn, and I was sleeping in utter peace and bliss when the friendly
breakfast call bellowed in my ears. That day there was a trip to the kopai. And
it was beautiful: the strange gorge made by the cutting river. There was a wee
bit of some water down in the ravine and of course I headed straight for it and
most of the rest followed suit. I splashed around in the bitty but cool water
pool that was there and it felt mighty good, and I remember we wandered around
and walked around that gorge/ravine and took many a picture. We spent the
better part of the morning and a good bit of the afternoon there, I think. But
my memory isn’t too clear about the rest. After my lightning fast lunch, I went
over to Sir and told him that I was off to meet my friend. He looked at me,
nodded and quietly said, "and be back by -----" I nodded like a
marine at boot-camp. I had no intentions of disobeying his order. I knew for a
fact that he probably would not have allowed too many from his brood of girls
to wander off on their own.
10. I met Manjira. We
talked and talked about who-knows-what. She was a good natured and clever girl and
self-contained with an amusing and sharp sense of humour and the ability to
observe and reflect and comment on life's oddities and strangeness including
but not limited to people, did a hilarious job of imitating people and could be
quite acidic (too bad if one got on her wrong side or was the butt of her sharp
jokes), read a fair bit of English literature and a whole lot of Bengali
literature. She was the girl who got me to read one of Sharadindu's books back
in our school-days, which had one of my favourite stories - Maru o Sangha. We hadn't been fast buddies
in school but had grown fond of one another and felt fairly comfortable in each
other's company, and she was more of a neighbourhood friend. She had blossomed
very prettily and there was a misty charm about her and a natural evergreen loveliness
of the inimitable sort that no amount of cosmetics and hair-dos can imitate and
the sort which age does not rob.
It was a good meeting,
and a non-riotous one. We walked around in the afternoon sun through some open
empty brown fields. There was very little shade I remember in some of the
places we wandered around while some of the places had some thin tree clusters.
At some point we came face-to-face with a pond. We took some pictures, and wandered
around some more. I had a watch back then, and I'd been looking at it at almost
15 minute intervals, and finally it really was time to go. That was when
Manjira came up with an excellent idea. We went over to her boyfriend's dorm
and she asked him to come along as well. I rode Manjira’s bicycle while she
rode with her boyfriend and it took a couple of minutes to zoom back to the
guest-house (which had taken interminably long the other way on foot). We
walked back to the dorm-room and the door was locked. I rapped smartly and
there were yells from the other side, "go away." "It's me. Open
up." Somebody finally unbolted the door taking her own sweet time about it
and most unwillingly, and what did I see? The girls were all dozing like little
sleeping beauties. All of them otherwise the couple who were awake were lazing
around and not even my friends wanted to see my face. "look, this is
Manjira." But nobody seemed interested in looking at Manjira right then,
and the ones who were awake gave her a vacuous smile. "Well aren't we
going anywhere for the evening?" Someone probably shot me a black glare
and said that it wasn't evening. I shrugged and then said, well then maybe I
would just go back with Manjira and come back later then. There were no
dissenting voices. In fact they all thought it would be great if I just
scrammed right then so that they could shut the door from the heat and my
effervescence. Both were too much to take. I said, "let Sir know. I came
back exactly at the hour and I'll come back later. I'm off now."
11. We were off and
then we lost track of time. Of course I probably should never have left upon my
return. I don't know exactly what we did really. Manjira’s quiet and shy boyfriend
obviously went back to doing what he had been doing before being disturbed. Manjira
and I probably wandered around and talked some more. God-only-knows but time
flew and before I knew it, it was getting dark. The cycle plan was out because
her boyfriend had other things to do than to be making up and down trips for
his girl-friend's friend who didn't know whether she wanted to stay or go, and
I buckled down and decided to take a rickshaw. By this time it was just plain
dark and just as the rickshaw driver started ambling along the road and I was
getting very nervous thinking of what Sir was going to say, Manjira hollered
and I saw. The whole college bunch was walking down the side of the road! Oh,
the shame of it. I thought at that point that they had come out as a search
party for the missing college student. I leapt off the rickshaw after paying
the driver for a bolting passenger and ran over to my bunch. Manjira joined me
for some minutes all over again. Sir saw me and nodded and I nodded back but he
made it clear that he wasn't going to entertain any conversations at that
point. I went over to my bunch of seven and they said that Sir was not happy. I
asked them whether they had told him that I had come back at the appointed time
but everybody was vague. How come nobody told him. I didn't know what to think
or say. Finally, I think someone said that they were just pulling my leg and
that things were all right. I didn’t know what to think but we wandered around
the local market for handicrafts and jewelry and the girls bought this and that,
and Manjira insisted on buying me a pair of ear-rings. I don't know how the
matter of my coming late was resolved or how Sir and I got around to
talking...I know I apologised and our Stats professor (who adored me for no
reason that I could ever fathom: it certainly wasn’t for my stats skills – I
didn’t have any) got a word in saying that it was true that I had returned at
the right time even though I had not stayed. After awhile of roaming around in
the market and on the roads, the college-bunch was heading back to the
guest-house and Manjira and I bid each other a hasty and quick good-bye - not
even a proper one or anything. Something like a 'see you' as though we were
meeting every other day.
12. The following day
we went to Tagore's abode. All I remember from there is the silence and one
room with, as far as I remember, pale green walls and a bed. And I wanted to sit
there and just keep sitting there in the corner. I got to know that that was a
room that Tagore stayed in but I don’t remember any facts. That's all I
remember from there and even that is fuzzy….and it surprises me to think that I
really remember nothing else. We visited a river (a stream?) too at some point but
that memory is hazy as well apart from the bit where I know I ran down and into
it and some of my friends joined me and Sir kept telling us not to go too far
out.
13. On our return to
the guest house, we got to know that our train had been cancelled because there
had been a railway mishap. I was really excited at the prospect of staying for
another whole extra day but that was when something that I didn’t expect at all
happened. More than a couple of the girls started crying softly. Some were
mourning and moaning as if that were the end of the world. I remember at least
one of them sat like a drooping wilted flower with her head leaning against her
friend’s shoulder and with such a pained expression on her face that one might
have assumed that she were suffering from intense emotional or physical pain or
both. They wanted to go home to their parents right then. Sir did put forth the
plan that we could simply stay for another day and take the same train out the
next day and that all of us could notify our parents and families through
phone-calls but that idea was dead on arrival. I was the only girl - the only
one who said that I would gladly stay. Most of the girls wanted to take a bus
half the way and then jump onto a lorry and then take the ferry and walk the
rest if need be but they wanted to go back home to their mums and dads and
families because they had already been away for a whole weekend. A couple of
the girls didn't say anything one way or the other. They were okay either-way,
not supporting but neither dissenting staying for another night. Sir really
didn't have a choice. As he told me quietly on the side, ‘democracy has to
prevail’ but I did fume a fair bit and yelled too at the whining girls which
didn't make me too popular. They simply muttered darkly about something or the
other.
14. How we got back
is something that I don't very clearly remember but at one point we were walking
across train lines at a train station (which was probably a junction of some
sort) after taking a bus half the way (and I'd been sitting on the engine of
the bus: the driver had very kindly let me sit there seeing I was the only one
standing). We were sauntering along the train tracks and suddenly there was the
abnormally loud hoot of a train. A couple of us looked around and looked back
and I saw the lightning fast image of our sedate, always unruffled Sir dropping
his bag and leaping across the tracks in one swift motion to drag back one of
the girls who was at that point bang in the middle of a train track. Time stood
still. I remember looking behind me and there was a lazy train chugging down
the other side far, far away from any of us. Some of the other girls had also
seen this fantastic image of Sir leaping and I, at any rate, couldn't help but
let out an involuntary chuckle but I don't remember any longer who picked up
Sir's bag and whether any words were exchanged.
15. And so we were
back in the city at night. A friend's dad had come over to pick her up and very
kindly gave me a lift. I know it was very late by then. Quite what the time was
I don't remember.
16. That was the trip.
One of the few trips that I've made and one where I happened to avoid making a
disastrous mess of everything or almost everything.
