by Abanindranath Tagore (translation Debashish Banerji)
Mother’s touch! Through light and dust along the margin of the thickly populated city this immaculate touch wanders in the guise of a river breeze. For the journey from this shore to the next, from the borderland to the home, while crossing the bridge, this startling touch, washed in Ganga water this touch.
On this bank of the serene soft caress I see a familiar ancient land, on the other bank the lion-gate to the beyond is visible, wrapped in dew-drenched wintry darkness.
Merged in the vast tide of the crowd I am hurried along, pushed along, soundlessly, silently; and from across the river, laden with all the tenderness of the collyrium sky, the black water, tirelessly wafts mother’s touch.
From the center of the darkness a shrill note screamed tearing suddenly the blue expanse. Light again, dust again, again the hubbub of humanity. Leaving all this aside as I pass, cleaving through the world-occupying enormous night, I hear only a clattering as of a fountain of iron rolling continuously underfoot.
From the double row of windows within the conveyance can only be seen two strips of sky curtain, and an occasional twinkling star or two.
Hour after hour between these two curtains of blue I travel. I see nothing to left or right; only from ahead, there come one clanging blow after another, and occasionally a sudden amorphous tree-form smites the eyes and races away.
To say I am flying through the enormous formlessness of the vast night would be incorrect. This is not a passage like that of the night birds who spread their still wings in the silent blue of the night and glide along soundlessly. This is as if a delirious demon, after shutting me in an iron cage with wheels is rushing across the earth. In the hurtling speed of his movement the cage, gashing the heart of the earth, scattering fire in all directions, proceeds ceaselessly through a black gulf.
Deep insomnia, unceasing restlessness, and after that enormous fatigue. Mute inert life lies prostrate like a helpless dumb animal staring into the shoreless darkness.
A little shock of light, the slightest aching tremor in the golden wire of night’s string instrument. In the midst of dawn’s quiet dew, I stand stationary, facing the new day. Ahead, to earth’s horizon, a large extent of massed darkness is still visible. A tender darkness like the skin of a black buck; upon it, footfalls of light softly descend. In front a single lotus bud can be seen standing still in water; as if the earth goddess folding her palms to the cosmic divine.
Like a traveler who stops for an instant to offer his respects at a wayside temple and continues walking, we make our salutations to this dawn juncture and advance forward.
Just ahead of an endless sand stretch the night has turned to dawn. The color of the sky makes the distant trickling streams of river-water glint like knife edges. To the ends of the earth spreads a single wash of pure turquoise. Against it a stand of tall rushes. Fresh light of day sprinkling on the white flower-whisks its powder in the color-play of Holi, has reddened the canvas. Solitary this river bank, soundless immobile the sand stretch of this shore, cutting through this the narrow stream moves; like us, slowly.
Far above the river we traverse the bridge. A gentle rocking, merely the shiver of a movement, beside this nothing else is felt. We move on and on, through the forgetful green of the day to the sleep-inducing blue of the night.
Unending path, moving ceaselessly through this deep time-quantum. Day and night, manifesting repeatedly on the two sides of this path the phenomenal magic of revelation and concealment, accompany us in our movement.
Varanasi – a vast forest of temples and monasteries. In the noonday sun, all its details are starkly visible – from the glint of lightning playing in the river-water lapping the steps of the desolate bathing ghats down to the dense shadows of pilgrims walking soundlessly on the hot scorching road. As if I am staring at an illusory city. From the stone walls a hot breath strikes the face. All the movements and activities of the townsfolk appear to the eyes in sharp relief; but no sound can reach our ears. Its as if we’re crossing a kingdom of the dumb. And beyond the boundary of sound, this their enormous city, lifting two pale stone arms high into the sky gazes into the distant horizon, like an inarticulate negation, etched against the soundless light of noontime.
On sunscorched fields falls copper glow of day’s end. In the shadows of the mango forest, night with its dread approaches. Against the tree-line a ruined fragment of the long-discarded palace of the last nawab of Ayodhya has left a deep melancholy stain of dried blood on the pristine blue of the sky. The dam-breached flood waters of the Gomti have spread across the earth like a vast tattered patchwork sheet, covering all the green for afar.
Across the western horizon a soundless cataract has descended from the sky to the earth; upon this, the bird of Night, its black wings outspread comes floating.
In the third quarter of the night, it is raining. Mountain wind coming through the darkness is like a touch of ice on the face. A single cricket opening up a fountainhead of sound sings interminably filling the distance. The oil-lamp of an inn reaching its light into depths across the rain-washed smooth softness of the earth stares unblinking towards the night.
Knocking against the impenetrable darkness the train advances, climbing the side of the Himalaya where the Ganga descends.
Here, breaking through clouds, the moon has appeared on the crest of a line of black peaks. Nearby the bathing ghat, the music pavilion, the temple tower lie asleep in the moonlight; the Ganga breeze has poured over all its soft tenderness. At the end of our journey, in the last quarter of the deep night, this gate to the Ganga. On the other side, the green horses of the Sun god are in waiting, to bear here the New, the Invisible in-front.
