My Reminiscences

I know not who paints the pictures on memory’s canvas; but whoever he may be, what he is painting are pictures; by which I mean that he is not there with his brush simply to make a faithful copy of all that is happening. He takes in and leaves out according to his taste. He makes many a big thing small and small thing big. He has no compunction in putting into the background that which was to the fore, or bringing to the front that which was behind. In short he is painting pictures, and not writing history.

Thus, over Life’s outward aspect passes the series of events, and within is being painted a set of pictures. The two correspond but are not one.

We do not get the leisure to view thoroughly this studio within us. Portions of it now and then catch our eye, but the greater part remains out of sight in the darkness. Why the ever-busy painter is painting; when he will have done; for what gallery his pictures are destined⁠—who can tell?

There was yet another place in our house which I have even yet not succeeded in finding out. A little girl playmate of my own age called this the “King’s palace.” “I have just been there,” she would sometimes tell me. But somehow the propitious moment never turned up when she could take me along with her. That was a wonderful place, and its playthings were as wonderful as the games that were played there. It seemed to me it must be somewhere very near⁠—perhaps in the first or second storey; the only thing was one never seemed to be able to get there. How often have I asked my companion, “Only tell me, is it really inside the house or outside?” And she would always reply, “No, no, it’s in this very house.” I would sit and wonder: “Where then can it be? Don’t I know all the rooms of the house?” Who the king might be I never cared to inquire; where his palace is still remains undiscovered; this much was clear⁠—the king’s palace was within our house.

Looking back on childhood’s days the thing that recurs most often is the mystery which used to fill both life and world. Something undreamt of was lurking everywhere and the uppermost question every day was: when, Oh! when would we come across it? It was as if nature held something in her closed hands and was smilingly asking us: “What d’you think I have?” What was impossible for her to have was the thing we had no idea of.

I could not have been more than eight years old at the time. Jyoti, a son of a niece of my father’s, was considerably older than I. He had just gained an entrance into English literature, and would recite Hamlet’s soliloquy with great gusto. Why he should have taken it into his head to get a child, as I was, to write poetry I cannot tell. One afternoon he sent for me to his room, and asked me to try and make up a verse; after which he explained to me the construction of the payar metre of fourteen syllables.

I had up to then only seen poems in printed books⁠—no mistakes penned through, no sign to the eye of doubt or trouble or any human weakness. I could not have dared even to imagine that any effort of mine could produce such poetry.

One day a thief had been caught in our house. Overpowered by curiosity, yet in fear and trembling, I ventured to the spot to take a peep at him. I found he was just an ordinary man! And when he was somewhat roughly handled by our doorkeeper I felt a great pity. I had a similar experience with poetry.

When, after stringing together a few words at my own sweet will, I found them turned into a payar verse I felt I had no illusions left about the glories of poetising. So when poor Poetry is mishandled, even now I feel as unhappy as I did about the thief. Many a time have I been moved to pity and yet been unable to restrain impatient hands itching for the assault.

One noon the clouds had gathered thickly. Rejoicing in the grateful shade of the cloudy midday rest-hour, I lay prone on the bed in my inner room and wrote on a slate the imitation Maithili poem “Gahana Kusuma Kunja Majhe.” I was greatly pleased with it and lost no time in reading it out to the first one I came across; of whose understanding a word of it there happened to be not the slightest danger, and who consequently could not but gravely nod and say, “Good, very good indeed!”

To my friend mentioned a while ago I said one day: “A tattered old manuscript has been discovered while rummaging in the Adi Brahma Samaj library and from this I have copied some poems by an old Vaishnava Poet named Bhanu Singha;” with which I read some of my imitation poems to him. He was profoundly stirred. “These could not have been written even by Vidyapati or Chandidas!” he rapturously exclaimed. “I really must have that MS. to make over to Akshay Babu for publication.”

Then I showed him my manuscript book and conclusively proved that the poems could not have been written by either Vidyapati or Chandidas because the author happened to be myself. My friend’s face fell as he muttered, “Yes, yes, they’re not half bad.”

Then I gained a further insight which has lasted all my life.

The end of Sudder Street, and the trees on the Free School grounds opposite, were visible from our Sudder Street house. One morning I happened to be standing on the verandah looking that way. The sun was just rising through the leafy tops of those trees. As I continued to gaze, all of a sudden a covering seemed to fall away from my eyes, and I found the world bathed in a wonderful radiance, with waves of beauty and joy swelling on every side. This radiance pierced in a moment through the folds of sadness and despondency which had accumulated over my heart, and flooded it with this universal light.

That very day the poem, “The Awakening of the Waterfall,” gushed forth and coursed on like a veritable cascade. The poem came to an end, but the curtain did not fall upon the joy aspect of the Universe. And it came to be so that no person or thing in the world seemed to me trivial or unpleasing. A thing that happened the next day or the day following seemed specially astonishing.