By Asad Latif
Tagore would have been 163 years old this year. In fact, he is that old this year. That is because he did not die in 1941. When poets pass away, they merely pretend to die, leaving mortals to bear the weight of their non-passage. In my case, at the age of 66, the happy punishment for being a Bengali is to be tied to a childhood spent in the lap of Tagore’s poems. That lap gets younger as I grow older.
I remember listening to Phagun, haoai haoai[1], Tagore’s ode to the winds of spring, on the radio in the attic of my ancestral village home in West Bengal’s Hooghly district. My home bordered a vast, circular expanse of agricultural land contoured by villages that included mine. Sitting in the third-storey attic, next to a terrace that overlooked the fields, I was transformed by the song. It turned vision into movement. The song’s opening lines speak of the poet making the gift of his carefree and untamed soul to the flow of the eager spring winds. Those lines might have added that Tagore had cast my soul as well to his winds. I leapt out of myself: I gladly yielded to my capture by the elements. I looked out, imagining that the spring winds would carry me across the vast fields into the homes and lives of the people who were participating in the rituals of spring, one of which was Tagore’s song itself.
There were many other songs in the same vein that accompanied me into youth. Among them were Tomar khola hawa[2], where Tagore welcomes a fresh gush of wind to his waiting sails and promises the elements no regret even if his boat sinks; and Nil Digante[3], where the blue horizon catches fire from the rioting colours of flowers and even the sun asks for itself in the brightness of the earth. Such were the poetic conceits that lent the urgency of understanding to the passage of my youthful days. To lead the imaginative life was to consign oneself to the youthfulness of Tagore.
My spring is over: Those days have passed, taking a happy Tagore with them. Now, what appeal to me are his sombre songs that deal with mortality and the divine. Tai tomar ananda amar por [4] is an outstanding example of what I would call the Late Tagore in me. Essentially, Tagore says to God: “You are the Creator only because I am the created.” Can you imagine the degree of self-certainty that allows a human to address God so fearlessly? I do not share Tagore’s devout hubris but I listen to that song over and over again to reassure myself that my days have not been useless because they have been inhabited by God-created hours. And, of course, with Jokhon porbe na more payer chinho[5], Tagore turns death itself into a romance with the endless interplay of time and space that defines life. I stand redeemed by his lines.
But I am growing old. I am not conveyed out of myself by the spring poems any more: I prefer to age, as wildly as health and imagination allow me to, within myself. Tagore accompanies me still, but what confounds me is how young he remains even in his constancy to the maturity of my withering years.
Phagun, haoai haoai: Tagore is exulting in the colours of this spring, this very year, even as I accept my autumnal steps to the final winter.
[1] The Spring Breeze
[2] The Free-flowing Breeze
[3] The Blue Horizon
[4] What will be your joy post my creation?
[5] When my footsteps will not fall…
Asad Latif is a Singapore-based journalist. He can be contacted at badiarghat@borderlesssg1
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