The Front Porch
When I told you about the bird’s nest
It had already abandoned it, I didn’t know.
I had perched my dream upon its beak
Which now elsewhere is building its home.
As I watered the plants in its remembrance
My heart’s melancholy didn’t let me see —
Another home has already moved in —
The street cat and her new born babies.
Ma as she was getting ready to leave for school, she said to me, as I waited on the door to see her off, ‘The bird has left I think, I don’t see it anymore.’
‘Maybe it doesn’t come when we are around.’
‘Na. Dekhchina kintu ar.’ I’m not seeing it anymore. ‘On Sunday I worked so late till the afternoon in the garden, I guess it decided to leave then, thinking this place to be unsafe.’
As she was saying so it quietly recoiled in my head something a classmate of mine shared about after reading the last week’s newsletter—
We too had a sparrow build its nest in our home once and we were very excited about it, would go to have a look at it again and again, then one night when we went to see, the mummy sparrow spotted us. They had already left by morning and we cried a lot, I guess I was in class 2.
Later in the day after the evening tea, the conversation with Ma veered towards the bird. ‘After building home, it won’t stay there? ’, I said.
‘No expectations, no strings attached’, she ruminated, her head heaving on the pillow at an angle. ‘How much I think too that I won’t worry about you all’s studies and everything, but can’t.’
That was last Tuesday. On Thursday I had to go to the University to get my migration certificate signed. Nowadays every time I have to get out for any of these official work my body starts to get tense since morning, the thought of having to step out of the home initiating a whirling in my gut. So I took with me My Life In My Words to turn away from the thought of it. It’s a selection of fragments of works of Tagore from his memoirs, poems, essays, letters and lectures—quite literally, Tagore on Tagore, it says in the blurb. I picked it up a couple days before and had read a few chapters from between, the chapters on his wife and children. The chapter on his wife, Mrinalini Devi, was just a series of letters he had written to her between 1890 to 1901. In one of the letters he talks about having sent to her some clothes and quilts with mejo-bouthan, his second brother’s wife. He asks her to ask for it if she hasn’t received it. It is quite a common thing to say and yet it in a way it felt like something he would have said to Kadambini, his choto-bouthan, who never really asked for what hers to have. The striking thing about the letters were how different they were in tone and concern, and obviously so though it never occured to me, from the once I read in the books Letters from a Young Poet, which is a collection of letters written to his niece Indira and The Mahatma and The Poet, which is a collection of correspondence between Gandhi and Tagore—remaining constant however in all these is his ability to empathize with everyone without ever compromising on his own principles.
When Mrinalini Devi passed away in 1902 at the age of 28, followed by the death of their second daughter Renuka seven months later at the age of thirteen and of their youngest son Shamindranath in 1907, the work on starting the school at Shantiniketan has already begun. He was exhausting himself out on one end to allocate funds to build this institution that he had no professional specialization in and on the other end his family was eroding away, eventually causing him a nervous breakdown of which he wrote in letter to his eldest son, Rathindranath, in 1915.
I had never known such anxiety ever. I have never been nervous by nature. I hardly worried about any of you. That is why I could give you so much freedom in your childhood. Now my mind is full of apprehensions that I worry even when you go out on a bicycle. When you are late coming home I fear you are in some sort of danger. It is incredible how all this anxiety has taken over my free and detached temperament. I know it is both wrong and ludicrous of me to cling to you so desperately. I had never even tried to ‘impose’ my ‘ideal’ on you, believing firmly that each of you must develop in your own individual way.
excerpt from Chitthi Patra II, as translated by Uma Das Gupta.
The conversation with Ma on attachment from a few nights back came gushing in and copulated with the words on the letter. I remembered the tiny bird and its nest that is still hanging from the rose plant, and I thought, detachment is not only about moving on but the strength to dream. When the bird was building this nest, it wasn’t doing so with the thought of having to leave it, it was in fact putting all hope and work to do the best. And now as it might be building the home elsewhere, all the same hope and work goes into that. Detachment is not disinterest, it is if anything the very opposite, where no strings are strong enough to keep you arrested. It makes me wonder if when Tagore asked his wife to ask for what hers, he is not doing so because of attachment but responsibility, knowing that the freedoms that are only at hand’s distance for him is not how it is for his wife.
Returning home from the University, instead of ringing the bell I waited a few moments in front of the rose plant. My eyes searched for that fleeting soul in sky overhead, the neighbouring plants and electric wires. A few crows flew by and a koyal can be heard cooing. I went on to water the plants before finally ringing the bell. When Ma returned, I heard from upstairs to gasp at something at the doorstep. I ran downstairs and asked about it.
‘Dekhis ni? Haven’t you seen? The street cat has given birth, three kittens, there behind the plants.’
When in the previous newsletter I said about conversation surrounding personal preferences, what I had in mind was the conversation I had with a college classmate on what God means to us. The conversation started with him replying to something with being answerable to God. Consequently my question was if he really thinks of being answerable to God. I was in a gossiping mood which led to the question, which otherwise I would have taken it for granted without a second thought to be it only an expression of thought. He then replied that God is conscience to him to which I said that to me God is beyond my own consciousness. The conversation went on for quite some time (on text), and when he had to leave because people do have a social life unlike me, I still had my questions unanswered. So I put up the question on the writing app I use, hoping someone would come by. The question I had put up was: Is God our consciousness or is God beyond our consciousness? Three people came by to participate in the conversation in the comments, and by the end even though none of us had the questions answered, only more questions, we were grateful for this brainstorming of four minds tied only by a mere question.
Few days later as I am reading My Life In My Words in the eight floor of one of the University building, I find this poem:
Seems like someone other than us four was tied by the question too or was this someone who conspired it all, we wouldn’t know. Coincidences like these like tokens of surprises is what I live for.
When I shared this with one of the four minds in the conversation, he shared:
There goes on the loop of chance encounters.
Wishing a colourful Holi to everyone who are celebrating!
And until next week,
Happy chance encounters.