TAGORE’S TREATMENT OF CHILDHOOD

By SNEHASOBHANA DEVI RAKSHIT

(Department of English, Govt. P. R. College, Kakinada)

Many of the average readers of Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry may be hardly aware that the character of childhood occupies quite an eminent place in the whole range of Tagore literature. It is a great pity that many of his exquisite lyrics and songs on childhood have not so far been translated, and it is a still greater pity that those which have come out through the garb of English and other languages have undergone so much transformation that much, nay most, of the beauty and grace of the original is lost. This however is a limitation with all translations. But to return to our point. Tagore’s treatment of childhood is, I repeat, quite unique. It is remarkable that unlike in many poets who have sung of childhood, the beauty and sweetness of these poems is never lost in the wilderness of philosophy. They are true poetry–poetry par excellence. The magic touch of Tagore’s poetry converts us all into children, so much so that we seem to live and move, not in the world of cares and worries, but in a new world of never-fading sunshine, of ineffable beauty and mystery.

When Poet Rabindranath wrote these poems on childhood his heart was heavy with bereavement, his mind was overcast with the darkening shadow of gloom. In such a state of mind the Poet found solace and relief in the company of children. As he was able to enter into the joy and laughter of the child-mind, his own care-worn mind found the sap of its sustenance and retained its freshness. Such is the magic charm of the society of children that even the grim master Death has to relax his rigour before them. Thus has Tagore’s Muse sung forth the sentiment:

“The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-reeling waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle. The sea plays with the children and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach,

On the sea-shore of endless worlds children meet.

Tempest roars in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water. Death is abroad, and children play.

On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.”

Verity the terrific roar of the sea plays to the child’s ear as sweetly as the mother’s lullaby.

To Tagore the child dwells in a land of perennial sunshine where there is one long-continued holiday. That sunshine, that holiday spirit, breaks through every step, every movement of his, and he scatters that spirit around him and infects everybody nearby. So long as he is awake and playing, his world too is busy and awake; the moment he falls asleep his world is silent and quiet; not only that, with him sleeping, there is a dead and uneasy silence in the whole house–the world of his elders; and again, as he wakes up, the world around him is stirred into a new life. As the poet sings:

“The wind carries away in glee the tinkling of your anklet bells.

The sun smiles and watches your toilet.

The sky watches over you when you sleep in your mother’s arms, and the morning comes tiptoe to your bed and kisses your eyes.

The wind carries away in glee the tinkling of your anklet bells.”

“The factory mistress of dream is coming towards you through the twilight sky.

The World-Mother keeps her seat by you in your mother’s heart.

He who plays his music to the stars is standing at your window with his flute.

And the fairy mistress of dreams is coming towards you, flying through the twilight sky.”

How exquisitely has the Poet brought out the deep yet familiar truth that the child is the centre of all our joy, the laughter of our life, the pivot of our hopes and desires for the future! As he sleeps the entire world around him waits in silent and anxious expectancy for his waking up, and the moment he is up again, there is up with him a world of delight.

Now, who indeed can be the most intimate companion and the willing partaker of all the Mysteries of the child’s world? It is the Mother, and no one else. This the Poet illustrates through a variety of portraits. To all his secrets of the inner world the child finds Mother to be the only trusted confidante, the sharer of his joys, the sympathiser of his sorrows. His mind forms the delightful picture of a Fairy Land and loves now and then to dwell in it in imagination. That Land is the child’s own, none is allowed entry there,–only Mother has free access. Do you know the secret of it? You men–grown-up men–are all too sceptical. You dismiss all his fond stories and his glorious pictures of the Fairy Land with a wise frown and turn them down as ‘silly’. Hence you have no admittance into that enchanted land. The Mother’s heart pulsates in sympathy with the child’s, and she alone can enter into the true spirit that pervades that land of charm, which no geographer has charted, no explorer has found. The child therefore whispers all his secrets and reveals all the mysteries of that land to his Mother’s ears. But do not imagine, O you sceptics, that this land lies far away beyond hills and dales, across the ocean waves, or in the region of the rainbow in the sky! Tagore’s child imagines the Fairy Land to be no further away than by the side of the Tulasi plant on the terrace! That very ordinary place–but not easily accessible to the child physically–is, to the child’s imagination, filled with all the enchantment of his Dreamland! It is there that the Fairy Princess sleeps, immersed in the enchanted slumber of an unknown spell! Her palace?–Oh, it has silver walls and a golden roof! But what happens within those walls and under that golden roof, only Mother should know; she is the only trustworthy confidante–no sceptic must hear of its secrets! Says Baby to his Mother:

“If people come to know where my King’s palace is, it would vanish into the air. Its walls are of white silver and the roof of shining gold. The Queen lives in a palace with seven court-yards and she wears a jewel that cost all the wealth of seven kingdoms. But let me tell you, Mother, in a whisper, where my King’s palace is. It is in the corner of our terrace where the pot of the Tulasi plant stands.”

There is one other person that can also be admitted into these mysteries. She is ‘Pussy’, though you sceptics will call her but ‘the Cat’. She is the unfailing companion at all his plays and pranks. To debar her from the delights of this Dreamland?–O, it would be sheer ingratitude. Moreover, she will not raise any doubt, nor ask any inconvenient questions about the wonderland! So it is quite safe to admit her there, and to her the child communicates a whole world of details which ever gleam through his imagination.

The Poet again takes us into another and a most important function that the Mother must perform for her child. Baby listens with keen interest to the fairy tales, reclining on his mother’s or grandmother’s lap; there are tales of adventure, of heroic exploits, whose hero is some Fairy Prince or some gigantic personality. Such tales do not fail to inspire the sleeping embers of heroism in our Infant Hero! He wants to emulate the Hero of the fairy tale and perform deeds of bravery like him. But to whom except the mother can the child confide this secret desire of his? So the Poet brings her as the obliging, nodding witness to all his feats of adventure. Our little Hero asks his mother to imagine that she is going in a palanquin on a journey to a distant village. And who is to be her guardian and escort for the journey? It is none other than the little Hero himself. You are not to suppose that he is within the palanquin listening to lullabies on the mother’s lap. Why should he? Is he not a Man? –a brave Man? So he has taken upon his broad shoulders the burden of escorting Mother. She is safe within the palanquin when Baby himself is on horseback, riding abreast of Mother’s palanquin. But so far it is a tame affair, after all! There is no adventure as yet! What is the good of becoming Mother’s escort and caretaker if there is no opportunity of displaying his daring and courage? So the Mother must imagine that the palanquin is attacked by highway robbers. A gang of tall, dark, terrific, turbaned fellows are they, carrying dangerous weapons. Surely palanquin-bearers are not bold men like our Hero; they leave their charge and take to their heels. The infant Caesar is thus left alone to fight the robbers! He takes up the noble duty with a word of consolation to the Mother, and with determination in his heart. This is how the Poet presents the picture in the ‘Crescent Moon’:

“You sit crouched in your palanquin and repeat the names of the Gods in prayer.

I shout to you, “Don’t be afraid, Mother, I am here.” With long sticks in their hands and with hair all wild about their heads, they come nearer and nearer.

Then I spur my horse for a wild gallop and my sword and buckler clash against each other. The fight becomes so fearful, Mother, that it would give you a cold shudder could you see it from your palanquin.

Many of them fly and a great number are cut to pieces. I know you are thinking, sitting all by yourself, that your boy must be dead by this time.

But I come to you, all stained with blood, and say “Mother, the fight is over now.”

A thousand useless things happen day after day, and why couldn’t such a thing come here by chance?

It would be like a story in a book.

My (elder) brother would say, “Is it possible? I always thought he was so delicate!”

Our village people would all say in amazement, “Was it not lucky that the boy was with his mother?”

The lines just quoted present one of the most exquisite and intimate pictures of childhood that the Poet has depicted. How beautifully and with what wonderful psychological insight the Poet has touched upon the spark of knightly chivalry embedded in the infant heart! The tiny bosom desires not only the accomplishment of the knightly deed, but craves for the approbation of the world too after the achievement. And not the mother’s appreciation alone, but of the villagers too, and, above all, the appreciation of the brother, the arch-sceptic who has faith in nothing that the little one would say or do!

There is another aspect of the child’s mind and activity which the Poet has portrayed in some very delicate, sympathetic touches. It is the child’s proverbial aversion to studies. In this connection, let us recall that the Poet himself as a child had never taken kindly to his prescribed studies. The child of Tagore wants all the days of the week to be Sundays, and to be a scholar is never his ambition. He does not mind being a dunce, if only he can have a holiday every day of the week, and if, of course, Mother keeps him company always. Says the child:

“Mother, what if I cannot become like your Ambika Gossain? Surely, I do not want to be a Pandit.

What if I do not want to be a good boy and want always to play?

What if I run after the silk cocoons on branches?

You say, I will remain a dunce?

But what do I lose in being a dunce if I get holiday every day?”

Yes, indeed, the child dreads his studies as drudgery imposed from above; for him the “play is the thing”, play gives him pleasure which studies do not. Do not all modern systems of children’s education recognise this fact and seek to teach the child through play and make study a pleasurable pastime?

There is yet another side of the child’s mind interlinked with his dislike for studies; it is his dread of one person who is his mortal enemy – the schoolmaster! The child’s constant care is how to get rid of this very unamiable person. He runs at times to his mother with woeful tales of rough chastisement at the hands of his schoolmaster. For such things Mother is his only solace, his unfailing sympathiser. How often do we fail to understand that a harsh word or thoughtlessly cruel treatment cuts the child to the quick and tells upon his entire mind and outlook! How incalculable is the harm done to the future development of the budding little personality! This the Poet has depicted with delicate sympathy in a small poem. Here he draws our attention to the scolding that the child has received from his master for failure to memorise the multiplication table. “What is the product of 8 into 7?” –he is asked; “it is 27”, the boy replies! O what a reprimand the boy gets for this! Not only the reprimand; a tiny, coloured earthen doll which Mother had bought for him at the car-festival for the price of one anna and a quarter, and which the boy had carefully hidden among his books, is forcibly snatched away from him and the master throws it away as part of the penance for not knowing the product of 8 into 7! The doll breaks into pieces, the boy sees the tragedy in silence; he sheds not a tear, makes no protest–but as he returns home he straightaway tells the mother the full details of the tragedy, and he asks Mother:

“Mother, to whom shall I complain? Does not the schoolmaster have another master over him? What if I go and complain to him that his pupil has broken my doll? Does he not have any doll or plaything at home? Does he not love to play with these? Did he not neglect his studies when he thought on his dolls morning and evening? Now tell me, Mother, if anybody were to break those dolls of his how he would feel?”

Thus has the Poet brought out the child’s eternal complaint with touches of sweet pathos. Do not these touches vibrate on the deepest chords of our heart? Do we not feel with the child that the schoolmaster is really a dreadful creature? The Poet’s reference to the doll as being a gift from the mother and of the occasion of the gift and of the price paid for it,–all these provide most delicate touches of the sweet relationship between the mother and the child. Here we find the Poet’s depth of sympathy and our hearts echo in unison with the fond mother’s love for the child. She has bought a tiny gift out of her paltry savings, in order to please her darling, and the Poet has roused as much our sympathy for the mother and child as our aversion for the schoolmaster.

Now let us turn over another page in the child’s mind. He is certainly not fond of the schoolmaster, but is nevertheless fond of playing the schoolmaster. When the dhoby comes with his bundle of clothes on the donkey’s back, the child has the opportunity of having the donkey’s young one as his pupil, with himself as the Master! He finds another pupil in little Pussy, his constant companion in play, and begins to teach her the alphabet, cane in hand! But as little Pussy does not evince any interest in becoming a scholar, he is put out and tells his mother:

“Mother, Pussy is very negligent in her studies. She is late to her lesson everyday. She will never listen to my instruction, but will only raise her right paw and yawn!”

The child writes down the alphabet from beginning to end, asks Pussy to say her lesson, but Pussy only says ‘Mew!’ She thinks that every letter in the alphabet is called ‘Mew’! But the child is more indulgent than his own schoolmaster; he sits with his cane but never uses it on his pupils. He brandishes it only because it is the mark of the pedagogue! He hasn’t the heart to try it on little Pussy or the innocent donkey.

Now we shall turn to yet another picture of the mother-and-child relationship. The child is ever eager to bring all the choicest gifts of the earth to his mother’s hands. If love is defined as thy desire to sacrifice, to give without the hope of return, this vere sentiment we notice in the child’s attachment to his mother. All his gifts and presents he wants to shower on his mother’s lap only to satisfy his overflowing love for his mother, but not with the hope of getting any return from the mother. The mother on her part is not unaware of how splendid a blessing the child is to her. This mutual love between the mother and child the Poet has, with rare insight, depicted in some poems. The traditional and commonly understood relationship between mother and child is that the child owes a deep debt to his mother for all that he is and become. Time after time, poet after poet has sung the glory of the mother who devotes all her care and concern to the child, and sacrifices her life and all for the upbringing of the child. But few indeed have realised the debt which the mother owes to the child for her own fulfillment, for the satisfaction of her soul. Poet Tagore is perhaps the very first who discovered the important part that the child plays in bringing the mother’s love and affection to a natural fulfillment. True it is that when the child “cometh from afar”, it comes empty-handed. But the smile, the joy, the beaming, radiant face, the restless spirit manifesting itself through every odd movement, the lisping attempts at speech,–all these form a wonderful world of delight, a very paradise around himself, which to the mother is more precious than all the riches of the earth. The subtle beauty and mystery of this world of delight only the mother can realise, and none else. But the insight arid sympathetic understanding of Poet Tagore have delved into these deeper mysteries and given us a taste of their delight. He has pointed out that whatever the child receives from the mother, he receives not as a beggar, but he repays all a hundredfold. What a helpless creature he is when he is first received into the mother’s bosom! For every movement and for every effort the must depend on the mother. But yet, for the Mother, he constitutes a whole world of treasure, a heaven of delight. Without him Mother is no Mother, with him Mother is everything. She fulfils herself through the child. He comes to the mother “trailing clouds of glory”, a gift of God, and should she not be hungering to give to her child all that she can, her entire life and soul? Thus sings the Poet:

“Baby had a heap of gold and pearls, yet he came like a beggar on to this earth. It is not for nothing he came in such a disguise. This dear little, naked mendicant pretends to be utterly helpless, so that he may beg for Mother’s wealth of love.”

In Tagore’s treatment of childhood there are so many aspects, such a wealth of variety, that it is not possible in a brief survey like this to do justice to them all. There is however only one more point which I should like to touch upon. The most pathetic of all the poems in this series is the one which deals with the child languishing through long sickness, and yet consoling his mother when she is overcast with the gloomy foreboding of the child’s approaching death. Baby does not fail to realise his own critical condition. He perceives the care and caution reflected in every eye in the house,–the gentle footstep, the silent whisper, the anxious inquiry, the woe-begone looks of the mother, her red, swollen eyes heavy with tears,–all these tell their own tale. From these the child has felt within himself the call of the deep, the beckoning of the Great Unknown. But he has no particular fear of death; death is, as it were, rushing into his favourite Mother Nature’s lap, and perhaps not much different from jumping to his own mother’s bosom. He is not therefore anxious for himself, but his concern is for Mother. Her own grief, her sense of desolation at his separation, is the sore point with him. So he consoles her, saying that he will not be away from her in death!

“I shall become a delicate draught of air and caress you: and I shall be ripples in the waters when you bathe, and kiss you again and again.

In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves, you will hear my whispers in your bed, and my laughter will flash the lightning through the open window into your room. If you lie awake thinking of your baby till late into the night, I shall sing to you from the stars, “Sleep, Mother, sleep”...

Dear auntie will come with Pujah presents and will ask “Where is your baby, sister?” Mother, you will tell her softly, “He is in the pupils of my eyes, he is in my body, and in my soul.”

In her happy moments the mother sometimes feigns grief and enjoys the luxury of consolation from her baby. When baby wisely assumes the role of Mother’s sympathiser in grief it fills the mother’s heart with infinite pleasure. But when today the same baby is going to leave her for good and when he, as he is about to depart, attempts to console her himself in this dreadfully real grief, who will be there to stay her torrent of tears?

There is a philosophy underlying Tagore’s poems on childhood. It must however be understood that such philosophy has never impaired the sweetness and grandeur of the poems. To the Mother, Baby’s kiss brings no mere earthly pleasure, no mere physical sensation. She says:

“When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surely understand what pleasure streams from the sky in the morning light, and what delight the summer breeze brings to my body, when I kiss you to make you smile.”

When Mother brings baby coloured toys, she understands from the child’s laughter why there is such a play of colours on clouds and water, and why flowers are painted in tints. When Mother sings to the dancing movements of the child, she understands the meaning of the murmurs among the leaves and of the ripples in the water breaking out into laughter. A little poem incorporates this deep and sublime truth about the subtle inter-connection between the mother’s joy and the joy in nature, yet the poem does not sacrifice the interest of poetry to philospohy. It must be borne in mind here that Tagore has woven a lovely web of mystery round the day-to-day attachment between the mother and the child. The poem I quote here reflects one of the loftiest reaches of Tagore’s philosophy and forms one of the lovelist lyrics of the Gitanjali:

“Thus it is thy joy in me is so full.

Thus it is that thou hast come down to me.

Oh thou lord of all heavens, where would be thy love if I were not?

Thou hast taken me as thy partner of all this wealth.

“In my heart is the endless play of thy delight.

In my life thy will is ever taking shape.

And for this, thou who art the king of kings, hast decked thyself in beauty to captivate my heart.

And for this thy love loses itself in the love of thy lover, and there art thou seen in the perfect union of the two.”

As this lyric conveys the sublime truth that God fulfils Himself through man, through His creation, so in the other poem in the Crescent Moon we find a parallel idea that mother fulfils herself through her child. As Mother gives colourful toys to her child and delights herself by delighting the child, so God gives us delight through the sights and sounds of nature, through the colour of the rainbow and the smile of the flowers, and at the same time enjoys his own delight through our delight; the artist delights in his own work of art, his creation is his own fulfillment; and God the artist fulfils himself through man, his handiwork; and Mother fulfils herself through her child. The same sentiment is reflected in yet another lyric of the Gitanjali where God is represented as a Poet who revels in the joy of his creation:

“What divine drink woudst thou have, my God, from this overflowing cup of my life?

My poet, is it thy delight to see thy creation through my eyes and to stand at the portals of my ears silently to listen to thine own eternal harmony?

Thy world is weaving words in my mind and thy joy is adding music to them.

Thou givest thyself in love and then finest thine own entire sweetness in me.”

Such is the sublimity of the Poet’s genius, such the depth of his poetic vision, such the sympatlhy of his mind, that he has read these deep mysteries in the love between the mother and the child. Abstruse philosophical truths which evade the meditation and baffle the understanding of seers and sages, can be readily perceived by the mother in fondling and caressing the child. In this respect the child is verily the angel of God. He brings to us the Message of the far-off yet intimate world which is our Home. He is, as Poet Wordsworth too has said, the “mighty prophet, seer blest”, who maintains an unforgettable link between us and our Maker.

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