I know I need not write to you, for I am travelling towards your own nest in the Venu Kunja. But the steamer is an ideal place for letter-writing. If ever I have the chance to visit Baghdad or Samarkhand, I am sure to go out shopping, simply because shopping will have a value for its own sake; it will be so delightfully unnecessary. But Whiteaway and Laidlaw’s! It is a humiliation to have to go there—to prove that man is compelled to sacrifice his precious leisure and even his good taste to the petty needs of respectability.
In a steamer, I sit down to write letters, not because it is necessary, but because it is natural, and consequently above all needs. Land has its claims upon you in return for its hospitality, but sea has none; it repudiates humanity with a magnificent indifference; its water is solely occupied in an eternal dialogue with the wind—the two inseparable companions, who retain their irresponsible infancy as on the first day of their creation.
Land imposes on us our missions of usefulness, and we have to be occupied with lectures and text-books; and our guardians have the right to rebuke us, when we waste good paper in making literary paper-boats. But the sea has no inspiration of moral obligation for us; it offers no foundation for a settled life; its waves raise their signals and have only one word of command: “Pass on.”
I have observed, on board a steamer, how men and women easily give way to their instinct of flirtation, because water has the power of washing away our sense of responsibility, and those who on land resemble the oak in their firmness, behave like floating sea-weed when on the sea. The sea makes us forget that men are creatures who have their innumerable roots, and are answerable to their soil.
For the same reason, when I used to have my dwelling on the bosom of the great river Padma, I was nothing more than a lyrical poet. But since I have taken my shelter at Santiniketan, I have developed all the symptoms of growing into a schoolmaster, and there is grave danger of my ending my career as a veritable prophet! Already everybody has begun asking me for ‘messages’; and a day may come when I shall be afraid to disappoint them. For when prophets do appear unexpectedly to fulfil their mission, they are stoned to death; and when those whom men warmly expect to be prophets, fail to act their part to the end, they are laughed to extinction. The former have their compensation; for they fulfil their purpose, even through their martyrdom. But for the latter, their tragic end is utter wastefulness; it satisfies neither men, nor Gods.
Who is there to save a poet from such a disaster? Can anybody give me back my good-for-nothingness? Can anyone restore to me the provision with which I began my life’s journey to the realm of inutility? One day, I shall have to fight my way out of my own reputation; for the call of my Padma river still comes to me through this huge and growing barrier. It says to me—“Poet, where are you?” And all my heart and soul try to seek out that poet. It has become difficult to find him. For the great multitude of men have heaped honours on him and he cannot be extricated from under them.
I must stop here—for the ship’s engine is throbbing in a measure which is not that of my pen. *