Tagore - Top Ten World Literatures

Author: Tong Yiqiu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features:
1. Childhood Yearning for Flight
On May 7, 1861, Tagore was born into a landowner and merchant family in Calcutta, West Bengal, India, belonging to the Brahmin caste. His father, Debendranath, was a philosopher and religious reformer with a strong patriotic and nationalist inclination, known as the "Great Sage." The "Great Sage" and his wife already had 13 children but refused to stop, giving birth to two more. The 15th child died in infancy, making Tagore the youngest of 14 siblings. Tagore's father loved traveling and was often away from home. His mother, weakened by excessive childbirth, had to manage a large family, leaving her unable to care for the youngest son. She entrusted him to her eldest daughter, Sundarini. The sister deeply cherished her little brother and often told people, "My Robin (Tagore's nickname) is dark-skinned, not as fair as the others, but one day he will shine even brighter."
Tagore's home had numerous servants, almost enough to form a small army. As he grew older, he was completely left in their care. The servants often confined the children indoors, ordering them to stay still and forbidding them to play. His childhood and youth were marked by little parental affection, spent mostly under the "rule of the servants." Some servants could sing folk songs, others recited poetry, and a few told stories, leaving a deep impression on Tagore. One servant, named Shama, was curly-haired, dark-skinned, and round. He was particularly good at slacking off. To keep the restless Tagore quiet, he devised a trick: locking him in a room, sitting him by the window, and drawing a circle around him with chalk, warning him that stepping outside would bring disaster. Having heard the story of the epic Ramayana, where the heroine Sita suffered calamity for stepping out of a magical circle, Tagore, after the servant left, never dared to cross the line. He sat motionless, gazing at a large banyan tree by the pond outside his window, his only companion in loneliness. Later, in a poem, he wrote:
"Countless fine roots hang low,
Oh, ancient banyan tree!
You stand day and night like a meditating sage,
Do you remember that child whose imagination played in your shadow?"
Another servant, Eswar, was quite greedy. He was responsible for feeding the children. When adding rice, he would ask threateningly, "Still hungry?" The children could tell his intention from his tone and eyes, so Tagore always replied, "No more." This way, the leftovers became his. Over time, this made Tagore a "poor eater."
As Tagore grew older, even this "rule of the servants" ended. The double burden of family and school education began to weigh on his young shoulders. At first, he studied with a private tutor. Soon, when he saw his older brother and nephew going to school in a carriage, though he was not yet of school age, he cried to go too. The tutor slapped him and warned, "You're crying to go to school now, but you might cry to leave it later!" The tutor's prophecy later came true. Tagore's first school was the "Eastern School," where he learned nothing that stuck. However, the methods teachers used to punish students were varied and unforgettable. Students who couldn't recite their lessons were made to stand on stools, arms outstretched, holding stone slabs in their palms. From then on, he grew to dislike school.
At the age of seven, Tagore transferred to a typical British-style normal school. One teacher cursed constantly, which deeply offended Tagore. After that, he refused to answer any of the teacher's questions. He sat in the back row of the classroom, silent all year round. While his classmates read aloud, he thought about the questions that interested him: "How can one defeat an enemy without weapons?" He imagined training dogs, tigers, and other fierce animals to fight on the battlefield, inspiring soldiers' morale and winning battles. However, in the annual exam, Tagore ranked first in the class. The teacher, dissatisfied, reported the examiner to the school, accusing them of favoritism. The principal then personally re-examined Tagore, but he still ranked first. In reality, Tagore had learned much more from his private tutor than in school, and he had already mastered the exam content.
While attending school, Tagore also faced pressure from home education. The heavy academic load made it hard for him to breathe. As he wrote:
"We sat like lifeless models in a museum,
Subjected to hailstones of lessons."
His schedule was packed. Every morning, he rose at dawn and practiced wrestling and boxing with a one-eyed teacher. Next, his biology teacher hung a human skeleton on the wall, requiring Tagore to memorize the Latin names of its parts. If he failed, the skeleton was hung in his bedroom at night, swaying and creaking in the wind, causing him great anxiety. At 7 a.m., a thin mathematics teacher arrived with slates, teaching arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. Then came literature, natural sciences, and Sanskrit grammar. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., he was sent to school. Upon returning home, a physical education teacher awaited him, and he had to do one hour of gymnastics on parallel bars. Just as the PE class ended, the art teacher arrived. After dinner, under dim oil lamps, English class began. For the exhausted Tagore, it seemed as if every page of his books was drenched in sleeping powder. He read until he fell asleep, only to be startled awake.
"He read less than he didn't read."
P1-3