# The Modern Review/Volume 26/Number 3/The Runaway

Original story (অতিথি) first published in Sadhana, Bhadra-Kartik 1302 B.E. (August-September, September-October and October-November, 1895). This translation later included in The Runaway and Other Stories (1959).
THE MODERN REVIEW
THE RUNAWAY
By Rabindranath Tagore.
1.
MOTI Babu, Zamimdar of Katalia, was on his way home by boat. There had been the usual forenoon halt, alongside a village mart on the river, and the cooking of the midday meal was in progress.
A Brahmin boy came up to the boat and asked: "Which way are you going, Sir?" He could not have been older than fifteen or sixteen.
"To Katalia," Moti Babu replied.
"Could you give me a lift to Nandigram, on your way?"
Moti Babu acceded and asked the young fellow his name.
"My name is Tara," said the boy.
With his fair complexion, his great big eyes and his delicate, finely-cut, smiling lips, the lad was strikingly handsome. All he had on was a dhoti, somewhat the worse for wear, and his bare upper body displayed no superfluity either of clothing or flesh,—its rounded proportions looked like some sculptor's masterpiece.
"My son," said Moti Babu affectionately, "have your bath and come on board. You will dine with me."
"Wait a minute, Sir," said Tara, with which he jumped on the servants' boat moored astern, and set to work to assist in the cooking. Moti Babu's servant was an up-country man and it was evident that his ideas of preparing fish for the pot were crude. Tara relieved him of his task and neatly got through it with complete success. He then made up one or two vegetable dishes with a skill which showed a good deal of practice. His work finished, Tara after a plunge in the river took out a fresh dhoti from his bundle, clad himself in spotless white, and with a little wooden comb smoothed back his flowing locks from his forehead into a cluster behind his neck. Then, with his sacred thread glistening over his breast, he presented himself before his host.
Moti Babu took him into the cabin where his wife, Annapurna, and their nine-year old daughter were sitting. The good lady was immensely taken with the comely young fellow,—her whole heart went out to him. Where could he be coming from: whose child could he be: ah, poor thing, how could his mother bear to be separated from him?—thought she to herself.
Dinner was duly served and a seat placed for Tara by Moti Babu's side. The boy seemed to have but a poor appetite. Annapurna put it down to bashfulness and repeatedly pressed him to try this and that, but he would not allow himself to be persuaded. He had clearly a will of his own, but he showed it quite simply and naturally without any appearance of wilfulness or obstinacy.
When they had all finished, Annapurna made Tara sit by her side and questioned him about himself. She was not successful in gathering much of a connected story, but this at least was clear that he had run away from home at the early age of ten or eleven.
​"Have you no mother?" asked Annapurna.
"Yes."
"Does she not love you?"
This last question seemed to strike the boy as highly absurd. He laughed as he replied: "Why should she not?"
"Why did you leave her, then?" pursued the mystified lady.
"She has four more boys and three girls."
Annapurna was shocked. "What a thing to say!" she cried. "Can one bear to cut off a finger because there are four more?"
2.
Tara's history was as brief as his years were few, but for all that the boy was quite out of the common. He was the fourth son of his parents and had lost his father in his infancy. In spite of this large family of children, Tara had always been the favourite. He was petted alike by his mother, his brothers and sisters, and the neighbours. Even the schoolmaster usually spared him the rod, and when he did not, the punishment was felt by all the class. So there was no reason for him to leave his home. But, curiously enough, though the scamp of the village—whose time was divided between tasting of the fruits stolen from the neighbours' trees and the more plentiful fruits of his stealing pressed on him by these same neighbours—remained within the village bounds clinging to his scolding mother, the pet of the village ran away to join a band of wandering players.
There was a hue and cry, and a rescue party hunted him out and brought him back. His distracted mother strained him to her breast and deluged him with her tears. A stern sense of duty forced his elders to make an heroic effort to administer a mild corrective, but overcome by the reaction they lavished their repentant fondness on him worse than ever. The neighbours' wives redoubled their attentions in the hope of reconciling him to his home-life. But all bonds, even those of affection, were irksome to the boy. The star under which he was born must have decreed him homeless.
When Tara saw boats from foreign parts being towed along the river; or a Sannyasi, in his wanderings through unknown lands, resting under one of the village trees, or a gypsy camp sprung up on the fallow field by the river, the gypsies seated by their mat-walled huts, splitting bamboos and weaving baskets, his spirit longed for the freedom of the mysterious outside world, unhampered by ties of affection. After he had repeated his escapade two or three times, his relations and neighbours gave up all hope of him.
When the proprietor of the band of players, which he had joined, began to love Tara as a son and he became the favourite of the whole party, big and small alike,—when he found that even the people of the houses at which their performances were given, chiefly the women, would send for him to mark their special appreciation, he gave them all the slip, and his companions could find no trace of him.
Tara was as impatient of bondage as a young deer, and as susceptible to music. It was the songs in the theatrical performances which had drawn him away from his home ties. Their tunes would make corresponding waves course through his veins and his whole being swayed to their rhythm. Even when he was quite a child, the solemn way in which he would sit out a musical performance, gravely nodding to mark the time, used to make it difficult for the grown-ups to restrain their laughter. Not only music, but the patter of the heavy July rain on the trees in full foliage, the roll of the thunder, the moaning of the wind through the thickets, as of some infant giant strayed from its mother,—would make him beside himself. The distant cry of the kites flying high in the blazing midday sky, the croaking of the frogs on a rainy evening, the howling of the jackals at dead of night,—all these stirred him to his depths.
This passion for music next led him to take up with a company of ballad-singers. The master took great pains in teaching him to sing and recite ballads composed in alliterative verse and jingling metre, based on stories from the epics, and became as fond of him as if he were a pet singing bird. But after he had learnt several pieces, one fine morning it was found that the bird had flown.
​In this part of the country, during June and July, a succession of fairs are held turn by turn in the different villages, and bands of players and singers and dancing girls, together with hordes of traders of every kind, journey in boats along the big and little rivers from fair to fair. Since the year before a novelty in the shape of a party of acrobats had joined the throng. Tara after leaving the ballad singers had been travelling with a trader, helping him to sell his pan. His curiosity being roused, he threw in his lot with the acrobats. He had taught himself to play on the flute, and it was his sole function to play jigs, in the Lucknow style, while the acrobats were doting their feats. It was from this troupe that he had last run away. Para had heard that the Zamindar of Nandigram was getting up some amateur theatricals on a grand scale. He promptly tied up his belongings into a bundle with the intention of going there, when he came across Moti Babu.
Tara's imaginative nature had saved him from acquiring the manners of any of the different companies with whom he had hobnobbed. His mind had always remained aloof and free. He had seen and heard many ugly things, but there was no vacancy within him for these to be stored away. Like other bonds, habit also failed to hold him. Swan-like, he swam lightly over the muddy waters of the world, and no matter how often his curiosity impelled him to dive into the mire beneath, his feathers remained unruffled and white. That is why the face of the runaway shone with an unsullied youthfulness which made even the middle-aged, worldly Moti Babu accept and welcome him, unquestioning and undoubting.
After dinner was over, the boat was cast off and Annapurna, with an affectionate interest, went on asking all about Tara's relatives and his home life. The boy made the shortest possible replies and last sought refuge in flight to the deck.
The vast river outside, swollen by the seasonal rains to the last limit of its brink, seemed to embarrass mother Nature herself by its boisterous recklessness. The sun, shining out of a break in the clouds, touched as though with a magic wand, the rows of half-submerged reeds at the water's edge, the fresh juicy green of the sugar-cane patches higher up on the bank and the purple haze of the woodlands on the further shore against the distant horizon. Everything was gleaming and thrilling and quickening and speaking with life.
Tara mounted the upper deck and stretched himself under the shade of the spreading sail. One after another, sloping grassy meadows, flooded jute fields, deep green waves of Aman rice, narrow paths winding up to the village from the riverside, villages nestling amidst their dense groves, came into sight and passed away. This great world, with its wide-gazing sky, with all the stir and whisper in its fields, the tumult in its water, the restless rustle in its trees, the vast remoteness of its space above and below, was on terms of the closest intimacy with the boy, and yet it never, for a moment, tried to bind his restless spirit within a jealously exacting embrace.
Calves were gambolling by the riverside. Hobbled village ponies limped along, grazing on the meadow lands. Kingfishers, perched on the bamboo poles put up for spreading the nets, took a sudden plunge every now and then after fish. Boys were playing pranks in the river. Village maids up to their breasts in the water chattered and laughed as they scrubbed their clothes. Fishwives with their baskets and tucked-up skirts bargained with the fishermen over their catch,—these everyday scenes never seemed to exhaust their novelty for Tara, his eyes could never quench their thirst.
Then Tara started to talk with the boatmen. He jumped up and took turns with them at the poles whenever the boat hugged the shore too closely. And when the steersman felt he would like a smoke Tara relieved him at the helm, and seemed to know exactly how to work the sail with the changing direction of the breeze and the boat.
A little before evening Annapurna sent for Tara inside and asked him: "What do you usually have for supper?"
"Whatever I get," was the reply, "and some days I don't get anything at all!"
Annapurna was not a little disappointed ​at this lack of response. She felt she would like to feed and clothe and care for this homeless waif till he was made thoroughly happy, but somehow she could not find out what would please him. When a little later, the boat was moored for the night, she bustled about and sent out servants into the village to get milk and sweetmeats and whatever other dainties were to be had. But Tara contented himself with a very sparing supper and refused the milk altogether. Even Moti Babu, a man of few words, tried to press the milk on him, but he simply said: "I don't care for it."
Thus passed two or three days of their life on the river. Tara of his own accord, and with great alacrity, helped in the marketing and the cooking and lent a hand with the boatmen in whatever had to be done. Anything worth seeing never missed his keen glance. His eyes, his limbs, his mind were always on the alert. Like Nature herself, he was in constant activity, yet aloof and undistracted. Every individual has his own fixed standpoint, but Tara was just a joyous ripple on the rushing current of things across the infinite blue. Nothing bound him to past or future, his was simply to flow onwards.
From the various professionals with whom he had associated, he had picked up many entertaining accomplishments. Free from all troubling, his mind had a wonderful receptivity. He had by heart any number of ballads and songs and long passages out of the dramas. One day, as was his custom, Moti Babu was giving a reading from the Ramayana to his wife and daughter. He was about to come to the story of Kusha and Lava, the valiant sons of Rama, when Tara could contain his excitement no longer. Stepping down from the deck into the cabin he exclaimed: "Put away the book, Sir. Let me sing you the story." He then began to recite Dasarathi's version of the story in a faultless flute-like voice, showering and scattering its wonderful rhymes and alliterations all over. The atmosphere became charged with a wealth of laughter and tears. The boatmen hung round the cabin doors to listen, and even the occupants of passing boats strained their ears to get snatches of the floating melody. When it came to an end, a sigh went forth from all the listeners,—alas, that it should have finished so soon!
Annapurna with her eyes brimming over, longed to take Tara into her lap and fold him to her bosom. Moti Babu thought that if only he could persuade the lad to stay on with them he would cease to feel the want of a son. Only the little Charu, their daughter, felt as if she would burst with jealousy and chagrin!
3.
Charu was the only child of her parents, the sole claimant to their love. There was no end to her whims and caprices. She had ideas of her own as to dress and toilet, but these were liable to constant fluctuations. So whenever she was invited out, her mother was on tenter-hooks till the last moment, lest she should get something impossible into her head. If once she did not fancy the way her hair had been done, no amount of taking it down and doing it up again would be any good—the matter was sure to end in a fit of sulks. It was the same with most other things. When, however, she was in a good humour, she was reasonableness itself. She would then kiss and embrace her mother with a gushing affection, and distract her with incessant prattle and laughter. In a word, this little mite of a girl was an impossible enigma.
With all the fierceness of her untamed heart Charu began to hate Tara. She took to tearfully pushing away her platter at dinner, the cooking was done so badly! She slapped her maid, finding fault with her for no rhyme or reason. In fine she succeeded in making her parents thoroughly uncomfortable. The more interesting she, with the others, found Tara's varied accomplishments to be, the angrier she became. Since her mind refused to admit Tara's merits, how should she not be wild when they became too obtrusive?
When Tara first sang the story of Kusha and Lava, Annapurna had hoped that the music, which could have charmed the beasts of the forest, might serve to soften the temper of her wayward daughter. She ​asked her: "And how did you like it, Charu?" A vigorous shaking of the head was all the reply she got, which translated into words must have meant: "I did not like it, and I never will like it, so there!"
Divining that it was a pure case of jealousy the mother gave up showing any attention to Tara in her daughter's presence. But when after her early supper Charu had gone off to bed, and Moti Babu was sitting out on deck with Tara, Annapurna took her seat near the cabin door and asked Tara to give them a song. As the melody flooded the evening sky, seeming to enrapture into a hush the villages reposing under the dusk, and filling Annapurna's tender heart with an ecstacy of unutterable love and beauty, Charu left her bed and came up sobbing: "What a noise you are all making, mother! I can't get a wink of sleep!" How could she bear the idea of being sent off to bed alone, and all of them hanging round Tara, revelling in his singing?
Tara, for his part, found the tantrums of this little girl, with the bright black eyes, highly diverting. He tried his best to win her over by telling her stories, singing songs to her, playing on the flute for her,—but with no success. Only when he plunged into the river for his daily swim, with his dhoti lifted short above his knees and tightened round his waist, his fair supple limbs cleaving the water with skilful ease, like some water-sprite at play, her curious gaze could not help being attracted. She would be looking forward every morning to his bath-time, but without letting any one guess her fascination. And when the time came, this little untaught actress would fall to practice her knitting by the cabin window with a world of attention; only now and again her eyes would be raised to throw a casual, seemingly contemptuous glance at Tara's performance.
They had long passed by Nandigram, but of this Tara had taken no notice. The big boat swept onwards with a leisurely movement, sometimes under sail, sometimes towed along, through river, tributary and branch. The days of its inmates wore on like these streams, with a lazy flow of unexciting hours of mild variedness. No one was in any kind of hurry. They all took plenty of time over their daily bath and food, and even before it grew quite dark the boats would be moored near the landing place of some village of sufficient size, against a woodland background, lively with the sparkle of fireflies and the chirping of cicadas. In this way it took them over ten days to get to Katalia.
4.
On the news of the Zamindar Babu's arrival, men, palanquins and ponies were sent out to meet his boat, and the retainers fired off a salvo startling the village crows into noisy misgivings. Impatient of the delay occasioned by this formal welcome Tara quietly slipped off the boat by himself, and made a rapid round of the village. Some he hailed as brother or sister, others as uncle or aunt, and in the short space of two or three hours he had made friends with all sorts and conditions of people.
It was perhaps because Tara acknowledged no bonds that he could win his way so easily into others' affections,—anyhow in a few days the whole village had capitulated unconditionally. One of the reasons for his easy victory was the quickness with which he could enter into the spirit of every class, as if he was one of themselves. He was not the slave of any habit, but he could easily and simply get used to things. With children, he was just a child, yet aloof and superior. With his elders, he was not childish, but neither was he a prig. With the peasant, he was a peasant without losing his brahminhood. He took part in the work or play of all of them with zest and skill. One day as he was seated at a sweetmeat-seller's, the latter begged him to mind the shop while he went on some errand, and the boy cheerfully sat there for hours, driving off the flies with a palmyra leaf. He had some knowledge of how to make sweetmeats; and could also take a hand at the loom, or at the potter's wheel with equal ease.
But though he had made a conquest of the village, he had been unable to overcome the jealousy of one little girl; and ​it may be that just because he felt that this atom of femininity desired his banishment with all her might, he made such a prolonged stay in Katalia.
But little Charu was not long in furnishing fresh proof of the inscrutability of the feminine mind. Sonamani, the daughter of the cook (a Brahmin woman) had been widowed at the early age of five or six. She was now of Charu's age and her closest friend. She was confined to her quarters with some ailment when the family returned home and so could not come to see her companion for some days. When at last she did turn up, the two bosom friends nearly fell out for good. This is how it happened.
Charu had started on the story of her travels with great circumstance. With the thrilling episode of the abduction of the gem, known as Tara, she had fully expected to raise her friend's curiosity and wonderment to the topmost pitch. But when she learned that Tara was not unknown to Sonamani, that he called Sonamani's mother, aunt, and Sonamani called him dada—when she further gathered that Tara had not only charmed both mother and daughter by playing songs of the loves of Radha and Krishna on the flute, but had actually made a bamboo flute for Sonamani with his own hand, and plucked fruit for her from tree tops and flowers for her from brambly thickets,—she felt as if a red-hot spear had been thrust into her.
That very day, Charu, on some different pretext, vowed eternal enmity to Sonamani. And going into Tara's room she pulled out his favourite flute, threw it on the floor and kicked and stamped and trampled it into shivers.
While she was thus furiously busy Tara came into the room. The picture of passion which the girl presented amazed him. "Charu!" he cried. "Why are you smashing up my flute?"
"Serve you right. I'd do it again!" she screamed, as with flushed face and reddened eyes she gave the flute some more superfluous kicks and then ran away crying from the room.
Tara picked up his flute to find it utterly done for. He could not help laughing out loud to think of the sudden fate which had overtaken his unoffending instrument. Charu was becoming for him more and more an object of curiosity as days went by.
He found in this house other objects, also, which gave full scope to his curiosity. These were the English picture books in Moti Babu's library. Though his knowledge of the outside world was considerable, he found it difficult to enter fully into this world of pictures. He tried to make up for the deficiency by dint of his imagination. But that did not prove wholly satisfactory.
Finding the picture books so greatly attracting Tara, Moti Babu one day asked him: "Would you like to learn English? You could then understand all about these pictures."
"I would indeed!" exclaimed Tara.
Moti Babu, highly delighted, at once arranged with the head master of the village school to give him English lessons.
5.
With his keen memory and undivided attention, Tara set to work at his English lessons. He seemed to have embarked on some adventurous quest and left all his old life behind. The neighbours saw no more of him, and when in the afternoon, just before it got dark, he would pace rapidly up and down the deserted riverside, getting up his lessons, his devoted band of boys looked on dejectedly from a distance, not daring to interrupt him.
Even Charu but rarely came across him. Tara had been used to come into the zenana for his meals, of which he partook leisurely, under the kindly eyes of Annapurna. He could no longer brook the loss of time which took place over all this, and begged Moti Babu's permission to be served in his room outside. Annapurna was grieved at the prospect of losing his company, and protested. But Moti Babu, glad to find the boy so mindful of his studies, fell in with the idea and so arranged it.
​All of a sudden Charu announced that she also must and would learn English. Her parents at first took it as a great joke and laughed heartily over their little one's latest caprice. But she effectually washed away the humorous part of the proposal with a flood of tears; and her helplessly doting guardians had to take the matter seriously. Charu was placed under the same tutor and had her lessons with Tara.
But studiousness did not come naturally to this flighty little creature. She not only did not learn herself, but made it difficult for Tara to do so either. She would lag behind by not preparing her lessons, but would fly into a rage, or burst into tears, if Tara went on to the next one without her. When Tara was through with one book and had to get another, the same had to be procured for her also. Her jealousy would not allow her to put up with Tara's way or sitting alone in his room to do his exercises. She took to stealing in, when he was not there, and daubing his exercise book with ink, or making away with his pen. Tara would bear these depredations as long as he could, and when he could not he would chastise her, but she could not be got to mend her ways.
At last, by accident, Tara hit upon an effective method. One day, as he had torn out an ink-bespattered page from his exercise book and was sitting there thoroughly vexed about it, Charu peeped in. "Now I am going to catch it," thought she. But as she came in, her hopes were disappointed. Tara sat quiet, without a word. She flitted in and out, sometimes edging near enough for him to give her a smack, if he had been so minded. But no, he remained as still and grave as ever. The little culprit was at her wit's end. She had never been used to begging pardon, and yet her penitent heart yearned to make it up. Finding no other way out, she took up the torn-out page and sitting near him wrote on it in a large round hand: "I will never do it again." She then went through a variety of manœuvres to draw Tara's attention to what she had written. Tara could keep his countenance no longer, and burst out laughing, The girl fled from the room beside herself with grief and anger.—She felt that nothing short of the complete obliteration of that sheet of paper, from eternal time and infinite space, would serve to wipe away her mortification!
Bashful, shrinking Sonamani would sometimes come round to the schoolroom door, hesitate at the threshold and then take herself off. She had made it up with Charu, and they were as great friends as ever in all else, but where Tara was concerned Sonamani was afraid and cautious. So she usually chose the time when Charu was inside the Zenana, to hover near the schoolroom door. One day Tara caught sight of the retreating figure and called out: "Hullo, Sona, is that you? What's the news: how is Aunt?"
"You haven't been to us for so long," said Sonamani. "Mother has a pain in the back, or she would have come to see you herself."
At this point Charu came up. Sonamani was all in a flutter. She felt as if she had been caught stealing her friend's property. Charu, with a toss of her head, and her voice pitched shrill, cried out: "For shame, Sonamani! To he coming and disturbing lessons! I'll tell mother." To hear Tara's self-constituted guardian, one would have thought that her sole care in life was to prevent the disturbance of his studies! What brought her here at this time the Lord might have known, but Tara had no idea.
Poor, flustered Sonamani sought refuge in making up all kinds of excuses, whereupon Charu called her a nasty little storyteller and she had to slink away, owning complete defeat.
But the sympathetic Tara shouted after her: "All right, Sona, tell your mother I'll go and see her this evening."
"Oh! Will you?" sneered Charu. "Haven't you got lessons to do? I'll tell Master masai, you see if I don't!"
Undeterred by the threat, Tara went over to Dame Cook's quarters one or two evenings. On the third, Charu went one better than mere threatening. She fastened ​the chain outside Tara's door and, taking a small padlock off her mother's spice-box, locked him in for the evening, only letting him out when it was supper time. Tara was excessively annoyed and swore he would not touch a morsel of food. The repentant girl, beside herself, begged and prayed for forgiveness. "I'll never, never do it again," she pleaded, "I beg of you at your feet, do please have something to eat." Tara was at first obdurate, but when she began to sob as if her heart would break, he had to turn back and sit down to his supper.
Charu had often and often said to herself that she would never again tease Tara and be very, very good to him, but Sonamani,—or something or other,—would get in the way and spoil her virtuous resolution.
And it came about that whenever Tara found her particularly quiet and good he began to look out for an explosion. How or why it happened he never could make out, but there it was sure enough,—a regular storm, followed by showers of tears,—and then the bright sun shone out and there was peace.
6.
Thus passed two whole years. Tara had never before permitted any one to cage him for so long a time. Perhaps it was his attraction for the novelty of his studies; perhaps it was a change of character, due to increasing age, which made his restless spirit welcome the change to a restful life; perhaps, again, his pretty little fellow-student, with her endless variety of teasing ways, had cast a secret spell over his heart.
Charu had reached her marriageable age. Moti Babu was anxiously casting about for a suitable bridegroom. But the mother said to her husband: "Why are you hunting for bridegrooms, high and low? Tara is quite a nice boy,—and our daughter is fond of him, too."
The proposal took Moti Babu by surprise. "How can that be?" he exclaimed. "We know nothing of his family or antecedents. Our only daughter must make a good match."
One day a party came over from the Raydanga Zamindar's to see the girl with a view to make a proposal. An attempt was made to get Charu dressed up and taken to the reception rooms outside. But she locked herself into her bedroom and refused to stir out. Moti Babu stood by the door and pleaded and scolded in vain; at last he had to return outside and make feeble excuses to the would-be bridegroom's party, saying his daughter was indisposed. They came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with the girl which was sought to be concealed, and the matter fell through.
Then Moti Babu's thoughts came back to Tara. He was handsome and well-behaved, and in every way desirable. He could continue to live with them, and so the wrench of sending away their only child to another's house could be done away with. It also struck him that the wilful ways of his little one, which seemed so readily excusable in her father's home, would not be so indulgently tolerated in that of her husband.
The husband and wife had a long talk about it and finally decided to send over to Tara's village in order to make inquiries. When the news was brought back that the family was respectable enough, but poor, a formal proposal was at once sent off to the mother and the elders. And they, overjoyed at the prospect, lost no time in signifying their consent.
Moti Babu discussed and settled the time and place of the wedding with his wife alone; with his habitual reticence and caution he kept the matter secret from everybody else.
Meanwhile Charu would now and then make stormy raids on the schoolroom outside,—sometimes angry, sometimes affectionate, sometimes contemptuous, but always disturbing. And gleams, as of lightning flashes, would create a hitherto unknown tumult in the once free and open sky of the boy's mind. His unburdened life now felt the obstruction of some network of dream-stuff into which it had drifted and become entangled. Some days Tara would leave aside his lessons and betake himself to the library, where he ​would remain immersed in the pictures. And the world, which his imagination now conjured up out of these, was different from the former one and far more intensely coloured. The boy was struck with this change in himself, and conscious of a new experience.
Moti Babu had fixed upon a day in July for the auspicious ceremony, and sent out invitations accordingly to Tara's mother and relatives. He also instructed his agent in Calcutta to send down a brass band and the other innumerable paraphernalia necessary for a wedding. But to Tara, he had not as yet said a word about the matter.
In the meantime the monsoon had set in. The river had almost dried up, the only sign of water being the pools left in the hollows; elsewhere the river bed was deeply scored with the tracks of the carts which had latterly been crossing over. The village boats, stranded high and dry, were half imbedded in the caking mud. Then all of a sudden one day, like a married daughter returning to her father's house, a swift-flowing current, babbling and laughing with glee, danced straight into the empty heart and outstretched arms of the village. The boys and girls romped about with joy and never seemed to get done with their sporting and splashing in the water, embracing their long lost friend. The village women left their tasks and came out to greet their boon companion of old. And everywhere fresh life was stirred up in the dry, languishing village.
Boats from distant parts, small and big, and of all varieties of shape, bringing their freight, began to be seen on the river, and the bazars in the evening resounded with the songs of the foreign boatmen. During the dry season, the villages on either bank were left in their secluded corners, to while away the time with their domestic concerns, and then in the rains the great outside World would come a-wooing, mounted on his silt-red chariot, laden with presents of merchandise, and all pettiness would be swept away for a time in the glamour of the courting; all would be life and gaiety, and festive clamour would fill the skies.
This year the Nag Zamindars, close by, were getting up a specially gorgeous car-festival, and there was to be a grand fair. When, in the moon-lit evening, Tara went sauntering by the river, he saw boat upon boat hurrying by, some filled with merry-go-rounds, others bearing theatrical parties, singing and playing as they went, and any number carrying traders and their wares. There was one containing a party of strolling players, with a violin vigorously playing a well-known tune, and the usual ha! ha! of encouragement boisterously shouted out every time it came back to the refrain. The up-country boatmen of the cargo boats kept up an unmeaning but enthusiastic din with their cymbals, without any accompanying song or tune. All was the excitement and bustle.
And as Tara looked on, an immense mass of cloud rolled up from the horizon, spreading and bellying out like a great black sail; the moon was overcast; the east wind sprang up driving along cloud after cloud; the river swelled and heaved. In the swaying woods on the river banks the darkness grew tense, frogs croaked and shrill cicadas seemed to be sawing away at the night with their chirp.
All the world was holding a car-festival that evening, with flags flying, wheels whirling and the earth rumbling. Clouds pursued. each other, the wind rushed after them, the boats sped on, and songs leapt to the skies. Then, the lightning flashed out, rending the sky from end to end; the thunder crackled forth; and out of the depths of the darkness a scent of moist earth, from some rainfall near by, filled the air. Only the sleepy little village of Katalia dozed away in its corner, with doors closed and lights out.
Next day, Tara's mother and brothers disembarked at Katalia and three big boats full of the various requirements of the wedding touched at the zamindar's landing ghat. Next day, Sonamani in great trepidation ventured to take some preserves and pickles to Tara's room and stood hesitating at his door. But next day there was no Tara to be seen. Before the conspiracy of love and affection had succeeded in completely hemming him in, the unattached, free-souled Brahmin boy had ​fled, in the rainy night, with the heart of the village which he had stolen, back to the arms of his great world-mother, placid in her serene unconcern.
Translated by Surendranath Tagore.
* ↑ Servants belonging to other provinces do not as a rule understand the niceties of Bengali culinary art. Tr.
* ↑ Cooks in Hindu households are usually Brahmins (invariably so in Brahmin households) and are on a much higher footing than menial servants.
* ↑ Elder brother.
* ↑ Respectful way of addressing or referring to a teacher of English. Tr.