My Reminiscences | Page 5

two in the outer[4] garden, and the
gathering of flowers, with which he would finally saunter slowly
homewards, radiating the cool comfort of his refreshed body, as he
went. This would go on till it was past noon. Then the bathing places
would be deserted and become silent. Only the ducks remained,
paddling about after water snails, or busy preening their feathers, the
live-long day.
When solitude thus reigned over the water, my whole attention would
be drawn to the shadows under the banyan tree. Some of its aerial roots,
creeping down along its trunk, had formed a dark complication of coils
at its base. It seemed as if into this mysterious region the laws of the
universe had not found entrance; as if some old-world dream-land had
escaped the divine vigilance and lingered on into the light of modern
day. Whom I used to see there, and what those beings did, it is not
possible to express in intelligible language. It was about this banyan
tree that I wrote later:
With tangled roots hanging down from your branches, O ancient

banyan tree, You stand still day and night, like an ascetic at his
penances, Do you ever remember the child whose fancy played with
your shadows?
Alas! that banyan tree is no more, nor the piece of water which served
to mirror the majestic forest-lord! Many of those who used to bathe
there have also followed into oblivion the shade of the banyan tree.
And that boy, grown older, is counting the alternations of light and
darkness which penetrate the complexities with which the roots he has
thrown off on all sides have encircled him.
Going out of the house was forbidden to us, in fact we had not even the
freedom of all its parts. We perforce took our peeps at nature from
behind the barriers. Beyond my reach there was this limitless thing
called the Outside, of which flashes and sounds and scents used
momentarily to come and touch me through its interstices. It seemed to
want to play with me through the bars with so many gestures. But it
was free and I was bound--there was no way of meeting. So the
attraction was all the stronger. The chalk line has been wiped away
to-day, but the confining ring is still there. The distant is just as distant,
the outside is still beyond me; and I am reminded of the poem I wrote
when I was older:
The tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the forest, They met
when the time came, it was a decree of fate. The free bird cries, "O my
love, let us fly to wood." The cage bird whispers, "Come hither, let us
both live in the cage." Says the free bird, "Among bars, where is there
room to spread one's wings?" "Alas," cries the cage bird, "I should not
know where to sit perched in the sky."
The parapets of our terraced roofs were higher than my head. When I
had grown taller; when the tyranny of the servants had relaxed; when,
with the coming of a newly married bride into the house, I had
achieved some recognition as a companion of her leisure, then did I
sometimes come up to the terrace in the middle of the day. By that time
everybody in the house would have finished their meal; there would be
an interval in the business of the household; over the inner apartments
would rest the quiet of the midday siesta; the wet bathing clothes would

be hanging over the parapets to dry; the crows would be picking at the
leavings thrown on the refuse heap at the corner of the yard; in the
solitude of that interval the caged bird would, through the gaps in the
parapet, commune bill to bill with the free bird!
[Illustration: The Inner Garden was My Paradise]
I would stand and gaze.... My glance first falls on the row of cocoanut
trees on the further edge of our inner garden. Through these are seen
the "Singhi's Garden" with its cluster of huts[5] and tank, and on the
edge of the tank the dairy of our milkwoman, Tara; still further on,
mixed up with the tree-tops, the various shapes and different heights of
the terraced roofs of Calcutta, flashing back the blazing whiteness of
the midday sun, stretch right away into the grayish blue of the eastern
horizon. And some of these far distant dwellings from which stand
forth their roofed stair-ways leading up to the terrace, look as if with
uplifted finger and a wink they are hinting to me of the mysteries of
their interiors. Like the beggar at the palace door who imagines
impossible treasures to be held in the strong rooms closed to him, I