My Reminiscences | Page 7

quarters and bore no stamp of usefulness;
moreover it was as unadorned as it was useless, for no one had ever
planted anything there; it was doubtless for these reasons that this
desert spot offered no resistance to the free play of the boy's
imagination. Whenever I got any loop-hole to evade the vigilance of
my warders and could contrive to reach the golabari I felt I had a
holiday indeed.
There was yet another place in our house which I have even yet not
succeeded in finding out. A little girl playmate of my own age called
this the "King's palace."[6] "I have just been there," she would
sometimes tell me. But somehow the propitious moment never turned
up when she could take me along with her. That was a wonderful place,
and its playthings were as wonderful as the games that were played
there. It seemed to me it must be somewhere very near--perhaps in the
first or second storey; the only thing was one never seemed to be able
to get there. How often have I asked my companion, "Only tell me, is it
really inside the house or outside?" And she would always reply, "No,
no, it's in this very house." I would sit and wonder: "Where then can it
be? Don't I know all the rooms of the house?" Who the king might be I
never cared to inquire; where his palace is still remains undiscovered;
this much was clear--the king's palace was within our house.

Looking back on childhood's days the thing that recurs most often is the
mystery which used to fill both life and world. Something undreamt of
was lurking everywhere and the uppermost question every day was:
when, Oh! when would we come across it? It was as if nature held
something in her closed hands and was smilingly asking us: "What
d'you think I have?" What was impossible for her to have was the thing
we had no idea of.
Well do I remember the custard apple seed which I had planted and
kept in a corner of the south verandah, and used to water every day.
The thought that the seed might possibly grow into a tree kept me in a
great state of fluttering wonder. Custard apple seeds still have the habit
of sprouting, but no longer to the accompaniment of that feeling of
wonder. The fault is not in the custard apple but in the mind. We had
once stolen some rocks from an elder cousin's rockery and started a
little rockery of our own. The plants which we sowed in its interstices
were cared for so excessively that it was only because of their
vegetable nature that they managed to put up with it till their untimely
death. Words cannot recount the endless joy and wonder which this
miniature mountain-top held for us. We had no doubt that this creation
of ours would be a wonderful thing to our elders also. The day that we
sought to put this to the proof, however, the hillock in the corner of our
room, with all its rocks, and all its vegetation, vanished. The
knowledge that the schoolroom floor was not a proper foundation for
the erection of a mountain was imparted so rudely, and with such
suddenness, that it gave us a considerable shock. The weight of stone of
which the floor was relieved settled on our minds when we realised the
gulf between our fancies and the will of our elders.
How intimately did the life of the world throb for us in those days!
Earth, water, foliage and sky, they all spoke to us and would not be
disregarded. How often were we struck by the poignant regret that we
could only see the upper storey of the earth and knew nothing of its
inner storey. All our planning was as to how we could pry beneath its
dust-coloured cover. If, thought we, we could drive in bamboo after
bamboo, one over the other, we might perhaps get into some sort of
touch with its inmost depths.

During the Magh festival a series of wooden pillars used to be planted
round the outer courtyard for supporting the chandeliers. Digging holes
for these would begin on the first of Magh. The preparations for
festivity are ever interesting to young folk. But this digging had a
special attraction for me. Though I had watched it done year after
year--and seen the hole grow bigger and bigger till the digger had
completely disappeared inside, and yet nothing extraordinary, nothing
worthy of the quest of prince or knight, had ever appeared--yet every
time I had the feeling that the lid being lifted off a chest of mystery. I
felt that a little bit more digging would do it. Year after year passed,