Rabindranath Tagore

My Reminiscences Rabindranath Tagore

We three boys were being brought up together. Both my companions were two years olderthan I. When they were placed under their tutor, my teaching also began, but of what Ilearnt nothing remains in my memory. What constantly recurs to me is "The rain patters, the leaf quivers."[1] I am just come toanchor after crossing the stormy region of the kara, khala[2] series; and I am reading "Therain patters, the leaf quivers," for me the first poem of the Arch Poet. Whenever the joy ofthat day comes back to me, even now, I realise why rhyme is so needful in poetry. Becauseof it the words come to an end, and yet end not; the utterance is over, but not its ring; andthe ear and the mind can go on and on with their game of tossing the rhyme to each other. Thus did the rain patter and the leaves quiver again and again, the live-long day in myconsciousness. Another episode of this period of my early boyhood is held fast in my mind. We had an old cashier, Kailash by name, who was like one of the family. He was a great wit, and would be constantly cracking jokes with everybody, old and young; recently marriedsons-in-law, new comers into the family circle, being his special butts. There was room forthe suspicion that his humour had not deserted him even after death. Once my elders wereengaged in an attempt to start a postal service with the other world by means of aplanchette. At one of the sittings the pencil scrawled out the name of Kailash. He was askedas to the sort of life one led where he was. Not a bit of it, was the reply. "Why should you getso cheap what I had to die to learn?"This Kailash used to rattle off for my special delectation a doggerel ballad of his owncomposition. The hero was myself and there was a glowing anticipation of the arrival of aheroine. And as I listened my interest would wax intense at the picture of this worldcharming bride illuminating the lap of the future in which she sat enthroned. The list of thejewellery with which she was bedecked from head to foot, and the unheard of splendour ofthe preparations for the bridal, might have turned older and wiser heads; but what movedthe boy, and set wonderful joy pictures flitting before his vision, was the rapid jingle of thefrequent rhymes and the swing of the rhythm