On being informed of a news item entitled "Rare India documents 'go missing',"
By Subir Bhaumik for BBC News, Calcutta, a still youthful A. B. C. E Appuradai, (to your right, not left), a young IAS officer stationed in the state formerly known as Madhya Pradesh, heaved a sigh of relief, sipped his tea, and said: "Someone is Listening to my Prayers."
"Astonishing as I am an atheist, a thousand times over (in India, you see, you have to be very insistent). But that is a small price to pay."
The young man had a Penguin copy of Marcus Aurellius in his pocket.
The article by Bhaumik is reproduced here in summary below:
"Tagore composed the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems. India's national audit agency says many rare manuscripts and documents have gone missing from the National Library in the eastern city of Calcutta. A senior official with the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) office said that the early works of renowned writer Rabindranath Tagore were missing. So too were letters and paperwork of independence heroes Subhas Chandra Bose and Sarojini Naidu.
The library has denied the charges and said the allegations are untrue.
"We have found readers complaining that they cannot get most of the rare books and manuscripts they like to read for research purposes," a CAG official - who did not wish to be named - told the BBC. "Almost 40% of the rare books and manuscripts are not available. Even inventories have been lost." "We have an inventory for rare books and it is surely not true that Tagore's early works have gone missing," he said. The worst such case was in 2004, when Rabindranath Tagore's original Nobel medallion of 1913 was stolen from a museum in West Bengal's western town of Shanti Niketan.
Tagore, often referred to as Bengal's Shakespeare, is the first and only Indian to win the literature prize.
He wrote poems and short stories and composed both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems. He died in 1941."
Mistaking the boy's sense of relief after we finished reading the article to him, we wondered if he meant that now he could actually access the rare works of Tagore, India's Shakespeare (Robindronoth having stolen that mantle, hotly coveted, from Kalidasa, who could not be reached for comment at this time. Bangla, in some circles, being India, especially where literature is concerned, allows us to say that Indian is Bengali, and Bengali Indian, so the 'Shakespeare of Bengal is the Shakespeare of India. Appadurai thought this a good enthymeme, one all too true to conventions of writing about Indian Literature. The two represented languages being Bengali and English. We do not, of course, agree with this enthymeme, nor the facts behind it. There are several Indian languages, if not on your bookshelves, or the local Borders. Urdu, Marathi, Tamil, Telegu, for example, have some fine pieces. Modern. Very Modern. Good luck with those languages then...)
The youthful official shook his head vehemently.
"No. Now We can destroy them. I could have been a great scholar. Perhaps a writer myself, you know. I have been studying Haikus. But I was ruined by Tagore. And Naidu," he shuddered, "the nightingale. But Tagore was the worst. It dripped piety. Like Tolstoy. But in verse. Imagine if Tolstoy preached at you without the epic backdrop of early modern warfare.
First the National Anthem. They made us sing it, day in and day out, and I did not understand a word of it. It felt like a warm-up to our Geography class, right before Calculus. You know, all this 'Sindh and Himachal and Yamuna..., Dravida something something. A very confused Geography class. Echoes of Italian Nationalism, where the land is a perfect unity and such. List its attributes, and the unity shows itself. Where were the people I thought? You see" he said apologetically, "I do not speak Bangla. Nobody does. Outside Western Academe and Bengal and Bangladesh, you see. But still we sang for India. Day in and Day out. in Bangla. There are still parts I do not understand. Let us misunderstand each other in several languages I say. Or in English. A language no one can claim anymore. But not like this."
He poured himself another measure of sickly, sweet tea.
"And there was that terrible Tennysonian poetry. How many bright minds we lost this way. How many undiscovered poets, and artists, who will never write in English now? The boy stood up and began intoning:
"Oh Lord, when thou didst commandest me'est to sing, I felt my heart would burst for pride, and I didst spreadest my wings of song, about yea wide, and how I didst fear the rustle and bustle of the feathered sonority would displease thee, in whose presence I had flown...a silence rimmed in light, at no extra price...
and it went on and on like this. Terrible. We could have read In Memorium and been done with this sort of thing. But no. We had to go on to read everything by Tagore. Anything. No Whitman. No Crane. No Larkin. I am only now getting over the mental cramp I used to feel on encountering iambic or free verse. I cannot see indents in a page and not squirm. All because of the Indian Shakespeare."
He sipped his cup of tea, and smiled a toothy smile...
"Maybe they will get his prose poetry next."
On being informed that the likes of Wittgenstein were known to read from Tagore to their students, the youthful official shrugged.
"Wittgenstein, correct me if I am wrong, was also known to prefer detective novels over Joyce. And he had a habit of keeping a few less chairs so that his students had to stand, or leave. It could have been another way for him to skimp on teaching and vacation by the fjords, where I am told he liked to be. In the dark. Alone. This is what I felt like as well on reading of the holy rustle and bustle of wings. It takes the wind right out of you. Trust a philosopher to pick it right up"
Shocked, we asked him whether he thought there was a Shakespeare of India.
"Yes," said Appadurai. "William. That was good enough for the World. I think it is quite good enough for us. Have you read Julius Ceasar? Friends, Romans, and the like, no bloody wings. Not even a single "burstet"; healthy pre-Victorian participles. Now thats the stuff. And haikus. Here, I can try one:
Tagore
Amid stacks of paper, a few less.
A fan shudders
alone
He smiled a little sheepishly.
"Perhaps now they can write a history of modernity in Indian literature without having to scamper over to half-digested letters written by Tagore to Mr and Mrs. Mahatma."
When we asked him what in today's literature he liked, he stood on the chair.
"It was the choice he forced on us: either simper, in sentences even American high school children can understand, or write weighty magisterial blither in mock Tennysonian idioms or in tone-deaf Bombaya. Why not serious and demotic? In Several languages? Not stupid. Not artificial half remembered mannerisms of a city now lost, confected for auditory tourists. But demotic. One's time in thought, and the like. We have given up seriousness, because of what it looks like. Big beard. No shoes. And dozens of students dressing like you. And what it sounds like. Oh God. Sonorous aviaries....wings spread yea wide. But now we write novels about arranged marriages in English. Any old fanny can get a Pulitzer. Throw in a green card, a samosa and a dowry, and wring your hands. Wear a sari on weekends. Talk about gods under stairs, a cow, a little cricket, or a bloody trip back home in the boonies. And caste. Mention caste. Or Hindus and Muslims falling in love, falling out of love. Why can't they fall out of autorickshaws? Joyce could have done it. It is the hand-wringing in second rate forms that is our Shakespeare's real legacy. Either Tennyson or daft Suburban American, mangled in translation. He left us in the swill: our best minds for generations becoming chartered accountants, software engineers, businessmen, doctors, because they can't put up with the drivel of serious, the sheer bloody mindless tedium of the humani....
We left him, standing on the chair, gesticulating at the ceiling fan, with his tie tied securely around his head, no longer smiling. We did not think appropriate to ask him about the prospects for an Indian Nobel. Or whether Bangla looses something in translation, or whether it was true, as famous Chicago based humanists have claimed, that Tagore's poetry contains the seeds for the regeneration of the liberal democratic tradition in India.
