(This complete book can be read at https://eldritchpress.org/rt/cmoon.htm .)
(To know who can read this book , scroll down below)
The shadow of the rains has covered the day from end to end.
The fierce lightning is scratching the sky with its nails.
When the clouds rumble and it thunders, I love to be afraid in my heart and cling to you (mother).
This book is a collection of many prose-poems ,
All of them are written in first person ; sometimes its the mother addressing the child or at other times the other way .
These poems are very short in length , but when you read them they will be with you throughout the day primarily because here :
(The Book :)
a.)Tagore paints a picture of a child and the many thoughts that cross his mind in the night , in the day in the protective presence of his mother . (Someone said that when childhood dies , the corpse that’s left is called an adult , so in this book , Tagore paints a picture of that ’Life’ , that lost world of yesterday. )
b.)the writings are free from any mysticism and religious symbolism and there should not be any doubts in your mind why this is so .. I mean obviously a child cannot be a mystic .. or can he be?? If the answer to that question is yes then these prose-poems are deeply mystical.
c.)You might think that the world they built with ’heartless’ bricks , stones and steel is a mess , and it needs to be restructured and reorganized - infact completely rebuilt - and though the engeeniers and philosophers together should work on it , they should at every step ask for the child’s consent.
Don’t you know that either philosophers should be kings or kings should be philosophers ??
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Content of the book :
The child is deeply emotional , has deep imaginings of all sorts , he tries to solve science riddles , riddles that the land and sky offer him , etc. and all of them with his crystal-clear logic . His imagination soars higher and higher , higher than Shelley ever imagined the skylark to fly . This book captures the free-spirit of the child who is a true romantic and courageous , bold , daring , adventurous and if presented with any opportunity or any challenge that life could offer him , he would prove himself ; when such a challenge life does not offer him - for he dwells in the confines of his house - he wonders ’’A thousand useless things happen day after day, and why couldn’t such a thing come true by chance? ’’.
In The Hero the child is courageous , bold , is skilled with the sword so when his mother (’the woman in his life’) and he are travelling and strange figures come towards them he fights them with his sword :
Many of them fly, and a great number are cut to pieces.
I know you are thinking, sitting all by yourself, that your boy must be dead by this time.
But I come to you all stained with blood, and say, ’’Mother, the fight is over now.’’
You come out and kiss me, pressing me to your heart, and you say to yourself,
’’I don’t know what I should do if I hadn’t my boy to escort me.’’
A thousand useless things happen day after day, and why couldn’t such a thing come true by chance?
It would be like a story in a book.
My brother would say, ’’Is it possible? I always thought he was so delicate!’’
Our village people would all say in amazement, ’’Was it not lucky that the boy was with his mother?’’
The child thinks he’s practical - he really is - and cannot understand why others are unable to see thinks with his crystal-clear logic .. :
When he asks his ’dada’ [elder brother] why in the evening when the round full moon gets entangled among the branches of that Kadam tree, doesn’t anyone catch it ? ; the following conversation ensues ..
dâdâ laughed at me and said, ’’Baby, you are the silliest child I have ever known. The moon is ever so far from us, how could anybody catch it?’’
I said, ’’Dâdâ how foolish you are! When mother looks out of her window and smiles down at us playing, would you call her far away?’’
Still said, ’’You are a stupid child! But, baby, where could you find a net big enough to catch the moon with?’’
I said, ’’Surely you could catch it with your hands.’’
But dâdâ laughed and said, ’’You are the silliest child I have known. If it came nearer, you would see how big the moon is.’’
I said, ’’Dâdâ, what nonsense they teach at your school! When mother bends her face down to kiss us does her face look very big?’’
( from: The Astronomer )
Tagore also beautifully brings up the ’’differences-of-opinions’’ and the seperate ways that the father and the son tread .. in general life and in the way they both love her .. albiet differently .
Mother, if you don’t mind, I should like to become the boatman of the ferryboat when I am grown up....
...When the sun climbs the mid sky and morning wears on to noon, I shall come running to you, saying, ’’Mother, I am hungry!’’...
...I shall never go away from you into the town to work like father.
(from: The Further Bank)
YOU say that father writes a lot of books, but what he writes I don’t understand
When I take up father’s pen or pencil and write upon his book just as he does, --a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, --why do you get cross with me, then, mother?
You never say a word when father writes.
When my father wastes such heaps of paper, mother, you don’t seem to mind at all.
But if I take only one sheet to make a boat with, you say, ’’Child, how troublesome you are!’’
What do you think of father’s spoiling sheets and sheets of paper with black marks all over on both sides?
(from: Authorship )
The child has not seen pain , he is a stranger to politics or power , and what actually makes the world of the rest of the people go round (money and materialism , lust , etc.) so (supposedly , and not in the Book) he simply beckons the whole world to play with him , but mostly he gets his own mother to whom he says
’’MOTHER, the light has grown grey in the sky; I do not know what the time is.
There is no fun in my play, so I have come to you. It is Saturday, our holiday.
Leave off your work, mother; sit here by the window and tell me where the desert of Tepântar in the fairy tale is?
May be this book will help you learn how to play with children .
The child is all this and lots more .
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Who can read it?
This book is for everyone to read , and owing to its beauty can be read over and over again , because though generally like say in Gitanjali , Tagore’s thoughts are difficult to understand but in this book what Tagore says is as simply understood as a picture.
Readers of Kahlil Gibran , parents of the children , teachers etc. will love it most ; infact its important they read it so they can understand the child better .