It is interesting that Tagore’s writing for children was not just poetry and stories, but also books that were meant to be used as textbooks! He wrote a series of Bengali language textbooks called Sahaj Path (Easy Reading), that started with simple rhymes teaching the alphabets and went on to teach sentences, paragraphs and rhymes. The books were illustrated by the famous artist Nandalal Bose, and are still used to teach children Bengali. Here is a little sample:

My introduction to Tagore, however, was not as a child reading such textbooks, or by hearing his songs. It was through a volume of poetry I discovered in a forest rest house during one of my stepfather’s shikar expeditions. I was always averse to guns and shooting and preferred to see the animals and admire them for their beauty. Of course, no one else understood this, and I would stay back in the rest house when my parents and their friends went out shooting. Most of these bungalows had libraries, or at least shelves of books, that no one bothered to dust, let alone remove books from to read. It was from one such dusty shelf that I rescued a volume of poetry written by Tagore, translated into English, and read it over a quiet afternoon, sitting happily all by myself in the empty house. I later read many of his works, whatever I could find in various translations, but my happiest memory of reading remains that day in the middle of the forest, with the calls of birds outside and the distant roar of the jeep carrying away all the grown-ups so I could read in peace.

I hope this book makes many such happy memories for you too, as you read the beautiful poems and stories in it.

Ruskin Bond

Landour, Mussoorie

poems

the home

I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was hiding its last gold like a miser.

The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the widowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent.

Suddenly a boy’s shrill voice rose into the sky. He traversed the dark unseen, leaving the track of his song across the hush of the evening.

His village home lay there at the end of the waste land, beyond the sugarcane field, hidden among the shadows of the banana and the slender areca palm, the cocoa-nut and the dark green jackfruit trees.

I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the starlight, and saw spread before me the darkened earth surrounding with her arms countless homes furnished with cradles and beds, mothers’ hearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness that knows nothing of its value for the world.

on the seashore

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.