The Crescent Moon
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali poet and writer, as well as a musician. He wrote over 2,000 Songs, numerous short stories, novels, plays, essays, poetry and dance dramas. Among his songs are the national anthems of two countries—India and Bangladesh. Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
contents
Introduction
POEMS
The Home
On the Seashore
The Source
Baby’s Way
The Unheeded Pageant
Sleep-stealer
The Beginning
Baby’s World
When and Why
Defamation
The Judge
Playthings
The Astronomer
Clouds and Waves
The Champa Flower
Fairyland
The Land of the Exile
The Rainy Day
Paper Boats
The Sailor
The Further Bank
The Flower-school
The Merchant
Sympathy
Vocation
Superior
The Little Big Man
Twelve O’Clock
Authorship
The Wicked Postman
The Hero
The End
The Recall
The First Jasmines
The Banyan Tree
Benediction
The Gift
My Song
The Child Angel
The Last Bargain
STORIES
The Kabuliwalla
The Kingdom of Cards
My Lord, the Baby
The Parrot’s Training
The Home-coming
Master Mashai
introduction
The name Rabindranath Tagore usually conjures up an image of someone very serious. He is the revered poet and Nobel laureate. But those who have read him know that he also had a playful and humorous side. It was a tender, emotional side filled with laughter and wit. This came through best in some of his poetry for children. In his lifetime, Tagore wrote hundreds of poems and songs, many of which he set to music himself. He also wrote dance dramas and plays, apart from short stories, novels and essays. In this large body of work there are some poems and stories that he wrote for and about children, which have been brought together in this volume.
Each poem in The Crescent Moon evokes the tender love of a mother and her child. Sometimes the mother is the beautiful land all around, and sometimes she is very much a human mother, calling out to the crescent moon in the sky as she holds her child in her arms in the darkening night. Some poems are about the sweet sleep that plays on a baby’s eyes at night, and in another the mother wonders who stole sleep from her baby’s eyes. Was it the Sleep-stealer who lurks about near the pond in the evenings?
Tagore also wrote a number of stories with strong child characters. One of my favourites is Minnie, from the story ‘The Kabuliwalla’. Minnie is a smart, precocious child, and her unlikely friendship with the burly Afghan from Kabul is beautifully described. Perhaps since he surrounded himself with children of all ages, Tagore was able to get to the mind of a child and put down in his stories exactly how a child thinks, talks and reacts to the world.
The Tagore family was a large one and there were always children playing about, studying—or trying not to study! Tagore himself has written elsewhere of his disdain for all kinds of formal schooling. He quite hated the schools he was sent to; the rote learning that the children had to do, and the exams they had to write. For him, studying meant letting the mind roam free to imagine in order to truly understand what is being taught. He believed so strongly in this that he started his own school in Shantiniketan. His wife, Mrinalini, gave him much of her jewellery to sell in order to raise money for the school. At Shantiniketan he created the kind of school that perhaps even I would have been happy to go to! Here, classes were held out in the open, under trees, no one was punished, and there was no learning by memory. Children worked and studied according to their interests. They played games, did art and learnt all that is essential, without feeling school to be a burden. All these thoughts are shown very effectively in the story ‘The Parrot’s Learning’. What happens if you keep pumping words and concepts into students? Read the story and see!
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.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
the source
The sleep that flits on baby’s eyes—does anybody know from where it comes? Yes, there is a rumour that it has its dwelling where, in the fairy village among shadows of the forest dimly lit with glowworms, there hang two shy buds of enchantment. From there it comes to kiss baby’s eyes.
The smile that flickers on baby’s lips when he sleeps—does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumour that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning—the smile that flickers on baby’s lips when he sleeps.
The sweet, soft freshness that blooms on baby’s limbs—does anybody know where it was hidden so long? Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay pervading her heart in tender and silent mystery of love—the sweet, soft freshness that has bloomed on baby’s limbs.
baby’s way
If baby only wanted to, he could fly up to heaven this moment.
It is not for nothing that he does not leave us.
He loves to rest his head on mother’s bosom, and cannot ever bear to lose sight of her.
Baby knows all manner of wise words, though few on earth can understand their meaning.
It is not for nothing that he never wants to speak.
The one thing he wants is to learn mother’s words from mother’s lips. That is why he looks so innocent.
Baby had a heap of gold and pearls, yet he came like a beggar on to this earth.
It is not for nothing he came in such a disguise.
This dear little naked mendicant pretends to be utterly helpless, so that he may beg for mother’s wealth of love.
Baby was so free from every tie in the land of the tiny crescent moon.
It was not for nothing he gave up his freedom.
He knows that there is room for endless joy in mother’s little corner of a heart, and it is sweeter far than liberty to be caught and pressed in her dear arms.
Baby never knew how to cry. He dwelt in the land of perfect bliss.
It is not for nothing he has chosen to shed tears.
Though with the smile of his dear face he draws mother’s yearning heart to him, yet his little cries over tiny troubles weave the double bond of pity and love.
the unheeded pageant
Ah, who was it coloured that little frock, my child, and covered your sweet limbs with that little red tunic?
You have come out in the morning to play in the courtyard, tottering and tumbling as you run.
But who was it coloured that little frock, my child?
What is it makes you laugh, my little life-bud?
Mother smiles at you standing on the threshold.
She claps her hands and her bracelets jingle, and you dance with your bamboo stick in your hand like a tiny little shepherd.
But what is it makes you laugh, my little life-bud?
O beggar, what do you beg for, clinging to your mother’s neck with both your hands?
O greedy heart, shall I pluck the world like a fruit from the sky to place it on your little rosy palm?
O beggar, what are you begging for?
The wind carries away in glee the tinkling of your anklet bells.
The sun smiles and watches your toilet. The sky watches over you when you sleep in your mother’s arms, and the morning comes tiptoe to your bed and kisses your eyes.
The wind carries away in glee the tinkling of your anklet bells.
The fairy mistress of dreams is coming towards you, flying through the twilight sky.
The world-mother keeps her seat by you in your mother’s heart.
He who plays his music to the stars is standing at your window with his flute.
And the fairy mistress of dreams is coming towards you, flying through the twilight sky.
sleep-stealer
Who stole sleep from baby’s eyes? I must know.
Clasping her pitcher to her waist mother went to fetch water from the village near by.
It was noon. The children’s playtime was over; the ducks in the pond were silent.
The shepherd boy lay asleep under the shadow of the banyan tree.
The crane stood grave and still in the swamp near the mango grove.
In the meanwhile the Sleep-stealer came and, snatching sleep from baby’s eyes, flew away.
When mother came back she found baby travelling the room over on all fours.
Who stole sleep from our baby’s eyes? I must know. I must find her and chain her up.
I must look into that dark cave, where, through boulders and scowling stones, trickles a tiny stream.
I must search in the drowsy shade of the bakula grove, where pigeons coo in their corner, and fairies’ anklets tinkle in the stillness of starry nights.
In the evening I will peep into the whispering silence of the bamboo forest, where fireflies squander their light, and will ask every creature I meet, ‘Can anybody tell me where the Sleep-stealer lives?’
Who stole sleep from baby’s eyes? I must know.
Shouldn’t I give her a good lesson if I could only catch her!
I would raid her nest and see where she hoards all her stolen sleep.
I would plunder it all, and carry it home.
I would bind her two wings securely, set her on the bank of the river, and then let her play at fishing with a reed among the rushes and water-lilies.
When the marketing is over in the evening, and the village children sit in their mothers’ laps, then the night birds will mockingly din her ears with:
‘Whose sleep will you steal now?’
the beginning
‘Where have I come from, where did you pick me up?’ the baby asked its mother.
She answered half crying, half laughing, and clasping the baby to her breast, ‘You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling.
You were in the dolls of my childhood’s games; and when with clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made and unmade you then.
You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship I worshipped you.
In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother you have lived.
In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have been nursed for ages.
When in girlhood my heart was opening its petals, you hovered as a fragrance about it.
Your tender softness bloomed in my youthful limbs, like a glow in the sky before the sunrise.
Heaven’s first darling, twin-born with the morning light, you have floated down the stream of the world’s life, and at last you have stranded on my heart.
As I gaze on your face, mystery overwhelms me; you who belong to all have become mine.
For fear of losing you I hold you tight to my breast. What magic has snared the world’s treasure in these slender arms of mine?’
baby’s world
I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby’s very own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never could move, come creeping to his window with their stories and with trays crowded with bright toys.
I wish I could travel by the road that crosses baby’s mind, and out beyond all bounds;
Where messengers run errands for no cause between the kingdoms of kings of no history;
Where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them, and Truth sets Fact free from its fetters.
when and why
When I bring you coloured toys, my child, I understand why there is such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why flowers are painted in tints—when I give coloured toys to you, my child.
When I sing to make you dance, I truly know why there is music in leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of the listening earth—when I sing to make you dance.