Letter From Boston
Boating . . . and Proust
Marcel Proust, the great French novelist, critic, and essayist, well-known for his monumental novel Remembrance of Things Past which was characterized by Somerset Maugham as the "greatest fiction to date", spent more than ten years in his house (mostly confined to bed though because of his severe asthmatic lungs) while he worked on his literary undertakings. Fortunately for Proust, he was able to stay in this comfortable, and for him stimulating setting, since he was independently wealthy thanks to his father, a doctor, and his mother, who came from a rich Jewish family. As fellow writers and my readers are equally aware, the task of writing is a serious endeavor and requires not only commitment and all the other ingredients that authors from Homer to modern-day Orhan Pamuk have identified, but also a nice and quiet environment to concentrate, reflect, and get one's ideas to the fore. As for myself, I cannot afford the luxury of spending much time in my home since my work and travels keep me away, although I will admit that my latest bout of creative energy started in this house one lazy morning as I was sitting by my kitchen window looking out at the vast expanse of open fields, dales, and the wooded skyline beyond. I felt so transfixed by this natural beauty unfolding right in front of my house and the peace and tranquility inside with my beloved, I understood why poets and writers often like to stay where they are, in loco, or to put it in the words of the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo, who waxed eloquent about his own neighborhood and said that he wanted to spend his life among "the leafy chestnut trees of Paris".
Turning now to someone closer to home, we can divine that Tagore's writings have been informed, influenced, and shaped by his settings. When I read or sing his songs, "Ashar shondha ghoniyey elo" or "amar raat pohalo sharodo pratey", I can close my eyes and see him sitting in his porch with his notebook in his Jorashanko house, on a rocking chair, or on the house boat on the river Padma with the rain pouring over his tall slightly bent figure as he plays with the tunes or lyrics of a song. Even his letters to his accomplices say as much. During his trip to Japan in the 1930s on Tosa Maru, he writes to Abanindranath, "Last night I couldn't sleep … the weather turned hostile and the ship was tossing and turning in the ocean. Finally I gathered my nerves and wrote down the song", "Bhubon jora ashon khani". Or from his estate in Shelaidah, where he penned his heart-rending song, "Jodi hay jeebon purno holo tobo okripon korey", and says "Baishakher sheerno nadi bhora sroter daan naa paye jodi" , in the third quatrain of the song.
I can now understand better the meaning and provenance of various labels, some of which appear to be at times mysterious, that Tagore acquired during his life and after, particularly through the influence of his frequent travels. While I had somewhat known about his travels, some of which were long and some short, and the well-justified sobriquet "peripatetic litterateur", now I understand why Tagore changed his venue often, and how that helped him avoid the "writer's block".
Needless to say, both the natural environment and the muse leave a big influence on a writer and her work. The setting sun, seen from my front yard or the deck at the back of my house, never fails to get me feeling sometimes nostalgic, sometimes romantic, or just ecstatic. I try to capture those sentiments either in real-time or usually later when my creative juices start flowing. I know that since I am not a natural-born writer it is nature or mood that usually inform my prose, rather than the other way around. Most often when I sit down to write I am at a public library surrounded by computers or in my wife's study which is decked with her work in progress. My typical session at the keyboard is a concurrent interplay of words trying to capture a lost moment and past scenes unrolling in my mind's projection screen. However, like all aspiring writers, and inspired by Tagore and his ability to write and be imbrued by his constantly changing locales, I have myself often changed my writing place. Tagore has on occasions written from his houseboat anchored on the river bank or coursing down the rivers. The rivers and waterways are not very far from where I live; the Charles, Taunton, Neponset, or the Mystic rivers are only a few minutes away, and even closer are the lakes and ponds that are spread all over the region. Nonetheless, I have never attempted to sit on a boat and write, though I am well aware of the soothing and hallucinatory effects of water on a writer's right brain. One possible excuse for that is while most of these locations are within driving distance, none are within walking distance from my home. Therefore, my joy was boundless, as one might imagine, when I discovered the other day a little stream and small bog right in front of my house in the Nature Conservancy land created out of an abandoned dairy farm. The view took me back to the little pond in Cezanne's "The Large Bathers". I was determined to find a small raft or boat to launch and to take advantage of this bucolic setting. I was convinced that as I sat on my boat or raft, or enjoyed nature and saw the sun go down across the trees, I would be able to not only describe it, but would see ideas sprouting in my mind in the manner that nature walks in the rural areas of Dinajpur or Mymensingh or on boat rides in the Sundarbans.
I finally bought a little boat (actually a kayak, as I was later told), and decided to carry it to the recently discovered pond. To witness the launching of this vessel and to make the event more romantic, I invited my muse, who accepted even though she was not too excited about the project, but consented to keep me company. I was thrilled by the prospect of sitting with her on the boat, facing each other, as we did when we first met many years ago on a little dinghy on Dhanmondi Lake, taking in the Monet-like picture-perfect setting, the flowing water and soft tingles, the undulating land, and the trees beyond as the gentle breeze whispered through the tall grass and brushes. The launch went perfectly, and only after I made myself comfortable on the small narrow boat and invited her to join me, did she finally reveal her true intentions.
She could not hide it behind her smile when she said, "Well, this journey is one you have to undertake by yourself. I will be watching you from the shore!" I will not deny that I was half-anticipating this eventuality, since her reservations about going on a boat with me were barely concealed during the few weeks that I spent hatching the plan with her and went through two rounds of searching and shopping for the perfect boat. But now, when it was time for her to step into the boat, she wanted to wait out, and recited from Tagore's Sonar Tori, "thhai nai, thhai nai, chhoto e tori", echoing the memorable lines that Tagore heard as he tried to get on board the "golden boat". Except that my partner in all crimes used the same lines only to keep herself out of my boat! I did not know what to do then. I just looked at her, and wondered what had happened to the girl who stepped on the boat with me on Dhanmondi Lake in the fading lights without any hesitation not too long ago? The answer might come to me when I find the time to start my own version of Remembrance of Things in My Past (apologies to Proust for mangling the title) and start reflecting on life's deeper meanings.
Dr. Abdullah Shibli lives and works in Boston.
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